QUOTE Wild Bill The only ones generally disliked are the SilverFace models. This is true of most Vintage Fender models. QUOTE
Wild Bill: Why are the SF's "disliked" so much? Other than the BF's being older (i.e., more vintage), are they that much better?
Are the circuits that much different? Poorer quality components?
Are you talking specifically about Bassmans here, or all SF's in general
I'vre heard some great tone from SF's.
Thanks
Dave
You have to get a bit of history first, Dave! Leo Fender started making amps and went through a number different families over the years he ran the company. In late '65 he sold the company to CBS Music Inc. and in '66 they took over.
It took them a year or two to start putting their own stamp on things. They hired new engineers to make changes to his circuits and changed the cosmetics of the amps to the "silver face" style, referring mainly to the colour of the faceplate with all the knobs.
As they changed the circuits more and more the sales became less and less! Players who had really loved the former "blackface" line did not seem to accept the newer non-Leo models. They just didn't like the sound as much as before.
By the early 70's the company was nearly bankrupt. CBS wound up selling the company to the employees, who started heroically turning the ship around. Obviously they succeeded. Look at the size of Fender today!
As a techie I look at the circuit changes the new engineers made and it looks to me like these guys were hifi engineers and not players. The reason I say that is that I've spoken with many electronic engineers over my career selling parts to manufacturers and unless they play guitar themselves they think of an amplifier as what they call a linear device. It can change the amplitude of a signal but not colour or modify it in any way.
This is fine for playing records, tape, CD's or whatever where you've already made your sound but of course it makes for a terrible amp for guitar. An electric guitar is SUPPOSED to be distorted! And not all distortion is the same and not all is to the same taste. Anybody who ever plugged their guitar into their hifi system immediately knows what I mean.
Meanwhile, look at a company like Traynor. The whole place is full of players! That's the way things have always been! It shows in how their products sound.
Guys like me get a lot of jobs "blackfacing" the SF Fenders. The changes were mostly part values and a few wiring mods. So it's usually not that hard to restore a SF amp to BF specs. To a collector it doesn't improve the value but to a player who just wants the tone it's a very cost-effective deal.
Some SF changes were only minor with some amps and some, like with the later Super Reverb, were just awful! There were some actual improvements, like with the SF Twin Reverb. The Twin is one of the few amps that can sound good at low as well as high volume. That's because it's specifically designed to be both clean and loud. "Hifi" circuit changes actually made it even better, IMHO!
Mind you, I don't really care for those early 90's Twins with pull-boosts and gain channels. They are very much a PITA to work on, which means a bigger repair bill to the owner. Besides, to me Fender has never really come up with good gain "crunch" compared to other brands. Then again, nobody else's "clean" is as good as Fender "clean"!:smile:
Hope this helps...
:food-smiley-004: