I've heard recently that Fender now makes a steel amp. Anyone know for sure? Who makes steel guitar amps besides Peavey and Evans?
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Does Fender Make A Steel Amp?
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Gaylon Mathews
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Billy Easton
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Gaylon...
The Fender "Steel King" is slated for production this summer. I got to play a prototype in Apache Junction at the SWSGA Spring Jam. It is a great sounding amp, solid state, with a 15" Speaker. There was a thread about this sometime back. One of our members, Sammy Marshall is the project engineer for Fender, and it is being developed here in Scottsdale, AZ. Watch for it!
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Billy Easton
Casa Grande, AZ
Southwestern Steel Guitar Association
The Fender "Steel King" is slated for production this summer. I got to play a prototype in Apache Junction at the SWSGA Spring Jam. It is a great sounding amp, solid state, with a 15" Speaker. There was a thread about this sometime back. One of our members, Sammy Marshall is the project engineer for Fender, and it is being developed here in Scottsdale, AZ. Watch for it!
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Billy Easton
Casa Grande, AZ
Southwestern Steel Guitar Association
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Doug Brumley
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Yes, Fender now offers a ’65 Twin Reverb Custom 15. It's new for 2004, and Fender is plugging it as a amp for steel players (as well as guitarists). There have been some threads discussing it here on the forum and there has also been talk of a "Steel King" amp coming from Fender in the near future.
Anyway, here are Fender's details on the Custom 15.
Anyway, here are Fender's details on the Custom 15.
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CrowBear Schmitt
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Rick Johnson
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Gaylon,
I have, what I call 3 Steel Amps. They are my Webb 6-14E, my Peavey Nashville 1000, and my Fender Twin Reverb. It's a '65 re-issue that came from Sam Ash Music. I must say the Fender holds it's own with the others I have. Plenty of bite, not to mention that warm TUBE sound. Works great with the RV-3 I now use. It also worked well with the Peavey Profex I used to have.
I have, what I call 3 Steel Amps. They are my Webb 6-14E, my Peavey Nashville 1000, and my Fender Twin Reverb. It's a '65 re-issue that came from Sam Ash Music. I must say the Fender holds it's own with the others I have. Plenty of bite, not to mention that warm TUBE sound. Works great with the RV-3 I now use. It also worked well with the Peavey Profex I used to have.
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David Doggett
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I know this question is about what is being made by Fender currently, but there are lots of great Fender tube amps for steel on the used market. Six-stringers disdain the late model silverface amps, because they prefer the warmer sounding blackface amps. But the blackface amps "crunch" and breakup at lower volumes, and so have less clean headroom for steel. And the collector fever among six-stringers has driven the prices of BF amps really high. For half the price of a BF (or any comparable new amp) you can get great SF Fender tube amps. The 135 watt ultralinear Twin Reverbs and Dual Showman Reverbs are some of the best amps ever made for steel. Lots of clean headroom with rich tube sound. Vibrosonics and Vibrasonics are rarer, but have more steel friendly EQ and come with 15" speakers.
Two of the best amps ever made for steel are the Fender 140 head and the Super Twin Reverb. The 140, which is very rare, is like a Dual 135 watt head, but instead of tremolo it has a switchable 5 band graphic EQ, and that's in addition to the usual 3 knob EQ.
The Super Twin is like one-and-a-half SF Twins (or two BF Twins). It has six 6L6 power tubes and generates 180 clean tube watts - absolutely awesome for steel. The ST also has the switchable 5-band EQ, but with knobs. This amp has some quirks that you need to know about. It doesn't develop its full power unless the foot switch is plugged in and the boost is toggled on. If you try one out without the foot switch, it just sounds like a regular Twin. It has a distortion effect, which is worthless. But who cares, with all the distortion devices on the market today. I have seen speculation that Fender built this amp (in the late '70s) to compete with the Peavey solid state steel amps that steelers were switching to. If so, they screwed up. This amp comes stock with two massive 12" speakers, and weighs 110 lbs. They should have put the amp in a head and sold it with a 15" speaker cabinet. I recently put one in a Dual head cabinet. It weighs 50 lbs., quite manageable. Looking at the insides, it looks hand wired to me, no green PC boards with imbedded circuits. Oh yeah, and this is the ugliest looking amp Fender ever made. Just a plain black grill cloth with really cheap looking gold trim. But in a Dual head cabinet, with its black face plate, it looks great like a Fender should.
The ST has a single 4 ohm speaker jack. I use a single 15" 4 ohm speaker, or connect two 8 ohm 15" speakers in parallel for a 4 ohm load. There is no better sounding steel amp on earth. Enough clean headroom for any need. The highs shimmer without being shrill, the mids are warm and brassy, and the lows are earth shaking and not muddy. These amps sell for less than a Twin, because they are big and heavy, and play too clean with no crunch - six-stringers hate them. Steelers will love them.
At the other end of the power spectrum there is the Pro Reverb. This is like half of a Twin (two 6L6s). The late model SF Pros produce 70 watts. This is about the smallest Fender tube amp that is useful for pedal steel outside of the bedroom. The stock with two 12s is the size of a Twin and mine weighs 64 lbs. I will put a lightweight single 15" speaker in it and expect it to end up around 55 lb. This is a little bigger and heavier than a Nashville 112, but less than a NV 400, and it will blow the b*lls off either of those. It is clean all the way to the top of its 70 watts, and has the same gorgeous tube tone of the Twin and Super Twin.
Every steeler should have at least one big Fender tube amp. These are the reference standards for steel tone. <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by David Doggett on 19 May 2004 at 12:16 PM.]</p></FONT>
Two of the best amps ever made for steel are the Fender 140 head and the Super Twin Reverb. The 140, which is very rare, is like a Dual 135 watt head, but instead of tremolo it has a switchable 5 band graphic EQ, and that's in addition to the usual 3 knob EQ.
The Super Twin is like one-and-a-half SF Twins (or two BF Twins). It has six 6L6 power tubes and generates 180 clean tube watts - absolutely awesome for steel. The ST also has the switchable 5-band EQ, but with knobs. This amp has some quirks that you need to know about. It doesn't develop its full power unless the foot switch is plugged in and the boost is toggled on. If you try one out without the foot switch, it just sounds like a regular Twin. It has a distortion effect, which is worthless. But who cares, with all the distortion devices on the market today. I have seen speculation that Fender built this amp (in the late '70s) to compete with the Peavey solid state steel amps that steelers were switching to. If so, they screwed up. This amp comes stock with two massive 12" speakers, and weighs 110 lbs. They should have put the amp in a head and sold it with a 15" speaker cabinet. I recently put one in a Dual head cabinet. It weighs 50 lbs., quite manageable. Looking at the insides, it looks hand wired to me, no green PC boards with imbedded circuits. Oh yeah, and this is the ugliest looking amp Fender ever made. Just a plain black grill cloth with really cheap looking gold trim. But in a Dual head cabinet, with its black face plate, it looks great like a Fender should.
The ST has a single 4 ohm speaker jack. I use a single 15" 4 ohm speaker, or connect two 8 ohm 15" speakers in parallel for a 4 ohm load. There is no better sounding steel amp on earth. Enough clean headroom for any need. The highs shimmer without being shrill, the mids are warm and brassy, and the lows are earth shaking and not muddy. These amps sell for less than a Twin, because they are big and heavy, and play too clean with no crunch - six-stringers hate them. Steelers will love them.
At the other end of the power spectrum there is the Pro Reverb. This is like half of a Twin (two 6L6s). The late model SF Pros produce 70 watts. This is about the smallest Fender tube amp that is useful for pedal steel outside of the bedroom. The stock with two 12s is the size of a Twin and mine weighs 64 lbs. I will put a lightweight single 15" speaker in it and expect it to end up around 55 lb. This is a little bigger and heavier than a Nashville 112, but less than a NV 400, and it will blow the b*lls off either of those. It is clean all the way to the top of its 70 watts, and has the same gorgeous tube tone of the Twin and Super Twin.
Every steeler should have at least one big Fender tube amp. These are the reference standards for steel tone. <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by David Doggett on 19 May 2004 at 12:16 PM.]</p></FONT>
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KENNY KRUPNICK
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Terry Sneed
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David Doggett
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Terry, the amps in the last two posts are on the used market only. The ones at the top of the thread are new.
It's gotten very confusing. Six-stringers prize the black face pre-CBS Fenders. They are handwired and easy to repair and modify, and they had warm tone with "crunch" that softens the pick attack. They also will break up and distort pleasantly (for six-stringers) at moderate volumes.
In the late '60s CBS took over. They began using silver face plates, and gradually phased out the hand wiring for cheaper PC board circuits. They also cleaned up the sound and gave the amps more power and headroom. This made the sound better for steel, but worse for the warm, crunchy, dirtier sound six-stringers like.
In the '80s Fender began to notice the fuss on the used market about the old blackface amps. So they started putting black faces on their current models, and they began making "reissues." These looked like the original blackfaces, but had modern circuitry that may or may not duplicate the old sound.
At least this is my take on the Fender amp history. I'm still learning, and would like to hear others thoughts on all this.
It's gotten very confusing. Six-stringers prize the black face pre-CBS Fenders. They are handwired and easy to repair and modify, and they had warm tone with "crunch" that softens the pick attack. They also will break up and distort pleasantly (for six-stringers) at moderate volumes.
In the late '60s CBS took over. They began using silver face plates, and gradually phased out the hand wiring for cheaper PC board circuits. They also cleaned up the sound and gave the amps more power and headroom. This made the sound better for steel, but worse for the warm, crunchy, dirtier sound six-stringers like.
In the '80s Fender began to notice the fuss on the used market about the old blackface amps. So they started putting black faces on their current models, and they began making "reissues." These looked like the original blackfaces, but had modern circuitry that may or may not duplicate the old sound.
At least this is my take on the Fender amp history. I'm still learning, and would like to hear others thoughts on all this.
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Neale Tracy
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I use a CyberTwin with my steel and it sounds great. I got some settings for it on an earlier thread on the forum and made a few myself. You can get a really warm "old" type sound and also a really clean bright sound. Lots of headroom too. (there also really light)
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