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Fender Studio Bass Club!
- Thread starter gjesse
- Start date
I was this close to buying one of these in Asheville NC a few months ago. I then remembered I'm 56 years old and I have back problems. Although I miss the studio bass amp I had, I can't see moving it (or paying to modify it) any time in the near future.
Me and my used Prodigy are very happy
Me and my used Prodigy are very happy
Just wondering if anyone can tell me the date my Fender Super Twin amp was manufactured? I managed to find and read the serial number on the back panel, here's the serial number.
B 17926
B 17926
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,636
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
they had a fairy wide range for the serial numbers starting with "B" + 5 digits so it's a 1975 or 1976.
Cheers for that, I thought it might be a mid 70's amp, the guy I bought it off sold it to me for Au$300.00, my guess is that they would have cost considerably more than that if you were to buy one brand new from a local Fender dealer.
Not sure if I have posted a pic of it in this thread so I thought I would post one so members can see what it looks like, it is sitting on top of my Peavey 410TX bass cab that I'm in the process of doing some restoration work on, I took the front baffle off the amp so I could cover it with some cloth and install a Fender amp logo I bought on eBay, still waiting for it to arrive in the post, next week I'll visit my local fabric shops to see if I can find some nice Paisley cloth, and will buy a square metre if I can find some, at a later stage I would like to re-tolex the cab, and maybe put new chrome corner protectors and fittings on it, I need to replace the two cooling fans cause sometimes they refuse to rotate when the amp is powered up, but a gentle nudge usually gets them going, anyway, here's the pic:
Not sure if I have posted a pic of it in this thread so I thought I would post one so members can see what it looks like, it is sitting on top of my Peavey 410TX bass cab that I'm in the process of doing some restoration work on, I took the front baffle off the amp so I could cover it with some cloth and install a Fender amp logo I bought on eBay, still waiting for it to arrive in the post, next week I'll visit my local fabric shops to see if I can find some nice Paisley cloth, and will buy a square metre if I can find some, at a later stage I would like to re-tolex the cab, and maybe put new chrome corner protectors and fittings on it, I need to replace the two cooling fans cause sometimes they refuse to rotate when the amp is powered up, but a gentle nudge usually gets them going, anyway, here's the pic:
Attachments
Here's another pic of my Fender Super Twin in my loungeroom sitting on top of my Peavey 410TX bass cab that I'm currently doing restoration work on, now, I'm wondering if this Bass Behemoth (Hee Hee Hee) is going to be able to handle the low B-string on my Ibanez Soundgear 6-string bass? the speakers I'm going to be using are the original 10 inchers that were in the cab when I got it, three of them needed some "surgery" performed on them to re-connect the voice coils to the terminals, as far as I can tell by testing them with a multimeter and signal-generator they all appear to be working now, at a later date when I can afford to do so, I'm going to be replacing them with some Eminence Legend BP102s, assuming i can find some at a reasonable price.
The original crossover was built on a pcb, but I have elected to re-build it old-school breadboard style using some 8-way tagstrips and a piece of 12mm pine wood, I've got the schematic and layout of the crossover all worked out.
Here's the pic of the "Bass Behemoth":
The original crossover was built on a pcb, but I have elected to re-build it old-school breadboard style using some 8-way tagstrips and a piece of 12mm pine wood, I've got the schematic and layout of the crossover all worked out.
Here's the pic of the "Bass Behemoth":
Attachments
The guy who sold the amp to me retrofitted the fans onto the rear cover himself, mostly due to the amount of heat dissipated by the six STR 6L6 power tubes, my Super Twin is one of the non-reverb ones with the built-in Distortion circuit, I have tried using the Distortion circuit a few times and I agree, it's not really a useable sound unless badly-biased 12AX7 distortion tone is you're thing, I have a few distortion and Fuzz pedals that sound way better, so it's something that doesn't work for me, the Super Twin does take pedals really well though, so my Super Twin serves dual-purposes as a bass amp and as a guitar amp, really looking forward to trying it out with my Peavey 410TX bass cab and 6-string bass.
Bought this today!
900€, seller was the first owner. Serial number indicates that it’s from 1979.
Couple of pots are scratchy, but everything else seems to work great!
I’m really happy with this amp. Sound is heavenly!
900€, seller was the first owner. Serial number indicates that it’s from 1979.
Couple of pots are scratchy, but everything else seems to work great!
I’m really happy with this amp. Sound is heavenly!
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,636
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
I’ve had this baby since 1990, my first amp. My only amp 1990-2008 & the bass gear I’ve owned the longest.
I built a headcase in 2004 but was just too darn heavy to lift so rarely used outside the house. (The 15” was put in a TL cab, also heavy & awkward to lift).
The Restoration
My brother (guitar tech/luthier) tidied up the old chassis that had been in Dad’s work shed for a 20 years. Reglued tears in tolex, cleaned/polished the tolex, added black touch-ups to missing areas, polished the chrome on corners/handle/etc, bought new wheels.
He also sourced some vintage-looking grill cloth and built a new grill frame (old particle board frame crumbling) & assembled & tested it. Sounds amazing with my ‘69 P with Roto 66 Stainless rounds. Ready to roll it staight in & gig it again like the old days.
I built a headcase in 2004 but was just too darn heavy to lift so rarely used outside the house. (The 15” was put in a TL cab, also heavy & awkward to lift).
The Restoration
My brother (guitar tech/luthier) tidied up the old chassis that had been in Dad’s work shed for a 20 years. Reglued tears in tolex, cleaned/polished the tolex, added black touch-ups to missing areas, polished the chrome on corners/handle/etc, bought new wheels.
He also sourced some vintage-looking grill cloth and built a new grill frame (old particle board frame crumbling) & assembled & tested it. Sounds amazing with my ‘69 P with Roto 66 Stainless rounds. Ready to roll it staight in & gig it again like the old days.
I just finished installing the new piezo tweeter in the Peavey 410TX bass cab I'm using with my 1975-1976 non-reverb Fender Super Twin amp, here's a pic showing what my bass rig looks like now, I haven't tried it out after installing the new piezo tweeter.....yet.
That square piece in the middle is a mounting bracket I had to make in order to mount the new piezo tweeter, it is just two pieces of 3mm MDF glued together with some PVA glue, and spray-painted with some matt black paint, seems to do the job fine, I couldn't source any of the original Fostex branded tweeters so I had to make do with a piezo tweeter bought from my local Jaycar Electronics store, the piezo is rated at 100W.
Here's a pic of my bass rig all buttoned-up after I've finished working on it.
If you're interested in hearing what my bass rig sounds like, here's a link to a quick demo I made and uploaded to my soundcloud account:
Stream Bass Rig Demo by DrNomis_44 | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
Stream Bass Rig Demo by DrNomis_44 | Listen online for free on SoundCloud
Yeah, I can see why these old Fender Super Twins make great bass amps, they are kind-of like 2/3rds of an Ampeg SVT, Fender designed these amps to stay clean up to very loud volume levels, they did that by wiring the power amplifier up to the output transformer in what's called an "Ultra Linear" configuration, which is normally used in Tube HiFi amplifiers, not guitar amps, incidentally the Fender Super Twin is supposed to be a guitar amp, I had a good look through the schematic and the first triode gain-stage in V1 of the preamp has a 750uF cap bypassing the cathode resistor, in my Super Twin amp the cap is a dirty great big 1000uF cap, most likely it's a replacement for the original 750uF one that probably went bad for some reason, that's probably why my bass guitar sounds really fat and warm through the amp rig, I'm very happy with the results I got.
