Elk Twin 50 head with matching cab

Gilk

Hi guys
I recently received an old Elk amp head and cab from a family friend... it was his fathers amp from the 1960's. The head is pretty rusty and damaged but surprisingly still works.barley haha. Unfortunately i opened the cab to find no speakers inside .I understand this guys farther used to sail around the Mediterranean with his band and perform wherever they docked... Seeing as this is all before my time i was wondering if any of you guys have ever herd of Elk ? was it anything special in its day?

costafonix

Elk were your 'budget' valve amps made in Japan, I think they copied the Fender range. I owned a small Elk combo amp years ago, it wasn't very powerful but it had an incredible clean sound and a really cool vintage sounding reverb and tremelo setting. I also owned a couple of Elk pa systems which had thin column speakers. They were very well made amps, and very reliable.
A good alternative to the other more pricey amps available in its day.
You may be interested to know too that Elk made some reasonably good quality replica's of Gibson Les Paul's, SG's and Fender Strats in the early 70's.

Gilk

I had it hooked up to my fender cab and the cleans where quite unexpected ,really close to what my mesa sounds like but unfortunately non of the vibrato or reverb functions seem to work. Is there anyone one in South Africa that restores vintage amps?

aja

Do a forum search - there are quite a few floating around! ?

guidothepimmp

Gilk,

Like Costa said, they were effectively based on Fenders of the time.

Mine is very well made and still rocking

Whereabouts are you? JPleRoux in Roodepoort serviced mine and done a great job.

Sorted out the Vibrato and reverb too..

Cheers
GTP

Keira-WitherKay

Yes i too own an old elk well it used to be an elk , jp le roux the amp guru , took my late sixties elk es 30 which is a fender princeton copy and because it was point to point design, jp replaced the ineffecient elk circuit with a fender princeton one and my amp has a fender 12 " speaker, after surgery with jp the amp is amazing , as fender sounding as can be , i love it and i can highly recommend jp le roux to you if you want to restore it or mod it beyond it's origins like mine is , the magic with those old amps is that it will be point to point design so adaptable to almost anything if the amp tech is a good one, enjoy , i love mine

vic

CostaFonix wrote: Elk were your 'budget' valve amps made in Japan, I think they copied the Fender range. I owned a small Elk combo amp years ago, it wasn't very powerful but it had an incredible clean sound and a really cool vintage sounding reverb and tremelo setting. I also owned a couple of Elk pa systems which had thin column speakers. They were very well made amps, and very reliable.
A good alternative to the other more pricey amps available in its day.
You may be interested to know too that Elk made some reasonably good quality replica's of Gibson Les Paul's, SG's and Fender Strats in the early 70's.

Costa is right about Elk.

These were Fender look-a-likes .....the one you have looks like a black face Fender bassman.

Google "ELK AMPLIFIERS"...there is some info available.