The year of the guitar amp is officially over. Like my relations with other stuff / people, I tend to move around very quickly and want a different thing somewhat often. What can I say? I don’t like what I don’t like. So anyway, when I first started playing out with an electric guitar, in say 2006, I bought this Fender Princeton 112 from the late 90s.
It did what I needed it to do, what the hell did I know. It sounded alright and we were only a 2 piece for most of its tenure so I had as much sonic territory as I needed. I had it until the end of 2009 when I plugged a keyboard into it and something shorted and I couldn’t get clean tone, tho the speaker seemed fine. It was fizzy and distorted and needed to go. Not knowing too much about guitar amps, I knew I liked Fender and I wanted something with maybe a little more power than the Princeton 112 so I used my Xmas bonus to buy this early 90s Fender Princeton Chorus:
It turned out to be terrible. Maybe I couldn’t dial in the tone right, I just never felt good playing with it. I sold it a month later for $50 more than I paid for it hehe. I still needed something so, one day after I went and saw a friend’s band on Letterman (and scoped out Dave’s dressing room), I bought my first ever tube amp, this 1976 Fender Twin Reverb:
This thing was BAD ASS. Super clean tone, very warm and very loud. I started falling in love with the warmth of a tube amp. This era of amp is called the silverface because the amps had a chrome control panel where the tone/volume knobs are. This amp is awesome but it has one drawback: it’s as heavy as a redneck church service. It took 2 people to carry it and it was a bitch to gig with. The reverb on it was soo nice and lush but it was temperamental and I had to shake the amp to get it to start working on stage a few times. So I sold it and bought this 1971 Fender Deluxe Reverb:
Oh man this amp was killer too. I bought it off a church in Williamsburg, it had some holy spirit mojo to it and it looked like it had been kept beneath god’s tender toes since 1971. It was super clean in appearance and it is light, way lighter than the Twin and I thought this was the one! It sounded like I was playing through an old AM radio. I loved it. However, I took it to a show, and I was changed. In practice, the amp was fine but at a show, where things are way louder, the amp couldn’t hold up with the band and keep clean tone. It was because it was smaller and had less power tubes than the previous one. So I sold it (for about $350 more than I paid for it) and bought this 1971 Fender Vibrolux Reverb:
Perfect. Looks just like the Deluxe right? Sounds soo much fuller. Way more powerful, not much heavier. I had to go up to Woodstock to get this. The Vibrolux Reverbs are pretty rare and sought after. It was soo good I forgot about amps for a few days. I even bought another silverface amp, a 1979 Fender Champ just cause it was for sale cheap.
It’s a little guy. Only weighs about 15 lbs and could be really loud and dirty sounding. But not really my thing. I sold this a very nice girl with braces.
So back to the Vibrolux Reverb. It’s perfect. Let me say that again. But it had to go. Now, I was starting to get very particular. These silverface models are great but the era before them in the 1960s are made with higher quality parts and are renowned as the best Fender amps of all time. So I bought another Vibrolux Reverb, one from 1966:
Total dud. I bought this off ebay and it was the first amp I bought without checking out and playing first. It did not have the original speakers which I thought wouldnt be a problem but was. This amp, on paper should have been the perfect one for me. It was made in early 1966, and used parts from before Fender was even really corporate, which happened when CBS bought them in 1965. But besides the speakers being new, the cloth which covers the speakers also wasnt original but was browned to look like it was aged. Something about that urked me, so it had to go. I knew I still loved the Vibrolux Reverb so I waited and finally found another one, this one from 1967:
This one is it. I’m cured. (I hope.) It sounds incredible, even better than the 1971. It is mostly original and it’s beat up a little but in relatively great shape for its age. It’s loud enough to stay clean and not get distorted when I have to get loud with the band. That’s all I was looking for. So a year and a lot of my income later, I am throwing in the towel and am totally a happy guitar player. For the meantime anyway.