When they first came out, they were using aluminum nails, then l;ater brass escutcheon pins, and in the late 80's, screws. The late Wilfred Doucette, and old time chromatic customizer and former tool and die maker made a tool for me in the early 80's that resembled a C-clamp that was designed for removing these very same type of nails that were being used on ther Hohner 64's back then, but it worked better with the Golden Melody and Special 20's that were made that way at the time. I still have that tool. If you use a hammer, get a tack hammer and use it very gently or you'll crack the comb or worse, totally shatter it from the force.

The driver tube that's in my real '59 Bassman is a 12AX7, tho finding real 12AX7's are tough to come by, but 12AX7A/7025 works well. This tube position has little to do with the overall tone but real 12AX7's had more midrange than 12AX7A's, but can be a tad noisier and thw 2nd preamp tube I have is a real 12AX7 made by GE (US made around 1960). The '65 Champ uses a 12AX7A, and the same goes for my 1995 Pro Junior. IMO, using a 12BY7A will weaken the overall output of the amp and it can wind up sounding mushy and waste too much juice from the power tubes.

Around that time, Hohner had already bought out most of the competitors in Germany and Austria and I believe they didn't buy Seydel because they were too large of a company at the time.

In the 40's, 50's, and parts of the 60's, Green Bullets and Astatic JT30's were actually standard all purpose PA mikes, and contrary to what most gear lovers believe, the amps they were plugged into was actually their PA, and on many tweed amps ,made in the 50's, you see a mic input to make sure it would carry over anything else being plugged into it. It's true> When I started in the early 70's, you still saw people using amps like a Fender Dual Showman or Twin Reverb with an extension cabinet being used as a PA system and 99% of all the mics on the market, crystal, ribbon, dynamics, etc., were all High-Z.

I own a real 1965 Fender Champ, a real '59 4-10 Bassman, a late 40's Sears Silvertone amp, and a '95 Pro Junior, and the only thing I've ever done to them was get rid of any Russian or worse, Chinese made tubes and use nothing but NOS US or Western European tubes. 3 of those 4 amps I bought when you could buy US made tubes in any instrument store, electronics store, and even in old school drug stores where they had tube testers and from my own experience, those US/WE made tubes are far better than anything being made these days. I really don't buy into the tube swaps other than different brands of the same numbers and just setting tone controls manipulation more than anything else because the bottom line is that the real tone comes from the person playing it 100% of the time.

With Russian or Chinese power tubes, under heavy duty use (gigging an average of 10-15 nights per month), you gotta change them and the driver tube every 3 months and the first sign they're gonna die is that the bottom end gets muddled and wimpy sounding, whearas the NOS stuff lasts a minimum of 6 months and the bottom end doesn't mush out like that and when it's gonna go, volume will go up and down.