Alamo Amp-5 112 Combo

This amp is a "montclair" or model 5, which indicates 5 tubes--2 6V6 power tubes, a 5Y3 rectifier, one 12AX7 and a 6SL7. Somewhere I read that the output is supposed to be 15 watts, I imagine 10 is closer to reality, but new power tubes might change my mind. The speaker is an "Alamo Alnico 5"

I give this amp a rating of 9 because I consider the lack of features a good thing. There are four inputs with two separate volumes, and a tone knob. Period. Turn it on and go, no experimentation required. I would give it a 10 if there were only one input and one volume.

This amp blows me away. Thick, sweet, creamy tone that only tweed fenders can even touch. When you dime the volume and turn the tone up 3/4 you get perfect touch sensitive distortion. In 19 years of playing I have honestly never heard a better sounding amp. I stand in front of it playing blues licks on my tele, all but hypnotized. The notes sing, they sustain endlessly even without distortion. The sound is bright but still very warm. Overtones on overtones. I don't know if the materials from the 50's and early 60's were better than they are now, or if the aging process itself sweetens the sound of these old amps, but there is no new amp anywhere that sounds this good to my ears.

This amp is in its late 40's, so to have it still working well and sounding great earns an 8. Maybe I should give it a 9, but one of the inputs doesn't work and one of the volume knobs doesn't seem to do anything--I guess it controls the input that isn't working.

Alamo is no more, so obviously no customer support. I'm not counting on great customer support from the Pantera fan who rolled out of bed at 4:30 pm to sell me this old amp.

Bloody hell, there is no way to give this amp anything but a 10. The sound is sonic crack (or meth, whatever is more addictive). I basically paid the pre-tax price of a blues junior. The BJ is louder, has a distortion switch and a warranty, but the Alamo is an incredible value by comparison. This is a hand-wired vintage piece of art that NO new amp for any price can touch for pure sound quality, which is most important. If this amp were loud enough to play un-mic'ed with a loud drummer, I would pray to it.

This amp was manufactured by the Alamo Electronics Corp. in 1950 - based on the date code of the Jensen P12R that came with it. The early Alamo amps (Amp-3, Amp-4, Amp-5) have a peculiar naming system that is based on the number of tubes the amp uses. The Amp-5 has, you guessed it, 5 tubes - a 5Y3GT rectifier tube, 6SC7 and 6SN7 preamp tubes, and two 6V6 power tubes.

When I bought this amp on eBay, it was not functional, so I had my amp tech replace the filter caps and resistors, replace the power cord with a 3-prong cord, and replace all the tubes with the following:

2x 6V6 =>Marconi (Westinghouse)
5Y3GT => RCA
6SC7 => RCA
6SN7 => GE

The amp has two "channels" with four inputs - two inputs per "channel". They aren't channels in the traditional sense, because there is not a separate gain, tremolo or reverb setting for either channel, just a separate volume knob - so presumably one could plug in a microphone and a guitar input and balance the outputs of both. There is a single tone control.

The circuitry and sound are very close to that of the Fender 5A3 circuit used in the TV-front Deluxe - not unexpected since both amplifiers are using old Western Electric circuit designs.

I'm giving this a "very versatile" rating since this would have been quite innovative at the time. It's not fair to assign this rating based on today's standard of amplifiers with thousands of knobs, switches, bells and whistles - I'm grading this compared to similar amps made at that same time.

This amp sounds, in a word, awesome! There is no reverb, no chorus, yet one would swear that they are, in fact, awash in the tonal palette of this amp - it is sweet, sweet, sweet and shimmery at low volumes and as you perk up the volume it begins to growl beautifully - this is the sweetest-sounding amp I've ever heard, and I've heard all the classics.

I tried this amp with three different Telecasters, a Rickenbacker 360/12 V64, and a Gibson acoustic with piezo pickup - all instruments sound awesome, with the exception of a slight low frequency muddiness only on one Telecaster with Bill Lawrence BL-280TN neck pickup - I suspect if I move the poles slightly farther away from the string, that the muddiness will clear up.

I don't gig, so I cannot comment as to its reliability under those conditions, but I can say that I have been playing this amp, on average, about 15-20 hours/week for the last 18 months and have not had any reliability issues whatsoever - you turn on the power and it works - plain and simple.

Alamo went out of business many years ago, so cannot comment as to the company's service performance, but will say that this is a very simple amplifier design that most techs should be quite capable of servicing.

I bought this amp, believe it or not, only because it had an original 1950 Jensen P12R concert speaker. Well, I took the speaker out, not because I wanted to use the speaker, but because I wanted to use the amp! The original speaker, after 50 years of age, probably shouldn't be played in a guitar amplifier, so I replaced it with a Weber P12R in a Jensen basket.

This amp is just amazing considering the tones you can get with very little trouble, and if you are able to find one (or an Amp-3 for that matter, which is probably very similar to a vintage Fender Champ) you should snap it up - they don't make amps that sound this good any more for less than thousands of dollars.