The Steel Guitar Forum

Hello, can anyone tell me when the Fender SteelKing Amps were produced,& why they stopped production.Also, are there any For Sale on this Forum.
I'm relatively new,& haven't learned to navigate so well.
Thanks For any help.
Sincerely,
Jeff D.

I have been able to acquire 2 Steel Kings, one new,
one like new and they are my favorite amps of over
50 years playing. I have (2) NV400's mod'd, (2)Evans,
had a Webb since sold. The Steel King is the only amp
I can plug any of my four steels into and they all sound great without a lot of EQ. Basically the amp
can be played with EQ almost flat and sounds fine.
Other amps need to work with EQ to find the sweet spot.
They come available from time to time. Hope you can
snap one up. I think they were not popular with players due to the weight (70#) and bigger cabinet.
Great amp though.
Good Luck,
Wayne Wallett

ISTR that they had reliability problems.

Yes, cheap manufacturing and reliability problems. Input jack failures a lot. They sound pretty good though.

I've been playing a Steel King for 10 years on gigs all over New England and never had a problem with it. I love the amp. I put in one of those lightweight Eminence speakers a few years ago, and cut 15 pounds off the weight of the amp.

My Fender Steel King has performed flawlessly since I purchased it in September of 2005.

It's a great sounding amp.

I really like mine, no issues to date

They have a very distinct sound which may or may not suit you. It might be good to personally play through one before you make your decision if possible. At this point I am not a fan of current fender gear.

I bought one new in 2005. It has performed flawlessly and has never let me down. I did replace the speaker with an Eminence to lighten it up. It sounds better than most other amps, IMHO.

In February of '05 I started working at a Sam Ash Store in Cincinnati. In the 6 months I worked there they ordered a coupe of Steel Kings for customers, none for store stock.But after talking to the guys that ordered them they got my curiosity up. Right after that I started working for a competitor, Willis Music, that had one for store stock.I had that amp transferred to the store I worked at from another store. I didn't get to try the amp then. But about 3 months after that I had it transferred to another location I was working at. The manager was a customer I had from a previous store that I used to manage.He let me bring in my steel to try it... I was HOOKED!!! I took that amp to a CD release party I played at...YES this was the amp!!!I won that amp in a sales contest the company ran. Outside of breaking some pot shafts from giging the amp, It;s been trouble free And I still use it and LOVE IT!!!

I agree with Wayne. I sold 12 of those amps from my now closed shop and did not have any complaints. I did have an input jack issue with the first amp I took for myself; however, it was repaired under warranty and worked fine. That amp was sold before moving to Arizona where a spare one was waiting at my retirement home. A EPS 15 speaker replaced the stock piece of lead and the amp is now much lighter and sounds even better.

Fender also made a similar amp called the Jazz King
I had both and couldn't hear any difference between them.
(I kept the Jazz King, which handles a variety of instruments well.)
They have a really nice feature in their EQ sweep knob (called "EQ Tilt") that allows you to change the EQ with one knob to compensate for the room in which you're playing.
They definitely have some weight to them, unless you change the speaker...