Merson Tempo Tribute

Merson was a distribution organization founded by a man named Bernie Mersky in New York City. The Merson Tempo guitar amp was a tube amp with an 8″ speaker with volume and tone controls. Other manufacturers made guitars and amps for Merson and the Tempo looks very similar to Premier amps manufactured by New York-based Multivox. The most distinctive features of the Tempo is the guitar shaped cutout on the front speaker baffle.

I started my tribute construction with a 6 bottle wine crate, added strips of wood to anchor the speaker baffle and the slats for the 1/3 open back. I used a Dremel hole cutter and a coping saw to create the guitar cut out on the speaker baffle. I covered it in a similar tan faux leather as the original Tempo and created the faux fingerboard coming out of the cut out with corduroy fabric.

I added a 14W solid state amp with volume, bass, mid and treble controls that I hooked up to an 8 AA battery pack to drive the 12 volts it needed. The chassis is a bent sheet of aluminum with all the appropriate holes drilled for the knobs. I printed out an adhesive vinyl cover with the legends for the knobs but after assembling it, I realized I should have put the legends on the other side of knobs. Something I'll come back and fix later. I added an 8" Jensen CR8 speaker which gives it a very rich vintage tone. My guess is that this is louder and fuller sounding than the original Tempo and it now is my favorite practice amp and loud enough to use for a band rehearsal or small venue.

Amplifier: 14 watts solid state

Controls: Volume, Bass, Mid, Treble

Speaker: 8" 8 ohm 25 watts

Inputs: 1/4" guitar in, 1/8" auxiliary in, 1/8 headphone out

Power supply: 8 AA batteries

Dimensions: 13" height x 11" width x 7" depth