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>
