Gee, Ma, It Followed Me Home. Can I Keep It? The Excelsior Americana

Here's an interesting amp that followed me home the other day. It's an Excelsior Americana accordion amplifier, and it sports some unusual equipment-a 15 inch speaker, two 8 inch speakers, two tweeters, and a pair of EL34 power tubes.

It is rumored to have been made by the Sano people in New Jersey but I cannot confirm that. I was able to lay hands on a more or less complete set of schematics and they are reproduced here. It's pretty clean but needs a bit of work to get everything running properly-the vibrato does not work, the reverb just barely, and the controls are noisy as all getout.

Still, the guitar channel sounds a lot like a Fender of the era, with a fair amount of sparkle. And who knows, with the right accordionist you could stir up some real fun and polka.

Plus, it's weird and nobody else around here has one.