Fender London Reverb - How Did This Happen?

Where to begin? The ribbon connector repaired with Cat5 cable? The solder pads that burn off with the slightest heat? Maybe the switches inside pots. Or the pots inside switches. The pot/switches that flip chips and relays three boards away. The two mid knobs on the second channel? An entire separate circuit just for the LEDs?! The cable that seems to only connect chassis ground to chassis ground?? What does this amp want from me?!?! Oh man, why don't you just stop it? This is too big for you, you know that? Who did this, who did that! It's a mystery! It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! Fender don't even know, man! Don't you get it? You want the truth? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!

The 1980s were a weird time that made people do weird things. The Fender London Reverb is one of those weird things. I'm just glad I made it to the other side of this one. Was it worth it? Only me and the voice inside my coffee maker know for sure.

Fender Princeton Reverb - Ready For The Road

This '78 Princeton Reverb just needed a little tightening up before it hit the road. I installed a grounded AC cable and removed the dreaded Fender "Death Cap." Everything needed a good cleaning inside and out, and the bias circuit was adjusted for its new power tubes. Its preamp tubes were the USA made originals, and like most tubes from the Cold War they still worked just fine... ok, better than fine.  A great little amp that makes traveling to the gig a breeze.

Fender HotRod DeVille - The 60 Watt Flame Thrower

The old joke about the Hotrod series is that Fender installed a second on/off switch that they mislabeled "volume." At 1, the amp is basically off. At 2, it peels the paint off the walls. To make the amp a little more user friendly and bring the overall gain down we swapped 12AT7s into the first two preamp spots. We also replaced the "volume" and "master volume" pots with 250k audio taper. We replaced the "reverb" pot with 100k linear taper. The end result was a much more mellow tone with a nice warm reverb that you can turn up without sterilizing farm animals at 100 paces. 

'68 Fender Super Reverb - The Legend of Little Joe

At some point in the late 70s or early 80s there was a failed attempt at repairing Little Joe, so he was left in pieces in a cold wet garage. Where he sat, and waited... for decades.  When he was finally rescued by our friends in Casino Queen  they knew they had stumbled onto something cool, but how cool? How about 1968 Drip Edge Fender Super Reverb with original factory JBLs level of cool? How about all original American made RCA preamp tubes (that still test great) as bonus cool? With a lot of love, some late nights, and a gallon or two of mold killer a bell-like chime finally cut through the decades of grime and neglect. It turned out that some poor soldering skills in the power supply and a wrong (really wrong) fuse were what had forced Little Joe to live in the garage in the first place. The damp had caused some warping of one of the speaker cones, and there is a slight rub that is slowly getting better. Hopefully we can avoid a recone on this classic speaker, and Little Joe will go down as one of those legendary barn finds you tell your grandkids about. 

Vox AC30tbx - Bad Timing

This Vox AC30tbx had a serious case of the "I ate my power tubes" in the middle of an outdoor concert. That part's not unusual. AC30s are known to be hard on their tubes. What's weird was how. The legs of both bias resistors were sheared off at the PCB.  Because apparently that is a thing that the laws of nature and physics allows. Metal can decide to just opt out now. Some new resistors and a fresh quad of EL84s were the solution. We also changed the cut control to function as a master volume.  It's an easy mod that is just as easy to reverse. It's a good experiment for those that want the classic AC30 sound, but don't want to sacrifice their hearing.

Fender Pro Tube "94 Twin" - Shaken, Not Stirred

The Fender Pro-Tube "94 Twin" is a feature heavy beast that was the result of some Fender engineer deciding that the regular Twin just didn't weigh enough. Seriously, I'm pretty sure the cabinet is made of lead reinforced concrete. This particular amp was having issues with it's power tubes. The customer reported lots of snap, crackle, pops, and he wasn't wrong. It had been re-tubed and biased in the past, but those tubes soon gave up as well. I pulled the chassis from the cabinet expecting a long haul, but the problem was revealed almost immediately. The mounting hardware on half of the power tubes was missing. When played, the cabinet vibration was causing those two tubes to flap around wildly. I replaced the missing screws and applied thread lock to all the socket mounts.  The amp didn't get any lighter, but it sure sounded better.

Arion Fat Chorus - Lordy, I hope there's tape

When Kevin purchased this "modified" Arion Fat-Chorus he wasn't counting on the mod mainly being a half-roll of electrical tape. Components were making contact in ways they shouldn't and much of the tape was starting to come apart. I cleaned up the soldering and insulated the mod with shrink tubing. After giving the main switch a good cleaning the pedal was fully operational and Fat as ever.

Fender Bassman 70 - A Little Goes A Long Way

The customer had purchased this vintage Bassman 70 with plans to clean it up, and while it initially worked fine, once he got it home it would only produce noise. The source of the madness was a missing nut and washer on the bias control pot. Without the nut the pot was no longer making contact to the chassis/ground. One little bit of hardware had thrown off the whole amp. I locked down the pot and biased the new power tubes. I also gave the front panel pots a good cleaning. Some people don't care for Fender's ultra-linear amps, but this one had a nice solid clean tone that was exactly what the customer was looking for.

Music Man HD130 - Rejuvenation

Things weren't working quite right, so Rian from These People Here decided it was time to spiff up his Music Man HD130. This particular amp started it's life with the older 12AX7 phase inverter. At some point in the 70s (remember those?) it was updated with the newer solid state drive board. Someone had replaced the power tubes and tried to bias it using the older method. With the solid state board installed you can spin the old bias pot like the wheel of a tall ship avoiding the Kraken and it won't make an ounce of difference. The tremolo effect needed some coaxing as well. We replaced the toasted EL34s with the correct 6CA7s, set the bias properly and the difference was immediatley noticeable. 130 watts of spacious, clean tone. Turns out it makes a surprisingly good bass amp too!  

Crate GFX50 - Finishing up where Crate left off.

The mighty Crate GFX50 Student Model!! Twin inputs! Twin headphone jacks! Stereo CD input that plays in mono through its one 12 inch speaker?! Or at least it would have if Crate had finished soldering the pins on the power amp transistor. Depending on which way you shake the amp you get either stunning silence or a jet engine roar. You can't teach your students the solo from "Crazy Train" note for note if your amp was left halfway built at the factory.