Daizen

Man there are a lot of Gibsons of this era that are pretty cheap! I'm super curious about the BR-1, and of course the GA-50. I'm beyond delighted with this BR-4, so much so that I might take a small dive into other vintage Gibsons... I have a tone of old Fenders but they only start from 1960. I'm gonna have to find a tweedy sound somewhere... Which vintage Gibson is comparable to say, a tweed Deluxe?

Apparently these amps were not made after 1947, so that's a 1955 speaker replacement. (Which I'm happy about!) It also appears that the pots are the only components which can be used to get any date codes. So I"m going to go with 1947 for this amp. With a '55 speaker. The pots all had white corrosion or something all over them. With my finger I wiped off a bunch of it, but the code isn't super readable. I included a CU of the pot with the most readable date, but here is a low res version. Does this mean anything?

Hello! Wow it took me about seventeen tries on the Captcha to register, I almost didn't make it. Glad to be here! I posted on TDPRI but it can't hurt to post here. Anyhow, I recently purchased this beautiful Gibson BR-4 amp. It has been serviced and sounds incredible. I just want to date it. The dude said it is a '48. This is my first official Gibson amp, but I also have a '62 Epiphone Devon Tremolo that's the same schematic as a Gibson model. I love them! The Fenders are great also but they are just so piercing at those 2k - 4k freqs. This BR-4 is only 14 watts but the mic channel gets beautifully hot and loud, it's got that extra tube gain from itw 6SJ7. Six tubes! 6SJ7, 6SL7, 6SN7, two 6V6s and a 5Y3. I'd just love to know what year it's from. The bass is super tight, in fact it's pretty un-bassy in a wonderful way. Speaker frame code = 328550 / 12DK (Utah speaker from the 50th week of 1945?) - This is crazy because I thought these amps were only made outside those years, from like '47 - '54 or something (according to here - https://www.superiormusic.com/page199.htm). Is the 12DK is the model? Speaker cone codes = P-9143 / RG-251 (where the hell do you find an index of these?!!! I only see speaker frame codes) The tiny dome of the speaker is gone, it looks like those little Jensen holes where that light foam / tissue paper stuff always disintegrates. I'm not really looking at a recone, but I don't want dust and crap to fall in and mess up the VC. For now I'm leaving it. I can send it to Weber for a full recone if needed. It sounds beautiful as it is. Big field coil choke code is G 8271, nothing on the little output transformer on the side of the frame. That big brown cap that's still there but disconnected has these numbers: 1815768 nlm EDJ 9100S The old original can cap (not pictured) has 111058 above the specs (40-450 / 40-450) and below them it says D12975 921 I cannot find any site that has can cap date codes. And there is only one big transformer in the chassis and there are no codes on it that I could find. I just want to know the year, I am never selling this amp. It sounds amazing. (Yes I am replacing that horrible Fender grille cloth right now, the glue is drying.) Thank you! Dan It appears all of my photos are way too large to embed, so here is a dropbox link to some juicy photos: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/qmd9366fcaidcj2di3wsv/h?rlkey=jms78m31nqwcizshu12oelgo2&dl=0