Fisher tube amp

msjohns

I was looking through some of my dad's old stereo equipment and found a Fisher tube amp. On the amp it says, The Fisher Stereophonic model X-202. My dad said he bought it new back in the 50's. It looks like its in excellent condition. I am just wondering what some of you guys might know about the Fisher amps.

jdhdiggs

Quite a few guys here know some about this type of stuff, but audiokarma.org would be the place I would go with vintage tube questions.

BlueMDPicker

Here's a possible link to a manual you could purchase:

X-202C

Sounds like a fun project to get it humming again! Hopefully, no pun intended.

organ

Congrats on the find. DON'T fire it up yet. Since the amp haven't been used in a long time, the caps are probably dry. The unit must be brought up slowly on a variac to re-form the caps. You can get a technician to do this for you. When I first got my vintage amp, I plugged it straight into the wall without bringing it up on a variac. The dry caps produced a loud hum and had to be replaced.

Take a look at the tubes in there. If they say Mullard, Telefunken, Amperex, Siemens, RCA, etc, they're worth big bucks.

Maurice

msjohns

Thanks for the information. I am glad I didn't just go and plug the thing in. I will have to take a closer look at the amp to see what kind of tubes are in it. By the way we do have the original owners manual for it also.

mhardy6647

An excellent amp. Bringing it up on a Variac will likely successfully reform the power supply electrolytics. Tubes are most likely all still good. Original Fisher tubes were Telefunken and Mullard-made (excellent tubes). Outputs, though, are likely US made.

I am not an expert on that particular amp. It may well work as is after re-forming caps, but if it has a selenium rectifier/rectifiers, it should be replaced with a modern silicon rectifier(s). The coupling caps to the output tubes should also probably be changed.

When you get it going, observe the output tubes. If the plates (interior structure) of the tubes begins to glow red (not the filament glow... you'll see the difference if it happens!), you've got a problem and need to shut down immediately. Bad capicitors and/or resistors are likely culprits if it happens.

Don't operate a tube amp without a load (speaker or 'dummy load' like an 8 ohm power resistor). That amp has lots of life left in it if all the transformers are good.

Hope this is helpful.

msjohns

The amp worked fine when it was put away, but that was serval years ago. Do you guys think this particuiar model is worth the expense of fixing up ? I am not afraid to spend the money, but I don't want to mess around with it just to find out later that it is not a quality amp. Next question is who would any of you recomend to work on this amp. Is there specialty shops that do this kind of work. I'm from South Dakota and I don't know of any around here.

mhardy6647

Oh, yes, well worth fixing up! or... you can sell it to me, as is :-)

Take a look on eBAY to get an idea of what people will pay for 'em. Audiokarma.org, audioasylum.com, and the 2-channel forum at Klipsch's website are good resources, and you'll find links to people who will repair/restore if you want it professionally done.

Even in South Dakota, I'll bet you could find an older ham, retired engineer (EE) or TV repairman who'd be happy to help you get it going for the price of parts and the joy of doing it. It really may not need very much work at all... It MIGHT even work as is without any special care, but the extra effort of a 'soft start' using a variac (variable transformer) is well worth the effort... it may make the difference between saving and destroying the power supply capacitors.

msjohns

Thanks for the info. I am going to dig a little deeper into this project. This tube stuff is all new to me, a little befor my time. I will start looking into finding someone that has a variac and is capable of getting it fired up. Then we will see what happens. I want to thank everyone for the comments and information.