The Steel Guitar Forum

Chris- never had any problem whatsoever with my Steel King either. got it over a year ago, and it always sounds and works just fine for me. Good luck. Mike

Due to the Canadian dollar taking a bad dive, it looks like my Steel King is gonna cost the same price as the Custom 15" did before the dive. Our dollar is now only worth .80 US. Weird thing is that Fender will replace the Custom 15" even trade, but will not give a better deal on the Steel King. I'm not paying $1,100 for a Steel King. Call me crazy, but I may end up trying another Custom 15". Ugh.

I use a nashville 1000 for home and club work. My custom 15 twin reissue is a great amp too. and yes I run the mid very low like 3 and around 7 for bass and dtreble 7 or as needed depending on the room your playing in.ojyes I use profex II also and george l cords.

interesting, here is a partial review from one of the guitar websites..

in

The Fender Twin Reverb is known as the “hardest working amp in show business” for a reason; it is. The '65 Fender Twin Reissue is a workhorse more suited to the studio than road, unless it is guarded in a cushioned road case to protect those delicate circuits. Its pristine clean signal is Tonal tofu for any outboard effect pedal you wish to throw at it. You will be assured a nice clean signal with tons of headroom to make your musical statement with authority and clarity. I’ll give Fender 8.5 out of 10 on this one!

out


Very odd, two of the most popular Fender amps on the planet right now use circuit boards along with the tubes, Hot Rod Deluxe and Hot Rod Deville, I wonder why these amps are considered rugged ?

I had been using a Hot Rod Deluxe and for the past several years have been using a Hot Rod Deville for pretty much all gigs and never had one failure. The HR Deville is a great mid sized room Steel amp.( 2 x12's) Actually it will probably fill a big room as well. It can be a bit bright but thats probably due to the Gold Label Eminance speakers.

Sometimes we just have way to many choices.

Very odd, two of the most popular Fender amps on the planet right now use circuit boards along with the tubes, Hot Rod Deluxe and Hot Rod Deville, I wonder why these amps are considered rugged ?

That website was no doubt comparing the PCB construction of the reissue to the original hand-wired models, and showing a bit of bias towards the durability of hand-wired amps.

The Hot Rods are not any more rugged than the Twin reissue, but if that same review was writing about those amps he'd probably downgrade them on durability because of the PCB construction. And the primary reason they are popular is they have decent tone and they are inexpensive. If you built the same amps using hand-wired construction they'd be close to $2k - which is where the prices are on Fender's hand-wired Custom Shop amps.

It's a simple fact that hand-wired eyelet or turret-board amps will take far more abuse that PCB amps - the "wiring" on printed circuit boards consists of extremely thin traces of metal, and there are always weak points in the construction where the boards flex more; that's where the traces are more likely to break.

They also generally use several small multi-wire connectors and/or ribbon cables - components that are more fragile than solder joints at eyelets or turrets.

However - there WERE no hand-wired Hot Rod amps for comparison, so the "they don't make 'em like they used to" mantra of the amp world is irrelevant.

I've seen innumerable broken traces on PCB amps; it finally got to the point where I stopped working on them altogether because fixing them is very, very tedious and difficult work. If one goes back to a manufacturer for repair, they replace the faulty board (which is why they usually are built in modules of some sort) - when some player needs his amp that weekend you don't have that luxury. They do that because the boards are cheap and replacing a board, even with all the parts on it, is cheaper than the labor cost of fixing it.

Mass production of amps resulted in PCB-type construction because it's FAR cheaper than hand-wired production. But personally, with what I've seen of PCB amps from Fender to Marshall to Crate, I wouldn't take one on the road myself without a flight case (many don't even have simple things like the tube retainers and shield used on older amps - which keep tubes from vibrating loose during transit). OTOH, I can take either my Vibroverb or Pro Reverb, toss it in the back of a truck, drive over a dirt road and play it.

I realize I'm hitting this topic late, but I'll throw in my two cents. For the price of a new RI Twin Reverb you could buy a silverface TR. From first hand experience they are much more reliable (point to point versus pc board in a solder bath and any decent amp tech can fix just about any issue easily and with little expense) and have much better tone. I've owned a '73 master volume model, '72 master volume, '70, and a '68 Showman Reverb (nope, not Dual Showman although I couldn't find a single difference). The only issue I had aside from regular tube maintenance was the failure of a capacitor on the '73. 1968 to late 1972 models do not have master volumes. Ultra-linear transformers were introduced sometime around 1976. I generally prefer non-master volume amps, but with the MV models I never noticed much of a tone difference when I kept the MV on 10.

Yes, Justin, your post is totally dead-on. But it all hinges on having a good tech in your area. Until recently, I didn't have a tech nearby who could work on old amps. About a month ago, however, I discovered a local guy who really knows his stuff, so I am leaning toward the old Fenders more now.

Having said that, I did receive a replacement for my faulty Custom 15 and it totally rocks. I've done a few gigs with it now, and I have nothing but raves about its performance and tone. (In fact, if I were living in the US right now, I'd purchase Ken Fox's Custom 15 in the want ads, and go stereo. That's a great deal for that amp, especially coming from a tech.)

The hand-wired amps seem to take a better licking and keep on ticking, as opposed to their more delicate younger cousins (see Jim's post above). But I do not believe they are THAT delicate, just not as rugged as the old ones. Many products are like that nowadays.

How does a person like myself,who is not an amp tech identify an older amp from a newer one. There are black face,silver face,no master,or is it a serial number search? This has turned out to be an interesting thread to me. Thank you all for your input. Incidentally,I have a close friend who has been playing a FSK for 3 years now and has had no problems with it gigging 3-5 nights a week. Very nice sounding amp in his hands. Happy Trails to you all. Mike C.

Mike,
I can date a Fender amplifier within a few years simply by looking at the faceplate. Concerning the blackface era and beyond, we know that after CBS purchased Fender they changed the "Fender Electric Instruments" tag under the amp model name on the faceplate to "Fender Musical Instruments" sometime during 1965. In very late 1967 the new silverface models left the factory. Aluminum trim was used around the grill on silverface models until the very early months of 1970. Master volumes began appearing on Fender amps in early 1973. Push/pull MV and ultra-linear OTs were added sometime in 1976. CBS continued to make incremental changes in the circuits while still utilizing many of the same old tube chart labels so these are NOT completely accurate. You may find Twin Reverbs, for instance, produced into the early 70s that have AB763 tube charts even though they do not actually have an AB763 circuit. For me, the simplest way to date an amplifier is by the date codes of its components. It is reasonable to take the latest dated transformer or speaker, add a few weeks for finally assembly and testing and assume the amplifier was shipped around that time. There are many intricacies and lots of inconsistencies in Fender amps. Continue to research and familiarize yourself with them and you'll get a good hold on dating them.

HFWIW here's how to really date Fender amps - oddly it doesn't seem to be well-known in the steel world ( I guess because of the "normal" use of SS amps) but the 6-string world has had this site bookmarked for several years:

http://www.tcguitar.com/articles/gagliano_pt5.html

Faceplates can get you within 5 or 6 years at best, and things like "VBL's" (vertical black lines) can pin an amp down to 2 years. SF "drip edge" models actually left the factory in June - the earliest I've seen is a June '67 Bassman head that I owned, but I've seen several Twins and Pro Reverbs with June or July serial numbers. Greg Gagliano spent YEARS compiling this information and it's been confirmed by every reliable source that was at Fender during the Blond/Brown/BF/SF/BF #2 years. The serial number nails the year except right at the ends of each run, where there are overlaps.

It's been confirmed by production-line and sales staff that the earliest SF amps left the QC line in June '67, but so did some BF ones - when a serial number is "on the border" then dating all the usual parts - transformers, pots, speakers - plus examination of factory stamps and even written notes on the chassis - can be used to pin things down, although NONE of the parts will be dated the same as many sat in bins for years - but if you have a SF drip edge amp with a '67 chassis date. the *latest* part date is going to get you very close to the production date . Example - if you have '66 speakers, '63 and '65 pots and an output transformer dated the 2nd week of June '67, it can't be *earlier* than early/mid '67.

That website has settled many a debate - and brought some amp owners very pleasant surprises, like finding their "bought new in 1969" silverface was actually made in '67 and is essentially a blackface amp wearing different clothes - and worth a LOT more.

Then there are the really wacky "use up all them parts, guys" Leo-mantra amps. Case in point:



A February 1964 Champ (with a serial number matching the early-'64's AND a tube chart with "NB" - "N"=1964, "B"= February). BTW, tube charts alone are unreliable as there are thousands of forgeries - plus they sometimes were stuck on wrong amps at the factory, left lying around - no one thought of "collectibility" in those days. Leo had those chassis and cabinets stacked up and wasn't about to waste 'em - so here we have one of the most well-known (but hard to find) anomalies, a "tweed" 5F1 Champ in a tuxedo.

And in a perfect example of collector madness, these '64's, which show up fairly often but are far more rare than tweed 5F1's, sell for much less (still a ton of money for a 3-tube, 5 watt amp with..at the time...a $5 8" speaker.).

Jim,

Why do some mid-60s Fenders have logos and some do not? It seems like around '63 they stopped using the metal Fender logo on the grill cloth for a short period.