Manufacturer of Silvertone 1481?

I just got a Silvertone 1481 amp. Anyone know who actually manufacturered these models for Sears? Any other thoughts on this amp or other vintage
Silvertone amps

I got the amp today and it is SWEEEEET. For $105 I can't believe the tone.
Very Fender Champ like. I've owned several Blues Jr's and this sounds every bit as nice or better. Nice gritty blues amp. At five loud watts, it's really nice with a wife and 1 year old in the house. I can't wait to build a sturdy hardwood cabinet for it. I do wish it had reverb. Any one have a good schematic or link for a spring or tube reverb in pedal layout?

They were made by Danelectro.

They are good amps, but I like the 1482 much better. They make great blues amps, slide amps, and harp amps. They sound great, but can rattle a lot because of the construction. Fix that, and they are cool little amps.

favorite or the sears guitar amps. The 1471, 1481 and Wards Airline
9012a are all the same amp, and with three simple mods they become really fantastic amps. Putting the tone control between the two 12AX7 gain stages instead of after, moveing the gain control to after the two
12AX7 gain stages and replaceing the output transformer with a Hammond
125ESE, which also gives you output impedance options. These mods are not really needed, they are great amps on their own, the only thing you really need to do is replace the caps in the power supply filter. But the $30 for the nice hefty airgapped 125ESE output transformer is well worth it. My Airline 9012a became my most played amp after I did these three mods. I do not remember what speaker the 1481 has, but the 1471 and 9012a both had a Fisher alnico if I remember correctly. Which is abit underrated wattage wise in my opinion, if you just use single coil pickups and nothing to drive the amp you should be fine, but after extended playing with a humbucker equiped guitar that speakers voice coil was nice and warped. So if you are going to drive the amp into distortion at all you might want to think of getting a new speaker or useing an external speaker.

adam

P.S. there is one differance between the 1471, 1481 and 9012a, the 1481 has a different output transformer with an 8 ohm output impedance instead of 4 ohms like 1471/9012a. But it is still cheap and undersized, but if you like the sound of the output transformer distorting its a really fantastic transformer, its the one thing i do miss from switchig the output transformer. Maybe someday I will switch it back.

I'm pretty sure the one I worked on a few years ago matched a
Danelectro model I was able to find somewhere on the web. I'm not sure of the name (Cadet?)

Probably Danelectro or possibly Valco.

Glad to hear they sound great. I'm gonna build a hardwood cabinet for it.
I think I got a pretty good deal. $105 on ebay and it was tuned up and modded by Torres Engineering for added gain.

I hope you got a good one.

Let us know what you think.

By all acounts, he's done some good stuff, and some truly appalling (with two p's) stuff.

Well, my first homebuilt amp was made form the parts of my Wards
Airline 9012a, which is exactly the same amp as the 1471. It was alot of fun but i ended up just rebuilding it and giving it a nice hammond
125ESE output trasformer which really improved the sound. I would reccomend just fixing that amp up and leaving it alone, i had alot of fun ripping mine apart, but there is not much you can do with that power transformer and output transformer. Just get a Hammond 125ESE output transformer, a power transformer that will give you around 350 volts and enough amps for your needs and play with that. If you get a big enough power transformer you will be able to use it to play with for a long time and with many different power tube/preamp setups. With the 1471s transformers there is not a whole lot you can do.

My 1481 needs a power transformer, otherwise it's a fashionable 60's paperweight. Is there a direct Hammond replacement transformer for this that you know of? Or better yet, anyone know the specs for this transformer?

Hi Jgelfritz,welcome to the forum

Maybe the following can help you out?

click here please

Let me know