Norwegian 1964 Vingtor instrument amp

By Ketil Svendsen

A flea market visit is a great way to fill up your attic. But then again, you just might find that rare art deco lamp, a signed first edition, or just a cool, unidentifiable thingy.

Last year I stumbled upon – as it often happens, be it at the bay-of-e or anyplace else – a cool, unidentifiable thingy: an ugly, little amplifier at a local flea market. Painted with an almost fluorescent camo, it honestly didn’t look too good. A light carving on top read “Shandy”, band name from early 80s career of local (Bergen) musician Egil Eldøen. A carving underneath said “Frank”. A Dymo label at the back stated “Organ”.
The simple design, with four knobs in front and large instrument jacks in the rear, made me curious. Priced at NOK 20,- (a mere 4 USD) there was no need to think about not buying it, even considering the possibility that it’d blow up.

The inside looked allright, though with the inevitably short’ed fuse. A glance at one of the parts inside read “controlled 1964″. An early transistor amp from Viking Transistor, Vestfold Radio-Elektro: a Vingtor K3T-SN. Almost too old for rock’n roll.

It worked and sounded good with both guitar and theremin, no hum, little hiss. Two channels with four jacks in, separate volumes for each. Bass and treble.

And no on/off.

A bit of investigation revealed the treble wheel to have a “click” at zero, and acted as power switch! Probably due to any hiss from the rig: if the treble level started low, noise would fade in and nobody would notice. Or something along those lines. Schematics seemingly available to members of NRHF.

No speaker, it seemed this was one of those amplifiers where the user chose a speaker cone and built a cabinet himself.

Pre cleaning.

While I still haven’t built that cool cabinet, I used a fair amount of paint remover to uncover the 50s lab style coloured amp cabinet: dull grey. It sure looks better now.

The company that made these amps still exists. Heavy import restrictions on just about everything – music equipment included – right after the war, made it possible for quite a few manufacturers to cash in on the new era’s interest in musical entertainment. Even swedish Hagström set up shop & factory in Oslo to avoid the restrictions in the late forties.

With it’s origin in Tor Kaltvedt og Gunnar Sommer Olsen’s Vingtor Radio Elektro AS from 1946, “our” company changed their name to Vestfold Radio-Elektro in 1959. “Vingtor” was initially nicked from the Catalina aeroplanes in naval use in Horten, to keep local customers happy. In 1965 they became Vingtor Electronics. Some name changes later they’re now GE Vingmed Ultrasound, specialising in ultrasound medical electronics, as a part of General Electric. The communication bit is handled by Zenitel. Rock’n roll undoubtly met a dead end.

In their early years they produced radios, guitar pickups, and 5-10W instrument amps, most notably various versions of the “Vingtor Rock“, with integrated speaker and tremolo (this was in the days of the Shadows). At an auction I saw a different version of the speaker-less amp featured here. They also produced a series of “suitcase combos“, where the suitcase itself became the speaker once the amp had been lifted out.

I’ll update when I’ve made a rig with speaker. More pictures (taken through my vintage Pentax 50 mm lens on my Canon EOS 350D):

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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