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Maton Professional V606 Amp [for sale]

A super rare Maton amp that’s for sale on eBay. I received an email from Michael today saying that he was selling his rare & beautiful Maton V606 amp. As information on these amps is scarce as best, and also that Michael included such a well detailed description of the amp along with some great photos, I thought I’d post it here for prosperity. If anyone is interested in buying it, here’s the ebay link:

Super Rare 1960’s/1970’s MATON Professional V606 WITH matching 2×12″ Cabinet.

Maton are world famous for their Acoustic Guitars but back in the day they used to make amps too and this is probably the coolest design they made! This is the ‘Studio Recording Model’, named as such because it has a ‘preamp out’ which you could plug straight into a mixing desk.  It is 60 watts and runs at either 8 ohms into one cab or 4 ohms into two (two 8 ohms cabs) It has three channels, two of which can be used at once (read more below later about this).

There is Channel 1, which is the Reverb and Tremolo channel and is clearly designed for guitar. It’s controls are ‘Volume, Treble, and Bass’. There is a pull out ‘bright’ switch on the volume knob too. The ‘Formant’ section which is used in conjunction with the Channel 1 controls, includes a Reverb Depth control, and Tremolo Speed and Depth controls. The Reverb is lush and can go to depths well beyond most peoples needs.

The Tremolo is transistor tremolo and runs on two germanium transistors. No opto-couplers here, and as such, you get a really warm and smooth/organic tremolo sound. Transistors are original Mullards, 1x AC128 and 1x OC74! Channel 2 is slightly louder/thicker than channel 1, as it has no reverb or tremolo. Normally (as I’ve also encountered on my old Moody GA40), the tremolo/reverb channel is made to sound ‘thinner’ so that when tremolo or reverb is mixed in witht the guitar signal, things don’t get too messy.

The Mic input channel has the one volume control, no tone, no tremolo or reverb, but is the loudest channel by far (probably to account for the low gain nature of Microphones). This channel actually sounds amazing with bass guitar.

The tone of this amp is a really powerful clean tone with loads of bass. Overdriven, it has a nice cruncy distortion but still leaves headroom for a fuzz pedal. Playing my Roland Bee Baa into this amp with the amp on full sounds absolutely incredible… sweet octave square madness without it being compressed into nothing.

As I said earlier, this amp is equally viable as a Bass Amp due to the 100 watt handling capacity of the cab, which additionally is closed back. Plus the 6BQ6 tubes are low distortion compared to a 6L6.

The original footswitch is unfortunately long gone, but luckily, the tremolo can be turned on or off by using a pull switch on the tremolo depth pot. Likewise the reverb is always on and need only be turned down to zero to be taken out of the signal.

This amp runs on a pair of 6BQ6 / 6CU6 power tubes (currently has a pair of NOS ‘Realistic’ 6BQ6GTB tubes installed), 3 x 12AX7 Preamp tubes (one for each channel), and one (what I think is a) 6DX8 to drive the reverb.

The Cab is the matching 2×12″ Originally supplied with this head. This cab comes with a very rare grille cloth which I have never seen before on any other example but is definitely original. This cab is not the exact one that came with this head (the tolex is different), but is definitely its matching counterpart.

It is is Excellent condition in every respect. The grille cloth is immaculate and the gold Maton badge doesn’t have a chip on it. Marks in the tolex are negligable for an amp this old. It looks and sounds like it was rarely used, as the speakers still sound fresh and look fresher still.

The speakers are Plessey/Rola 12U50 AlNiCo’s with the horseshoe magnet and are rated 15ohms, 50 watts each. They are wired in parallel to give a total impedance of 7.5 (8) ohms. These speakers are very much sought after by themselves because of their superb sound. What makes these speakers even rarer still, is the fact that instead of their usual blue powder coat finish, they have been powder coated black specifically for Maton (I infer this from the fact that they have been stickered with a Maton Amplification sticker rather than a Plessey sticker). Both of these Maton stickers are still attached perfectly to each speaker.

Now, the issues. UPDATE: I just took some photos of the circuit. Electrolytic caps are original! Only two preamp caps have been replaced with orange drop caps!

The amp is about 95% original, the 5% being made up of a replaced power lead, two preamp caps and possibly a different reverb tank (I say possibly because many of the tanks in these amps were removed in their history and lost, and I can’t prove if this is a replacement or not. That said, the screw holes on it line up perfectly with the originals, so it is at the very least to the same specs). All the other electrics look original, including mustard caps and brown resistors. The transformers are the original A&R transformers and all the pots are original too. It has even managed to keep the plexiglass panel on the back with all the speaker outs labeled.

The only thing wrong with this amp is the very peculiar situation that arises if you have a preamp tube in both channel 1 and in channel 2 at the same time. With no tube in Channel 2’s preamp socket, Channel 1 works perfectly, yet upon placing a tube in Channel 2’s socket (and I tested this with the amp already running), as the signal starts passing through Channel 2’s preamp tube (as it is gradually heating up), the ouput from Channel 1 is reduced likewise, to the point were it becomes notably quiet. Channel 2 will work totally fine in this situation as will the Mic Channel. The easy solution is just leaving a tube out of the Channel 2 socket which allows you to use the tremolo and reverb in Channel 1. I never needed both channels at once so I didn’t bother trying to fix it.

Considering the problem, it sounds like it would be very simple to fix, since both Channels work correctly independently. I suspect that perhaps whilst being serviced, a wire was reconnected to the wrong point causing this to happen. I will try to fix the problem during the course of the listing too.

All in all, this is a rare opportunity to grab a piece of Australian history. The price of this one reflects the fact that head and cab are not the original matching pair, and that the footswitch is missing.

Reasonable offers considered! This one has got to sell! (Or trade for a Wedgtail 😉

Thanks Michael. Again… if anyone is interested in buying it, here’s the ebay link.