|
|
Post by Leftee on Mar 10, 2022 17:17:46 GMT -5
I recently acquired one from Reverb for a nice price - with road case. These aren't the greatest amps Fender ever made. Even so, it seemed like a diamond in the rough - and cheap.
The one I landed is a 1980 1x15" combo.
Internally it's built like a SF - eyelet board, etc. This amp is exceptionally clean and straight and came with its footswitch, which is important for the amp to work correctly. Oh, and someone along the way stuck an EVM-15L in it. So this is, by far, the heaviest combo I own. I have amps that weigh less than that speaker. LOL
Right out of the box it sounded pretty good. The cleans were nice. The OD in these is pretty "meh." I might mess with that later.
I opened up the amp to have a look. It's had a recent recap - and nice work at that. While I was in there I snipped the snubbing caps on V1 and V2. There were actually 2 on V1.
I reassembled the amp and gave her a quick run. Just snipping those caps sweetened the cleans up appreciably. They were a tad on the dull side before. That simple mod fixed that. Honestly... this amp - with that speaker - is a great sounding beast. Like I said, I might try to do something with the "Lead" channel, some day. Or not.
|
|
|
|
Post by bluzcat on Mar 11, 2022 8:38:18 GMT -5
Years ago I had the 1x12 version. It was my first “big” tube amp. It had the foot switch also. Agreed on nice cleans, meh overdrive. I was too young and new to tube amps to appreciate what I had. I later sold it for other things but in retrospect I probably should’ve hung onto it. I bet the 15 inch speaker has a nice thump to it.
|
|
|
|
Post by Leftee on Mar 11, 2022 9:43:00 GMT -5
Not so much thump as very full and rich sounding. I need to plug a Strat into this amp as I suspect it holds the Strat tones I’ve always longed for. The Lead channel:  |
|
pdf64
Wholenote
Posts: 558
|
Post by pdf64 on Mar 11, 2022 9:51:38 GMT -5
There’s was a few knocking around in my area, I think a local distributor must have bought a batch of them.
I’ve got one, which I used as a platform for various redesigns through the 80s and 90s. It’s now being used as a clean bass amp, which the massive transformers make it eminently suitable for.
I devised a new circuit for a friend’s 75, which worked out pretty well. In retrospect, its overdrive section is now rather Dumble style.
The tricky part was getting a happy reverb balance between clean and overdrive modes.
I keeping meaning to rebuild mine to that design, now that the need for a bass amp has passed.
A weird thing with that era of Fender is that all the pots have a linear taper.
If you like the mid boost feature, a nice simple mod is swap the wiring so that the reverb footswitch brings it in and out. It certainly gives the stock overdrive circuit a kick. A 100k trimmer can be used to calm down the degree of mid boost.
|
|
|
|
Post by Leftee on Mar 11, 2022 10:11:13 GMT -5
I think I’d be more interested in ODS’ing it. Rather - ODS-ish. It’s either leave it as it is now or doing that. 🤔
|
|
|
|
Post by bluzcat on Mar 11, 2022 10:16:34 GMT -5
ODS?
|
|
|
|
Post by Leftee on Mar 11, 2022 10:18:02 GMT -5
Dumble OverDrive Special
|
|
