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Fender Bassman 4x12 pyramid

#3
Dell said:
Does anyone know what speakers were the originals in these and what their impedence would be?
Also, has anyone tried one of these cabs? any comments are welcome.
(still looking for a cab for my Hiwatt head!)
Click to expand...

Are you referring to the 4x12 Bassman135 cab that housed the 12s angled inward from all 4 sides?
If so, I used to own the cabinet. Since it was a 4 ohm cab, I'm thinking the 12s were 4 ohm drivers. I don't have any more info on the speakers, except that I do remember them having small motors on them.

My opinion: It was not a good design, and I never liked it. It didn't have any punch, and highs were all but non-existent. 12s should have sounded better than that, even back in the day.
I tried various amps along with the Bassman135 head that came with it. I eventually tore out the 12s and the angled enclosure baffle, and rebuilt it as a 2x15 cabinet. The cab was not very well built. The angled baffles were particle board, glued and "stapled" together. The back of the cab was also particle board, with ply top, sides, and bottom. It had removeable casters, and the housings were mounted into particle board pieces at the bottom of the cab, which weren't strong.
I recently rebuilt the thing again after about 20 years sitting in my closet, and refitted it was 2x15s (eminence kappa pro LF-2s).. I'm gigging with it now.
I don't think that cabinet was one of Fender's better designs.

For what it's worth..

Mag...
 
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#4
+1
At rehearsal room there was from time to time that box paired with Fender 300PS (or PS300? :confused: )
And with various basses all I got was crappy sound, knobs on the amp had very little effect on this cab, and output was weak (not at all what you would expect from 300W tube head)
If you want 4x12 I highly recommend Trace Elliot 1248 (great cab). IMHO there are many better vintage or vintage sounding cabs on the market than Fender 4x12 pyramid.
 
#6
I used to own that old Bassman 4-12 (first sold with the Bassman 100, later with the 135). Impressive looking, pretty awful sound.

The stock speakers were either 16 ohm or 4 ohm wired up for a total load of 4 ohms. They were Fender branded, not sure who actually made them for Fender...Utah, Eminence maybe.
 
#7
Dell said:
Does anyone know what speakers were the originals in these and what their impedence would be?
Also, has anyone tried one of these cabs? any comments are welcome.
(still looking for a cab for my Hiwatt head!)
Click to expand...
As everyone else has stated....this cabinet did little for me. I never owned the head, but I bought, played, destroyed, an parted out one of these turds. Mine did not have "motors" on the speakers...but I believe them to be original. I still own 2 blown speakers...one of which is in my hand. The other two were sold to a moron (read: guitar player) who I used to play with.

To answer the questions I can: both speakers are stamped with a "4" in a circle on the frame, so I assume the are 4 ohm. The magnet says "Fender Musical Instruments Special Design Speaker". A sticker on the frame that I assme is the part number "010662" with "465-846 1256L-1" underneath it. The actual cone is tagged "P5439-1". <edit> OK. so far as I can tell, 456=Oxford 846= 1978 46th week of the year (date of manufacture) Oxford used letters to denote wattage. The L would make these 30 watters (kinda odd).

Googling these numbers brought up:[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

Made by Oxford. Oh, and at that price, I take back the moron comment about my old guitarist...it seems he got a good deal.

Mike
 
#9
Thanks for the info people!
Ive only ever seen one Hiwatt SE320 for sale here, and he wanted £900 for it. Whilst I could save that much its the fact its the first one Ive seen for sale since I started looking at cabs.... and I cant wait 6 months for another one to turn up :/
Cant find a 8 Ohm version of the Eden 2x15 in the country either.
 
#11
I bought one of these new when they came out in the early 70s.It was the matching cabinet for the Bassman 100 which I also bought.I kind of liked the tone when played by itself but it didn't have real good bottom when turned up to band volume or even cut through very well.I was new to the credit thing so I traded it in on a new old stock Dual Showman cabinet with JBL D 140F speakers.Way better tone,lows,mids and highs and it was not so cumbersome.It would also get a little ragged at band volumes because of the small sealed cabinet but was one of the best sounding cabinets at the time except for the Sunn 200 and 2000 cabinets with JBLs and the Acoustics 371 cabinets.So I liked the head but not the Fender 412 cabinet.
 
#12
I used to have that cab with the Fender Bassman 100 head. It was heavy, had no highs, and a muddy low end. No matter what I did with the amp, I couldn't get a good tone out of it. This was my first amp/cab rig, and the poor tone sent me down an "anti-tube" pathway...mistakenly, for many years. I got a much better tone using the Bassman 100 with a single 15" cab. I ended up giving the the head and cab away to a band member when I moved because I didn't want the hassle of moving it. I was young and foolish. The cab was crap, but I bet the head would sound great with some of the newer cabs I now have.
 
#15
You guys musn't have been using the right head with the 412 box, because it is awesome. it is designed to push bass frequencies omni - directionally. It was designed to be the perfect partner for a P bass, or J bass or T bass and the 135 Watt head. When serviced, tuned and biased properly that amp with those basses and cabinet produce arguably the best old-school bass tone ever. An SVT may have more volume, but the 135 has so much sweet fender tone. My 135 rig has done 500 plus shows several album sessions in 12 years on one set of valves(a 5 inch computer fan is highly recommended to extend valve life) and is constantly going to other people's recording sessions because people hear it live and just want it...
As long as your head is a 4 ohm head this cab will make your bass sing...don't believe otherwise...anyone who wants to get rid of their crappy old Fender 135 heads and/or 4x12 cabs PM me and I will take em off your hands and make good money renting them to people for shows and sessions! I never run the channel vol over 2 and always run the master at 10, and I play with a Strat wielding guitarist who cranks the hell out of his Blues Deville and my drummer has one of the loudest Yamaha Studio 1000 kits...we play ROCK and I often get told to turn down on stage...
The rig may not be for a metal band with two Marshalls, but for just about everything else, they rule...passive bass is all you need and make sure when you get that head serviced your tech REALLY knows what he is doing with valves and fender amps - with a bit of hot-rodding you get heaps more headroom out of the 135 head.
 
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#16
BOSS302BASS said:
it is designed to push bass frequencies omni - directionally.
Click to expand...
-1. Bass frequencies are by nature omnidirectional no matter what the cabinet design. This Fender has increased midrange dispersion, but it's achieved by reducing the cabinet interior volume, and that in turn reduces the low frequency output. It was also loaded with the same drivers used in their guitar cabs. :rollno:
If you like a thin tone all well and good, it will do that and loudly so. But modern 2x12s will beat it in bass output, in a far easier to haul package.
 
#19
Magneto said:
Are you referring to the 4x12 Bassman135 cab that housed the 12s angled inward from all 4 sides?
If so, I used to own the cabinet. Since it was a 4 ohm cab, I'm thinking the 12s were 4 ohm drivers. I don't have any more info on the speakers, except that I do remember them having small motors on them.

My opinion: It was not a good design, and I never liked it. It didn't have any punch, and highs were all but non-existent. 12s should have sounded better than that, even back in the day.
I tried various amps along with the Bassman135 head that came with it. I eventually tore out the 12s and the angled enclosure baffle, and rebuilt it as a 2x15 cabinet. The cab was not very well built. The angled baffles were particle board, glued and "stapled" together. The back of the cab was also particle board, with ply top, sides, and bottom. It had removeable casters, and the housings were mounted into particle board pieces at the bottom of the cab, which weren't strong.
I recently rebuilt the thing again after about 20 years sitting in my closet, and refitted it was 2x15s (eminence kappa pro LF-2s).. I'm gigging with it now.
I don't think that cabinet was one of Fender's better designs.

For what it's worth..

Mag...
Click to expand...

+1. The one I had a long time ago was a particle board POS which buzzed like a beehive during loud bass notes--a real load of CBS Fender BS...
 
#20
Whether it sounded good or not is pretty subjective. But as a Fender dealer from 1977 through 1988, I know that we only sold TWO of those turds new. We sold quite a few Bassman 100/135, and a bunch of the Bassman 50/75. Heck we sold more of that pitifully undersized 2x15 cabinet CBS/Fender made for the Bassman 75 than we did of the Bassman 100/135 cabinet. Seems most of our customers would rather have a cabinet from another manufacturer than the Fender 4x12 Bassman box. What sold were various 1x15 boxes, such as Bullfrogs, a few Yamahas (good boxes with GREAT speakers in them), and Peavey's 1x15 or 2x15. Then it went to lots of Peavey 1810/1820 (1x18 and 2x10), a few 3620s (two 18" and a pair of 10's), and the 1516 (one 15 and a pair of 8s- my all-time favorite Peavey speaker cabinet). Then the 4x10 thing started with us selling quite a few Guild/Hartkes... but I digress.

As others have said- the cabinet is not a well-thought out design, and the build quality is generally attrocious. Flimsy materials not put together well, and despite bos302bass' experience, they were not very robust cabinets. The baffles especially had a bad tendency to come apart at the seams, utterly ruining any attempt they may have made at designing the ports in them. Plus the speakers weren't specially chosen for bass, not even the EV equiped ones. Thing is the EV ones were heavier, leading to more baffle problems. One came through our store with the Fender PS speakers by Cerwin/Vega- I don't know if it came from the factory that way, or if it had been modded by a previous owner, but the top baffle had pulled all the way loose while riding in the band truck.

jte
 

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