The Steel Guitar Forum

i'll grab on a fender bandmaster reverb head tomorrow as a "lightweight" steel/tele backup amp for my 15" loaded vibrosonic. heavy as hell! just too much for hauling around twice a week for rehearsals.

any suggestions to make the second channel sound better with steel guitar? or doesn't it need a modification, cause it is already good sounding?

and keeping double use and weight in mind - what would be the best speaker / cab combination?
a combo with 1x12 or 1x15?
or go for head cabinet combination with 1x12 / 2x12 or 1x15??

regards

guido





...below the bandmaster head, it's my loved vibrosonic with 15"jbl.

If you find it doesn't have enough headroom, you can get more with a Bassman transformer.

THE output transformers are very small on these for sure. Same amp as a Super reverb, Pro Reverb but just a really small OT. I like to use a Twin Reverb OT. The 4 ohm tap for it is an 8 ohm tap for a 2-6L6-GC amp

Mojotone has a nice multi tap for a Twin and it would give you some nice options


Another option is the 40 watt Fender multi-tap giving you 2-4-8 ohms. You can install a Marshall style impedance selector in the aux speaker jack location and have a nice multi tap for different speaker cabs

You can change the 100K slope resistor in the tone stack to 56K and add reverb to that channel. Those mods have been discussed here many times

I use the exact same head, mine's a '69. I only use reverb for steel, not on guitar, so it works perfect for me as is. Great with a Weber California 15"

thanks for great tips!!
i was thinking about a bigger transformer, too to improve the headroom and to get more options in the 'ohms'!
i'll go for the tonestack mod and add reverb to the fist channel (which will be the guitar channel then).

does it make sense to do a mod in the middle frequencies (scoop out around 750hz)?

and for speaker/cabinet combination, i guess to go for a 2x12 head to combo conversion - cause i don't hink to find a nice 1x12 4ohms speaker, which works for tele & steel...!

I say if it's not broke, don't fix it. I personally really like the Bandmaster. in terms of ease of carrying, I'd put a Neo 12 or 15 in a seperate cab and call it good.

...any other suggestions for a speaker choice, that fits guitar and steel?
would prefer the 1x12 / 1x15 option so, i'll need a 4ohm speaker.

Weber California 15" sounds great. What I like about Weber speakers is you can specify the ohms when ordering and you can request they break in the speaker which they will do for no extra charge. I don't know of another place to get speakers already broken in besides Weber.

...yeah, they'd be my first choice if there weren't the problem of high shipping costs and tax when ordering from germany!
what about jensen's c12n?? can handle 50watts, rated as 4ohms and good value too!

Ken likes the Jensen 12" Neo. You can get that in 4 ohms. Plus the Italian economy needs the help.

I play steel and Tele thru a Twin. I added reverb to the first, Normal, channel, and use it for steel. Ain't no way I'm gonna lose the vibrate-oh! on my Tele and Baritone Strat! Tranny upgrades are very important. My tech turned my ordinary Peavy Delta Blues, 15"er, into a monster by changing both the weezyly, tiny transformers. A big ole Hammond for the PT, and a Dr. Z for the OT. The transformers transformed that amp!

Just to add to Ken's points. I would also add a solid state rectifier (not the weber one as it emulates a tube rectifier) to the amp to get rid of some of the sag. Also you could then beef up your Filter capacitors to 2x 220uf @350volts

The Bandmaster Reverb is one of my favorite amps. They are (for a SF Fender) relatively inexpensive, good-sounding, and extremely versatile.

I think what you do with this depends on what you are really looking for. You say you want this for steel (I assume 'clean pedal steel'?) and Tele. The first ingredient is "How loud and clean do you want to be?" If you're looking for big-headroom pedal steel and big-headroom Tele sounds, definitely put in an upgraded big-iron transformer. But for a club gig where I don't need a loud stage volume, I'm OK with the transformer as-is, and in fact prefer the slightly smaller-iron transformers for Tele to avoid the 'icepick-in-the-ears' syndrome. But there are some other things you can do to give a little more juice and apply to most blackface/silverface push-pull Fenders.

First - I sometimes lower the preamp gain by subbing a 5751 or 12AY7 in the first preamp stage of whatever channel I'm using for pedal steel. It's a matter of taste and I don't always do it, but sometimes it helps tame the high output of those overwound pedal steel pickups.

Second, I put reverb on both channels - this is a simple and easily reversible mod for which there are readily available instructions on the web.

Third, I disconnect the tremelo and run it through a push-pull pot that replaces the tremelo intensity pot - my buddy Dave Sarge showed me this trick. When the push-pull pot is 'off', the tremelo is out of the circuit and the overall preamp gain is goosed up a bit, and it beefs up the sound a bit. If you want tremelo (e.g., for guitar), just click the switch 'on', and you get your tremelo back (albeit with a slight loss of juice.) Some people just disconnect the tremelo completely, but I gotta have it for some things. [NB: do NOT do this on a Princeton Reverb or smaller BF/SF Fender - the tremelo on a Princeton is bias-modulation, and if you remove the tremelo circuit, you remove the bias voltage, and your amp will burn up in a matter of seconds. This change is useful only for Deluxe-Reverb and up.]

Fourth, I sometimes revise the 'normal' channel tone stack a bit. What to do depends strictly on your tastes. On some amps, I like a little bit more of a 'tweedy' sound with a bit more mids for guitar, but it would be equally possible to clean up that channel a bit by scooping the mids a bit more, or do anything else to your heart's desire. Experimenting with resistor/capacitor substitution boxes can be enlightening.

Fifth, and this depends on how much clean headroom you want - good NOS power tubes and/or a good 5AR4/GZ34 or solid-state rectifier. But heed this caveat, especially if you want to goose up the power supply - make sure your power filter capacitors are solid and everything's else is in good shape - the increased voltages from high-efficiency rectifier can make old marginal components fail. But once past that, for a real clean sound, a really good (I like Mullard GZ34 rectifiers) rectifier tube or a solid-state replacement can give you more clean headroom. Again and importantly - this depends on how much clean headroom you really want. Unless I want to turn it into a 'hoss', I usually prefer the stock 5U4 for guitar - but for steel, having the extra clean headroom can be nice.

Sixth, speakers. Stock impedance is 4 Ohms, so 2 12" 8-Ohm speakers is fine, but a single 4-Ohm JBL, EVM-12L or 15L, or Peavey Black Widow sounds great if you're going the high-headroom route. If you want some juice out of a 45-watt amp, use a high efficiency speaker like these. It's what comes out of the speaker that counts, not what goes in. Some of the Neodymium speakers are great - I have one in my NV 400, and it sounds great, and took around 10 pounds off the amp.

Just some more ideas. In the end, if I want to use one amp for both pedal steel and guitar, I wind up making tradeoffs. Nobody else could make this tradeoff for me, I have to just fiddle around for myself.

dave, that helped a lot! for sure everyone has to fiddle around by himself, but other's ideas may accelerate this a bit!
and finally, i'll check it with a 1x12 jensen c12n combo solution and hope to get what i expected!
thanks a lot

...i finally got it together! this is really great sounding amp for steel & tele!!
i ended up in a 2x12 custom made cabinet loaded with alnico jensen replicas! ok - it won't break down walls with volume, but therefor i got the vibrosonic!
the next thing will be fine tune the amp a spend it some new caps and so on...





by the way: does someone have an old metal fender badge for silverface amps?? this one plastic ins't that cool!

Instead of the fixed resistor on the Normal channel for Mids, a mini pot can be installed above and between the Treble and Bass pots. For more range a 25K pot can be used in place of the stock 10K value. I did that on my Deluxe Reverb and came in very handy. It can also be modded so that both channels get Reverb.

I had a bandmaster some years ago and a buddy built me a cabinet like the twinreverb and I put the amp in it with a soundboard that I put a 15" JBL in.
The bandmaster had two 6l6's but the chassis has space for 4 with blanks over the emptys.
I added sockets and rewired the circuits from twin reverb schematics along with the ouput xformer form same.
I was working form a Music dealer at the time that sold fender products as well as Fisher stereo.
Fisher had a kit for reverb for their stereo radio AM-FM receivers which I ordered and put in the bandmaster still following the twin prints.
It made a great sounding unit. I was playing a emmons d10 at the time and had an occasion to do steel workshop for a music dealer in Ithaca NY where he had Scotty from ST Louis in.
Scotty played my setup some and said don't ever break up that unit as it was some of the best sound he had heard.
The bummer from all this is I lost the whole setup in a fire.
For those that know Scotty personally, ask him if he remembers doing a thing in Ithaca back in the 70's
If you mention Hemroids that might help

Buddy B

Guido, what year is your Vibrosonic?

...i think it's 1979.

Guido,

I love Bandmasters too!
I have a '66 non reverb model and a 2X12 cab with alnico Jensen P12N's
I also got a Rick Johnson cab with a JBL 130K 15" pictured here.


I put on some Fender tilt back legs and the metal logo to match.

Guido Hausmann wrote:by the way: does someone have an old metal fender badge for silverface amps?? this one plastic ins't that cool!

You can get metal Fender logos on eBay here for $34.95. Free shipping, but may only apply to US.

Clete

...i found a good metal logo on ebay us and now it's finished on the optical side, too!!
and even with the 2x12" alnico jensen replica speakers it sounds absolutely great with steel!
(but the vibrosonic is still the best, and heaviest)

maybe i'll try the 1x15" speaker option as well, got a jbl in spare!