Beltone 110 Combo

I recently purchased a vintage Beltone tube amp for CD$200/US$130. There's no model number on the case. It's a 1x10" combo amp, and the power consumption is marked as 31VA. The covering is purple Tolex. Apparently this model also comes in red, green, and blue. For the price, you could collect the whole set. The salesperson -- someone who knows a great deal about vintage amps -- believes that it dates from the early 60s. I'm not up on the finer points of tubes, so you'll have to bear with me. The amp is pure tube. The guy who sold it to me ran through the various tubes in the amp, and honestly, I didn't recognize any of them (no 12a anythings, or 6v anythings). They're all small single-triode tubes, and a tube rectifier as well.

There's not a lot of information available on Beltone, but here's what I have been able to determine. Beltone amps were sold in Canada in the early 60s. This particular amp has been imported and relabelled by Davis Importing. There's good reason to believe that the amp was actually built by Teiko, who were the manufacturers of the also-relabelled SilverTone line of amps and guitars in the US.

Controls are spartan. A volume and a tone control. There is also tremolo control (Off/On speed only) that doesn't work anymore. Despite this spartan set of controls, there are three instrument input jacks and one microphone input jack.

The amp delivers somewhere around 8 to 12W. This is adequate for practice, and for performance -- well... That's what PA systems are for. There really aren't too many venues that don't have house PA systems any more, so there's really no reason to lug around 100W amplifiers any more. I don't have any problem with it's anaemic wattage.

The amp produces a clean tone throughout the entire volume range. As for the other Beltone amp reviewed in this section, this is a pretty much a one sound amp. However, the sound that it does produce is quite lovely. It's has a distinctly tube sound, with a nice round bottom with a little bit of punch, and a decent treble that is admittedly not "sparkling", but is certainly adequately. Overall, the sound is sweet and jazzy -- which just happens to be what I'm looking for.

It would be nice if the amp would overdrive and crunch just a little more. It proces a nice crips jazz tone, but it can't quite convince itself to overdrive itself enough for even a little bit of crunch. Val Halen fans should stay well away from this amp. That being said, that one tone that it does produce is as nice or nicer than anything I've heard coming out of various tube amp emulators and, for that particular clean jazz tone that I want as nice as I'm likely to find until I can save up enough to buy myself the Fender Cyber Twin -- which does, truthfully sound a hell of a lot nicer than this one.

Hey. It's survived for almost 40 years. Can't argue with that.

Hah. Long gone.

However, I would like to plug Retrotown Music, in Ottawa who sold me this little beast. The folks there are knowledgable and helpful and I have absolutely no concerns about obtaining service and repair from these folks.

Amazing value. You could go spend $2500+ on a vintage Fender Champ, or you could spend $120 on an off brand vintage low-power amp and get much the same result (the Champ only has a volume and tone control too). Until I save enough for a Fender Cyber Twin, this is where I'm parking my hat.