Hi All,
Yesterday, I bought a used '65 DRRI ltd (the wine red one). It sounded good to my ear and everything seemed to function perfectly. But, I noticed a few things and before I with my zero electronics experience (except a few pedal builds) cracks the thing open, I thought I would ask you fine people if you had any initial thoughts.
The used music store advertised it as a "Modified" '64 DRRI ('64?), but other than the Mercury output transformer, which is obvious (at least according to the stickers haha), they could not communicate what exactly had been modified other than to suggest that they think it was capacitors - may be filter cap upgrade? From the looks of it, it is obviously one of the Sweetwater ltd wine red/ wheat grill, late model RI '65 DR's, so I am unsure where they are getting '64 from.
The tube/circuit sticker looks very new, and I see the corner of another sticker underneath it, and neither the tube/circuit sticker nor the CA compliance sticker below it have writing on them.
The chassis straps on the top of the amp look like they have been changed, as evidenced by the uncovered holes where it appears the straps were once longer. This concerned me that there is a different than stock chassis in this thing, or that for some reason the chassis was re-mounted slightly adjacent from its original location.
I have been wanting one of these for the longest time to pair with my Electromatic and as mentioned this one sounded good and everything works - in the end, I guess it's what matters.
I guess my concerns are that this is fake (doubt it, and the price was right so even for a kit build, I'd still be content), a franken-amp, or that the guts were removed and replaced with something not original/ inferior.
I also noticed where the 2-letter date code goes (or so I thought), it just has a handwritten "6". I know this is a late model RI as I have seen them on Sweetwater, but I was looking to find what year it was made, no idea how to tell. Anyone know?
Cool forum, glad to be reading everyone's posts and I look forward to any thoughts if anyone wants to donate 2 cents.
Thanks!