FEATURE AMP -
1950 OAHU
Valco made Oahu's are fairly common, but the very cool canary yellow covering and
black piping scheme, black handle and sharp looking grill featuring the Oahu logo makes
this model a great piece of eye candy as well as a serious little tone machine.
Underneath the pretty cosmetics, this model is the same as the
Supro Spectator from the same era, sharing the same circuit, tube
configuration, speaker and cabinet. This one is serial #X3155.
The power transformer reads B 121 A, 166020, the output
transformer reads X5789. It has an 8" Rola 4 ohm speaker with
code 285041 stamped on the frame and 550-10 stamped on the
Alnico button magnet.
Here is a 1950 Oahu amp. A fine little lap steel amplifier with good looks and an attitude to boot.
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The circuit doesn't get much simpler than this, with a 6SL7GT High-Nu win triode preamp tube, a 6V6GT Beam
power tube and a 5Y3 full-wave rectifier as the tube compliment driving the 8" Rola speaker. The control panel has
two Instrument and one Microphone inputs, Volume and Tone controls marked "Low" and "High", and On/Off switch,
and a fuse holder that reads "3 Amp". The spare fuse packet is still present with the original spare fuse inside, but
strangely it has a 2 amp fuse in the envelope. (The 3 amp is overkill, and the 2 amp is the more correct value to
really protect the amp.) The bottom of the control panel reads "Valco Manufacturing Co., Chicago 51, Illinois -
110-120 Volts AC Current Only - 50-60 Cycles". Chicago 51 was the address of the company in Chicago and NOT
an amp model, as some folks have suggested. The black chassis and white silk screen motif add class to the overall
look of the amp, and is certainly a good example of the Valco company's knack for creating some great classic
cosmetic designs to pair up with their innovative circuits.
