Vintage Tube Amp

This is a vintage Webster Chicago tube amp from late 1951 or early 1952. They have been successfully been converted into really cool guitar amps or harp amps, with very little modification. Drop the amp name into YouTube and you’ll see what I mean. I removed the maroon covering and the speaker grill years ago because it was looking rough. Hey I was 14, gimmie a break. Underneath it was this beautiful wood that you see in the pictures. This amp already has that vintage mojo, but a retro speaker cover would make it look incredible. The speaker does have a couple tiny tears (see pics). Some dummy took the speaker grill off ya know, so of course that was bound to happen. I glued one of the tears and it worked fine (I was using just the speaker with another amp), but those tears will need to be addressed, either with some speaker glue, a re cone, or a replacement speaker. I have always wanted to convert this over to a guitar amp, but I have to be realistic with myself and accept that it’s never going to happen, after all, it’s been sitting in my closet now for 40 years. Last time I tried to get some sound out of it, it kinda worked, but the volume pot was very scratchy. In preparing for this post, I did plug it in. As you can see in the pics, all of the tubes light up, so that tells me it’s probably just a couple of amp tech hours away from being the main topic of conversation down at your local blues bar gig. I see no swelling or leaking of the capacitors, which is pretty incredible considering this amp is all original. Original cord is in great shape, no cracking, and those sure look like the original tubes too. I recently bought a nice photocopy of the original 166 manual, and it includes the schematic. That of course comes with the amp too. Anyway, hopefully someone will see the potential of this thing. I sure do, but other priorities in life have taken over.