Rickenbacher Electro Lunchpail

 

 

 

 

Rickenbacher Black Metal Lunchpail Sockets and Pinouts
53
47
380

From the advertisements and trade show photos shown in Richard Smith's The History of Rickenbacker Guitars, metal bodied Richenbacher amplifiers were available from 1937 until 1941.  Presumably, production was suspended at the beginning of WWII, which is too bad, as this amp would look right at home strapped to the back of a Sherman tank.  The circuit consists of a single gain stage: a 53 dual triode wired as a driver/fixed paraphase splitter, and 2 directly heated 47 pentodes in push-pull configuration. Compare this circuit to basic two stage amplifiers such as the Valco Supreme amps of the 40s (at right top) and the early Fender amps of the 50s (eg. Deluxe 5B3, at right middle).  The Lunchpail uses the exact same phase splitting circuit (at right bottom), but without the input gain stage.  As a result, the Lunchpail provides quite low gain and high distortion by today's standards, though it was probably enough to compete with acoustic instruments.  Compare this circuit with the self-balancing paraphase inverter used in the Vega 131 (1939).