Vintage Fender amps?

[Haole Jim]

Well said, Dubtrub. There is history and the kind of magic which vintage gear can stir in souls.

While it would be needle-pegged-hip to have like a Super Six Reverb or old Showman with a D 130 and stand-alone verb, personally, for daily use and weekly bass-at-Mass playing, it's modern amps which need minimal maintenance...at expense of some of the magic vibe.

But man, looking at the old real ones in a catlaogue or book or stage photo, they were THERE, where the big playing was done by the immortals.

Thank you for the memories.

[zarfnober]

As for maintenance on old amps versus new ones, I have to throw my 2 cents in here. Granted, any vintage amp should be gone through by a tech, after which it should be just fine for another 40 years, just use quality American made parts and adjust resistors in the power supply to compensate for todays higher wall voltages.

Modern amps, and I'm assuming you're not talking Victoria, Matchless, Bad Cat or other boutique amps, do break down fairly often. And when they do, they're far more exoensive to repair, mainly because printed circuit boards start to burn up when a component goes south. If it's under warranty, they usually just replace the amp. Resistors and caps are of a much lower quality and , some components are tied together with a flexible "terminal strip", looks like a ribbon, just not built the way I'd like. That said, there are plenty of well built amps with PCB's, and they're harder to work on

These same lower quality components are another reason your new Marshall or Fender just doesn't sound quite as good as the old one. Still nice amps though.

Rocco

[MOSDAN]

It's great to hear of the amps that others on this forum have.

Most of you by now know the Mosrites I have so I'll let you know in this thread what I play them through. And yes, I am a vintage equipment nut. My stage rig consists of running a 1972 Silver Face Twin Reverb equipped with JBL D120F original speakers and a 1963 Fender Vibroverb equipped with Webber speakers(Yes, I have the original speakers but the Webbers sound better). I have a Boss pedal board with a Visual Sound Comp 66 compressor, 2 Digitech Hardwire Delay units(for setting 2 diffierent delay/ slap backs), Boss MT-2 distortion Pedal, a Boss RT-20 Rotary Ensemble all split into 2 seperate stereo signals between the 2 amps. Volume for all is controlled with a Visual Sound Volume pedal that is between the guitar and the pedal board. All the pedals are powered with a 9vlt I-spot power supply system. My backup amps consist of a 1966 Black Face Super Reverb and an early 1980's Music Man 115RP. I also run my Steel Guitar through the Music Man (15 inch Electro-voice speaker) when I play Steel Guitar. For my acoustic guitar I use a 1996 Rivera Sedona Doyle Dykes signature that has been signed by Doyle Dykes. I use a A/B foot switch to switch the Rivera amp into the signal train for acoustic work.

A lot of equipment but it will let me do studio and/or stage work for anything I need from the hardest form of rock to vintage country for any size venue. For the road it all goes into road cases on wheels for protection and is about a 5 minute hookup job at gigtime. Most of the wiring is already done through the pedal board and all the pedals are preset and have setting locks so they will remain at the preset settings. I just have to plug the pedal board into the 2 amps and plug in the guitar and I'm ready to go. Great system that always meets all the needs I have.

[stl80]

1975 Twin Reverb, 1969 black line, drip edge Bandmaster w/ drip edge cabinet, 1968 BL, DE Bassman w/ matching cabinet w/ 15" JBL's, 1968 BL, DE Dual Showman, 1990's Super. Somehow, I became a Fender amp collector.
Jim

[sleeperNY]

Not the greatest pic but here are 3 of the vintage Fender amps I have here.


!966 Deluxe and Princeton Reverb...........1968 or 69 Bassman

Jim

[oipunkguy]

I don't talk much about fender amps, because I usually play with a TON of gain. but for that silky smooth clean tone, NOTHING beats an old fender amp. I've played through a few from time to time and have always wanted one. if I have an amp that could get a true fender vintage clean tone and the roar of a marshall OD, it would be the greatest amp ever made imho.

[dubtrub]

if I have an amp that could get a true fender vintage clean tone and the roar of a marshall OD, it would be the greatest amp ever made imho.

That would be a Fender Tweed Bassman with four tens. That's the amp Marshall copied but made it in piggy back with four twelve's.

[surfrider]

I have been playing thru a Bandmaster since I bought it around 1969 or so. It wasn't long after that I decided the speaker cabinet was just too big and bulky to be stuffing into a Mustang, so I cut it down to a more manageable size. So now the whole unit sits about 30" high. Don't know, but I suspect the operation did have a negative effect on the sound. That aside, I love the sound of the old tube amps, it's hard to beat!

[jfine]

Surfrider--sounds like you had the big post-'68 cabinet. Fender/CBS decided in late-'67 that they needed to compete with the Vox Super Beatle, so they redesigned the Bassman, Bandmaster, and Dual Showman cabinets to look bigger and more impressive. Same speaker configurations as the older horizontal designs, but taller and heavier. I bought a blackface Bandmaster in early '67, one of the last of the smaller-cabinet ones, and when they enlarged the cabinets, I was sure glad I had the smaller one! That was my junior year of high school--in my band, our bass player had a Bassman, I had the Bandmaster, and the other guitar player had a Pro Reverb, and we could get all that plus the guitars and the PA in my mom's big Ford station wagon. If we'd had the big cabinets we'd never have done it! You might try to locate one of the smaller cabinets, or you could get a reproduction from Avatar or Mojotone.

[pigihangeev]

I play with a Fender Dual Showman (but the cabinet is 1 15'' speaker) from 67 matched with a black fender reverb unit, or with a F Twin reverb reissue blonde matched with a blonde reverb unit