This cab came into my possession a little over a year ago by way of a trade with an old friend of mine. He had this cab probably coming up on 30 years and I had coveted it the whole time!
It had been covered in fuzzy Ozite and had a metal grill put in sometime in the early 80's:
When he showed interest in a trade, we made a deal and I had started this thread (http://forum.metroamp.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=38485) here in the speaker and cab section to get info on it. It had all of the original hardware with the skinny handles and I believed the speakers to be 20-watt 003 Pulsonic greenbacks original to the cab but after dating the speakers to July '68, that went out the window. I also found out that Celestion used up their supply of magnet covers with 20 watt stickers on the new 25-watt speakers and just glued a 25 sticker over the 20. Made sense because of the glue residue and the stickers I found in the bottom of the cab:
So last summer I started what would become a pretty challenging restoration. First I peeled off the Ozite and lost the grill. You could see black spots all over it where it seemed like someone had spraypainted the bare wood through the ripped holes in the original tolex. This cab definitely had a hard life before the carpet covering:
The baffle board still had basketweave around the perimeter:
And the little caster sockets were still there:
Stripping the glue from the wood was by far the most difficult part, probably took 3 or 4 days for as long as I could stand it. Had to use a high powered heat gun and several scrapers since they used industrial carpet glue.
At this point I thought about how cool EVH's bare wood cabinets looked and considered stopping, ha! Old Colorado band of yore:
Filled endless dents, dings and splintered off wood with filler and sanded down to a clean slate:
Did I mention the hard life before carpet?
