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i have a 70's musicman amp that i'm thinking about taking the tolex off of and just leaving it as exposed wood... maybe sand and stain as well. has anyone does this before? would i need to disassemble the amp?

I would personally remove the amp chassis before doing that. You don't want to get dust and shit in the pots and inside the works if you decide to sand it. Just do the simple disassembly. All should be well!

osbornkt wrote:I would personally remove the amp chassis before doing that. You don't want to get dust and shit in the pots and inside the works if you decide to sand it. Just do the simple disassembly. All should be well!

Yep. It's probably only held in with a couple screws and should be fairly easy to remove.

I'm in the middle of re-tolexing a 4x12. It has sat half done in my garage for months now because getting the glue off is like slow motion crucifixion. It blows donkeys. Be warned.
Take that with a grain of salt though, as I don't have a lot of time to devote to diying at the moment.
Also check and see whether or not your wood grain is worth staining, some of them are less than spectacular.
I'd recommend hitting up Wood Wizard, he's just done a beautiful job staining a head shell he built and he knows his stuff.

i've done this twice and regretted it 100% both times.

but i also can never make up my mind so.... have fun?

its pretty simple, just take your time and do it right

I think you'll be much better off and happier with the results if you build a new headshell from scratch. Most tolexed headshells are cheap ply and are not going to look that great with the bare wood.

I think it'll look fine, it's modern headshells that have shitty plywood/particle board. I have a 70's ampeg 8x10 flatback that has the tolex removed and it looks amazing, same with an old acoustic 2x15.

I've done two vintage ampegs that looked fantastic when done.
Palm sander with increasingly fine grit paper--and patience--will work wonders.

Its do able for sure. BUT you never know whats under there and could be disappointed. that glue has had 30 years to cure and get rock hard. Its a bitch to remove, you can use a chemical stripper to some success with a scraper though. After that youll have to sand a whole lot as said before. Only issue there is, plywood only has an ultra thin sheet of good looking wood on top, its maybe a 1/16th or a bit more and you can sand right through that real quick and ruin the whole thing pretty quick.

Also if there's any glue left on there or in the pores/grain of the wood, it wont take stain and youll have uneven blotchy spots.

Im not trying to discourage at all, its a fun project and I think you should try it but Make sure you know that you may end up with something ugly that youll want to just re tolex after spending hours working on it.

A fresh headshell would be best for a perfect stained finish, like my doom train shell


but if you are cool with the more antique beat up look then go for it, you will feel like a champion after its done!

thanks for the input. i think sometime when i get the time, i'll start building a new chasis completely. do it proper and stain it and everything. really nice wooden thing.

Awesome dude. Making one from scratch is great because you can say I made this whole damn thing, suck it haters haha

Some manufacturers use a tolex glue that looks really ugly underneath and makes removing the tolex extra difficult.

My friend did this to an old Acoustic combo amp. Chainsawed the amp out, then took off the tolex, and stained it. It came out pretty amazing actually.