Danelectro Pioneer 15

I have no idea what year this amp is but I would guess late 40's or 50's. This is used as a practice amp and when it was made there were not a lot of features put into these, it does have vabrato. It has a very nice natural distortion that makes this truely blues. It is warm and plenty loud for a practice amp. It does have miltiple intrument inputs but if you plug in more than one then the quality goes away. There is no output jacks or headphone jacks, they didn't use them back then. It is all tube and all original. It is a push-pull 6V6 chassis and it uses the typical 12AX7 preamp tubes. It is equiped with the original speaker, a Jensen, that works great but due to the age of it I don't turn it up real loud anymore for fear of damaging the cone. <a href="http://www.antiqueradiosplus.com/index12.htm>pics of amp</a>. The rating for this is as a practice amp only.

I have several different guitars that I use but the best sound for this amp is from a hollow body like the 335. Because this amp doesn't have a gain or anything like that the best sound comes from it when it is on about 7 on the volume. Below 7 it has more of an acoustical guitar amp sound. The sound is good on this and when you are not playing there is virtually no hiss or humm, built very well with Freed transformers (there are none built like this any more). This rating is for the sound it produces (blues, warm distortion) not for versatality.

I have never done a thing to this amp, not even replacing a tube. It has always worked fine. I would never take this on a gig, it is not designed for that and it is not built to be handled a lot, not very many of these older amps are. If this amp ever broke I would fix it. If it was ever stolen I would replace it with the same model if I could find one, if I couldn't find one like this I would find some other OLDER tube amp like this one. The sound from these older amps is unmatched, if you really want the tube warm sound and the natuaral distortion like the way it was done in the early days of rock and blues then the older tube amps are your only choice. This amp is only good for practice and writing at you studio or at home, if you need something to take to the show then you will have to find something bigger and more powerful and built to be handled.

The original Danelectro company is no longer around. The new Danelectro company doesn't support the older units so you would have to find a repair shop that can work on older tube equipment, like an old radio repair shop.

I purchased this one from a garage sale for $25.00, it was a steal. I have been playing for 15 years while most of it is blues and older rock I can be found playing some classical riffs now and then too. I like the older tone generating amps rather than running a bunch of preamps and effects. The tube amps are the only place to find this sound, go to a musical instrument shop and try out some real old amps and see what I mean. Being loud is not an issue unless you have a larger music hall to fill and then you can mic everything through PA amps and then it's not an issue again. I don't really care for much of the newer amps being offered these days, don't get me wrong, they are built very well and are very versitil but the sound is not the same even the new tube ones sound different. For on stage I use a Fender twin reverb II, it is very bluesy and will do what ever I need it to do mostly without any effects.