I heard my amp can kill me because it doesn't have a power transformer! Why?
I've ordered "Sprague TVA Atom" capacitors (either from us or other places), some are labelled "Sprague" , others "Chemicon", even tho the part numbers are the same. What gives? Which are yours?
Some of your sockets are labelled "Amphenol Made By WPI". Are these real Amphenols? Are they really made in USA?
I posted to a Usenet Newsgroup, and next week my email-box was full of junk email and chainletters (aka "spam")!
What an ugly web page!
What is a "cookie" being used for on your online ordering page?
What's my amp (preamp, tuner, etc.) worth?
Did Raymond Loewy really design the Coca Cola bottle?
Was O'Hare Airport named after Al Capone's lawyer? 

Q.I heard my amp can kill me because it doesn't have a power transformer! Why?

Back in the old days, many cheap entry level tube amplifiers did not use power transformers. These usually can be identified by the presence of certain tubes (50C5 ,50L6, 35C5 and 35L6 are typical output tubes, 35Z5 or 35W4 are typical rectifier tubes), and because you can see only one small transformer (none if it's under the chassis), sometimes mounted on the speaker.The lack of a power transformer means that the ground side of the amplifier is actually the low side of the AC power line coming out of your wall!...and it might not be the low side, because some of these old amps didn't have "polarized" plugs that keep you from plugging in the plug the wrong way, and it's not impossible (especially in older places) for the sockets to be wired wrong, too.
Because of the way guitar pickups and microphones work, they require an AC signal ground return. To keep you from getting shocked (or to put it more accurately, so you'd only get shocked mildly) in the case of a reversed ground, these amps typically used a resistor paralleled with a capacitor (typically a .047 bypassed by a 220K resistor) between the ground side of the input and the actual circuit ground...basically, just enough impedance to block big medicine juice coming out of the wall, but not enough to block the small signal coming from a guitar or microphone. Unlike the "ground polarity" capacitors found in some amps, like old Fenders, this resistor/capacitor  combination cannot be removed as the input will not work at all without it.
The real problems with these amplifiers are (1) the small capacitor (especially old wax ones made before the early 1960's) can short out and could put live,direct AC wall juice right on your guitar or microphone.This can and has killed people.(2) Many of these amps do not have fuses, and if something in your amp shorts out, it could be a smoking ball of flame and start a house fire before it blows your house fuse or circuit breaker. This has killed even more people than the previous case.

The solutions are pretty simple:
1.Replace the offending capacitor. The best one to use is a 125VAC UL rated line filter cap, but a new 600VDC rated capacitor is still a lot better that what came in these originally.
Many of these old amps need other capacitors replaced just as routine maintainence, there's generally only a few dollars worth of capacitors in these amplifiers. When electrolytics go bad, either the amp will start humming uncontrollably or the capacitor will spew corrosive goo inside the amp, which is a mess to clean up.
2.Use an isolation transformer.We sell these, including stepdown versions that allow these amps to be used on 230V European voltages. This is highly recommended if you are going to use the amp for gigging or recording, namely, anywhere you might be touching another piece of equipment at the same time you are using it.
3. Install a fuse.If you don't want to poke a hole in the amp to mount a conventional fuseholder, inline fuseholders with wire leads that can be installed inside the amp can be had at nearly any auto parts store. The usual 3 tube or 2 tube guitar amp needs a 1/2 amp slowblow  fuse.

Some old "hifi" amps (mainly pulled from old consoles), have "transformerless" amplifiers as well. These have the same dangers as guitar amplifiers, usually there's RCA input jacks grounded in the same manner as the input jacks in guitar amps. Trying to interface this type of amplifier with  modern day or other transformer isolated equipment without using an isolation transformer is problematical, possibly dangerous, especially if there's no fuse and the "isolation" capacitor is toasted.

A lot of old radios &TV's are "transformerless", these usually isolated the user with plenty of plastic or wood and often had "interlock" plugs that disconnected the AC power if the back was removed.Still, replacing that "isolation" capacitor to the chassis and installing a fuse is a very good idea if you wish to use this type of equipment.

Q.I've ordered "Sprague TVA Atom" capacitors (either from us or other places), some are labelled
"Sprague" , others "Chemicon", even tho the part numbers are the same. What gives? Which are yours?

A.TVA "Atom" electrolytics have been made for a number of years under contract for Sprague/Vishay by United Chemicon in North Carolina. Provided the part numbers are the same, they're exactly the same item.
 

Q.Some of your sockets & plugs are labelled "Amphenol Made By WPI". Are these real Amphenols? Are they really made in USA?

A.A few years back Amphenol (formerly Amercan Phenolic Co) sold the tooling for manufacture of their 4, 5, 6, 8(Octal) and 11 pin sockets & plugs to Wire Pro, Inc. , who manufactures these under license.
These are exactly the same as the Amphenol parts and in most cases are still stamped "Amphenol".
 

Q. I posted to a Usenet Newsgroup, and next week my email-box was full of junk email and chainletters (aka "spam")!

A. Certain companies &people on the Internet...usually folks peddling "Work At Home Make $5,000 a Day" scams, penny stocks, various get-rich-quick schemes ("This is not MLM!! No selling involved!"), illegal chainletters (aka "MMF"), letter stuffing swindles, and other unsavory items....use a computer program commonly called a "spambot" to collect email addreses from newsgroups &web pages, then the lists are used to send the unwelcome sleaze-e-mail to unwilling victims.

If you can  put a spam filter in your From: and Reply to: address fields, for example, if your address is jjones@anotherisp.net,change it to jpleasenospamjones@anotherisp.net.
If you've got America On-Line, use their spamproofing to change the first half of your address (before the @). The "smart" computerized spam harvesters know enough to take extra letters out of "aol.com".

(Note: make it something that the average person can figure out!)

If the address the spambots collect isn't valid, you won't get the junk email. Note, do not put your real email address in the body of your posting,they'll find it there, too!

Using non-alphanumeric characters may be of limited value,I KNOW some spambots know these are illegal characters and will remove them. They also use other "smart" methods to defeat spam filters, like deleting strings like "nospam". So be imaginative.
You can help stop unsolicited junk email by simply NEVER responding to any of it, and NOT patronizing business that send it. When people don't respond, or it causes a loss of business, these places will eventually have to stop spamming!
If you want to know more about spam and how you can help stop it click here, or , click here

If you get illegal chainletters ("send money to the top of the list and add yours at the bottom"), check out this page to see what to do about it.

Also note that spam filters are not necessary for Email, only Usenet postings. I get at least one email a week that has a spam filter that even we can't figure out! Those folks probably think we are ignoring them, sorry! I realize that Netscape uses the same email address for both Usenet and Email, and changing it to add or delete a spam filter is a pain, but if you are just writing us to ask for free advice, it's really only common courtesy to take out the spam filter when emailing us.

If you're emailing us an big order for tubes, of course we'll be more than happy to delete the spam filter on my end!  Just make it one we can figure out!

Also, if you are emailing questions, keeping it brief & to the point (but with enough info for us to answer your question) helps us give you a prompt response. Of course some questions are going to be more complex than others.

Q. What an ugly web page! 

A. That's besides the point...Firstly, we want this page to be 100% compatible with every web browser, even text-based ones like Lynx. We get 25,000 web visits a month, and we've got enough fun just keeping it up to date...and we've got LOADS more schematics and tube related stuff we want to add to make this the most comprehensive source of tube related info on the 'net. We'd rather spend our time putting more data on this site instead trying to figure out Java bugs crashing people's browsers......or CGI on the server end croaking...tubes we know, computer geniuses we ain't.

Q.What is a "cookie" being used for on your online ordering page?

A. The "cookie" is solely used for keeping track of what's in your "shopping basket". For example,if you lose your connection, you can come back and pick up shopping where you left off. The cookie does not track or contain any personal information other than your shopping basket contents. If you block the cookie, the shopping basket won't work.

Q. Did Raymond Loewy really design the Coca Cola bottle?

The Encyclopaedia Britannica says so, and Loewy's own web site says so, but, no he didn't. The Coca Cola bottle was designed (and patented, thus leaving no doubt as to the date) in 1915 by the Root Glass Co. of Terre Haute, Indiana. Oddly enough, one of the fellows who really did design the bottle (T. Clyde Edwards ) based it on a drawing of a cocoa (not coca or cola) bean pod drawing in a copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which nowadays incorrectly credits Loewy, as this web page at Indiana State University relates.Coca Cola themselves verify this story, and they own the original prototype.
Loewy was no doubt a genius and designed a great number of important and distinctive industrial products, including Coca-Cola vending machines, and he he did at one time comment that the Coke bottle was a brilliant design, but he didn't design THE Coke bottle, as in 1915 he was either still in school in France or serving in the French Army. Loewy didn't emigrate to the USA until 1919. Also see this page on Urban Legends about the Coke bottle.

Q. Was O'Hare Airport named after Al Capone's lawyer?

Almost. It was named "Butch" O'Hare, a World War 2 pilot and posthumous Medal Of Honor winner, who was also the son of an Eddie O'Hare, a lawyer & business associate of Al Capone.  Here's da facts.