Vintage Garnet amp - piece of Canadian music history

[gtone]

Great cosmetic shape for a late 60's vintage.  Daresay it got recovered/refurbished in 2004 by Gar Gillies himself in 2004, judging by his autograph on the back panel.  Sounds cool as hell - deep swampy tube-driven trem and pull boost features yield a fairly unique tone that sounds something between a Tweed and Brown Fender Deluxe with a bit of its' own thing going on.

At least half of young up and comers I knew and performing bands throughout the country either had a Garnet or Traynor guitar or bass amp, and quite possibly both.  They were actually far more numerous from about '68 to '80 than either Fender or Marshall amps this side of the border due to heavy tariffs placed on imported gear.  Some bands are still using them today due to their cool factor and abundance (Gordie Johnson of Big Sugar and Grady and the guys from the Sadies come to mind).  Weakest links in the early Garnets and Traynors was easily the crappy Canadian made speakers that fitted in the cabs and combos.  Once swapped out for almost anything else, these amps were brought up to their potential.

[sonic1974]

Is it a lil rock? 

[killerteddybear]

Nice!

[gtone]

6 hours ago, sonic1974 said:

Is it a lil rock? 

No, it's a Rebel Tremolo, one model up from the Lil Rock (model L90T, IIRC).  I had a Lil Rock I shouldn't have let go earlier this year and it was a kick-ass amp - sounded just like a Brown Fender Deluxe.  You could do ZZ Top grind all day long on that little sucker thru a Marshall cab.  Really fun, punchy, crunchy little bugger!!

[crunchee]

I once had a BTO head several years ago, an earlier one with a chassis mounted Fender-style (tubes pointing down, later ones had the chassis mounted Marshall-style, tubes pointing up).  Loved the 'Stinger' (fuzz) and Trem features, but it was WAY too much amp for me...or at least, for my neighbors.     Really heavy too, almost too much for the kinda thin carry handle, though the handle stayed intact while I had it.  The one thing that I really didn't like about it, is that the original head cabinet appeared to be made from heavy-duty particleboard of some type, judging from the exposed cabinet material I saw in the small minor nicks, tears, and chips in the vinyl covering.  If I had kept it, I woulda wanted to have a birch ply head cab made for it...not only for protecting the amp, but because it deserved better than what it had.

http://www.garnetamps.com/specs.htm

[gtone]

Interesting!  Actually, the BTO model with the Stinger is probably the most collectable Garnet model there is.

I hear ya on the particle board cab construction - sure didn't see that on a Fender of the same vintage (although they did pick up on that 5 or so yrs later in a big way, it turned out). Gar Gillies had to cut a few corners for the sake of economics to keep his price points down, so that's just one of the ways he did so.  Tell you one thing, though - when we were teenagers with small budgets and big dreams, small details like cheap construction materials didn't seem as significant a factor as it does now.  In those days, we just wanted to sound good and score some girls (ha ha).