SUPRO 1605 REVERB

We’re totally blown away by this 1963 Supro 1605. It has serious attitude – the ‘modified’ grille cloth is wrong, but packs attitude – this vintage valve amp sounds superb. It’s had a UK-made Tayden New Vintage 10” driver installed at some point in its life, which seems to have been a stroke of genius: our tech’s serviced a few of these and says this one’s the best he’s heard. It’s been serviced and is ready to play – a great recording amp. See The ToneQuest Report article further down the listing for further info.

They really are stunning little amps – made by Valco in the USA, it was a Supro that Jimmy Page used on early Led Zep recordings. I plugged my Tele in and wow… OK, it didn’t make me Jimmy Page, but certainly made me smile and not want to sell this one. However, we also landed a Supro Model 24 in the same shipment, so that’s staying put in our studio for now.  

This amp came from Mike Crossey’s studio and has been used on recordings by:

The 1975

Wolf Alice

Tribes

Razorlight

and many others…

 

 Please see photos to assess condition. 

It is of course a USA 110v mains unit so will require a step-down transformer for UK/EU use.

We can supply high quality UK made transformers if required.

 

From The ToneQuest Report Aug 2007:

Made in the early 1960s, the 1605 is a 1×10 combo amp originally shipped with a Jensen C10R, 12AX7, 6DR7, 6EU7, two 6973 output tubes, and a 5U4 rectifier. Controls include Volume, Tone, and a Reverb on/off intensity switch. This is a rare amp, and an identical Gretsch Electromatic version also exists. The 1605 is very loud for its size. In fact, it has the same power amp chassis as the early Gretsch 6162 amp with 2-10″ speakers, and produces a full, rich tone with major gain and overdrive. The reverb is not all that great sounding – probably a notch above the old Danelectro amps – but the intensity control circuit has a cool and probably unintended characteristic. As you turn the reverb control down, the gain in the amp goes up, and in effect the intensity control can be used as a master overdrive control, dialing in the amount of gain you like. This is because the circuit takes some of the dry signal off the volume control to drive the reverb circuit. The reverb sounds OK if you just blend it in enough to hear it, but fine tuning the intensity control is the key and pushes an already great sounding amp over the top. The 1605 is a versatile and great sounding little amp – one of the best sounding Valco amps I’ve ever owned.