My Father's Fender Pro Reverb

[keyofnight]

Once upon a time, my father had his own blues band—he sung and played the bass. Eventually, he became a small business owner and stopped playing altogether, but he has kept tons of old relics from his life as a bluesman: a fretless Guild, an old PA system, etc.

One such relic has come to my attention: a Fender Amp my mother found hiding in one of her closets. I always thought that it was a blackface combo Fender Bassman with a busted cone. Today I asked my mother to take a picture of the amp for me to peruse, and it turns out to be a blackface Fender Pro Reverb combo… with a blown fuse. I'd date it as a 69, but I haven't seen the thing in 10 years, so I have no idea.

I was confused: —why did my father buy/use this amp when he could've bought a Bassman back then? Even still, he played and toured with it, so it must've gotten the job done.

Here's the question. Can I use it to play bass? (—like he did?) What can I do to get it in shape for playing without depreciating the value too much?—should I throw upgraded drivers in there for better bass response? Should I change caps/resistors to change the tone stack?

(Sorry for the wall of text, guys.)

 

[walterw]

forget using it as a bass amp, it'll be terrible for that. it's a great guitar amp and should be used as such.

 

[will33]

I'd leave as close to as-is as I could. It's an open back combo with 40+ year old speakers so I'd take it easy on the bass, maybe bedroom volumes. You've got a piece of history there. Tubes, maybe a cap job and good cleaning are normal maintenance but I wouldn't go turning it into something it's not.

I may be a little sentimental sometimes but I'd preserve it, play it responsibly (it was made to be played) and think of dad.

Plug a guitar in there and play it for a while...you'll like it.

 

[walterw]

or if you're not a guitar player at all, sell it or trade it; if it really is a '60s blackface, it's worth enough for a pretty good actual bass rig.

 

[will33]

The low 4 strings on a guitar are the same notes as a bass. If you can play bass you can play something on guitar. Ever see a G chord? it ain't that hard to make....every hit song has a G chord in it.

 

[JimmyM]

Guys like your dad played stuff like that because it was available back then. Bass amp technology back then was not especially advanced, and only started to get usable as we define it today in 68-69.

 

[keyofnight]

Well, I don't want to sell it, and I don't own a guitar. I also don't have much space, but I don't want it to go unplayed. I read a thread or two saying that a bass sounds okay through one of these, but I'm sure it sounds mediocre compared to today's standards—just as you've said, Jimmy.

I guess I'll do what Will says—play it softly, see how it sounds.

 

[JimmyM]

Actually, if you play it at volumes it can take, it should sound most excellent. The tone wasn't lacking...just the available volume.

 

[Stumbo]

I was confused: —why did my father buy/use this amp when he could've bought a Bassman back then? Even still, he played and toured with it, so it must've gotten the job done.

Maybe he had more than one amp?

From Wiki:
The Fender Pro Reverb is a high-end guitar amplifier made by Fender. It was in production from 1965 and was discontinued in 1982. The Pro Reverb is a 40-watt tube amplifier (at 4 ohms) and has a pair 12" speakers; however, models later than 1976 were increased to 70 watts.

The Pro Reverb is most often used by players seeking a traditional Fender clean tone, with, owing to the relative low output power, propensity for 'breakup,' or musically-pleasing distortion. Many players note the quality of the tube driven spring reverb and tremolo (inaccurately referred to as "vibrato" by Fender).

Pro Reverbs were first sold in mid-1965. Since CBS bought out Fender in January of 1965, all of them are post-CBS Fenders. Even so, some have "Fender Electric Instruments Co." on the front panel under the Pro Reverb Amp logo instead of the CBS era "Fender Musical Instruments."

All the original Pro Reverbs are "blackface" -- they have black control panels with white lettering, script logo, silver/black/white grille cloths, raised Fender logo on the grille cloth and black Tolex covering. They use two 5881/6L6GC power tubes, a GZ34 tube rectifier and are rated at roughly 40 watts. They have two channels, one of which has reverb and tremolo. A dual footswitch controls the effects. In excellent condition, with original speakers these amps were selling for between $1900 and $2400 in 2010(2011 Vintage Guitar Price Guide). Mint examples usually sell for more.

You can always plug the amp into a bass cabinet if you want to use it for a bass rig.

IMO, since it's a vintage classic, I suggest either selling it or keeping it safe/locked up and getting it properly insured.

 

[keyofnight]

IMO, since it's a vintage classic, I suggest either selling it or keeping it safe/locked up and getting it properly insured.

I read that wiki article when I first found out what it was. Pretty awesome. I even called my mother up to tell her how much it was worth.

I could never sell it, though. Call me sentimental. Bass is probably the only thing my father and I have in common with one another.

Insurance? I've never thought about it. Maybe if I start gigging?

Actually, if you play it at volumes it can take, it should sound most excellent. The tone wasn't lacking...just the available volume.

Excellent.

I'm going to ask my dad how this amp stood up to the road. I'm sure most of the gigs he played were miced to a PA system. I know because he tried to give me a giant(, old) PA speaker.

 

[keyofnight]

Hm. I was browsing about ampwares.com (awesome website, by the way), and I noticed a lot of overlap between the Blonde Bassman, the Blackface Bassman, and the Blackface Pro Reverb. These overlaps make me wonder what the real differences between these amps are.

The Blond Bassman cab, the Blackface Bassman cab, and the Blackface Pro Reverb were all manufactured with Jensen C12N speakers at some point. I hear Fender's bass cabs weren't so great back then, but it's comforting to hear that (at least some of) the speakers were considered functionally equivalent.

I also noticed that some of the Blackface Pro Reverbs and Blackface Bassman (bassmen?—lol) have the same circuit number AA165. I compared the schematics, and I didn't notice too much of a difference between the two, beside the addition of the vibrato. Of course, I suck at reading schematics closely—I'm mostly comparing component values.

Can one of you tell me the real difference between the bassman and the pro reverb…? Are they both relics that shouldn't be touched by a Bass? I know I'm missing something here.

 

[chadds]

I wouldn't even play bass through it. You don't need to. Own it, enjoy it. Perhaps you'll let a responsible guitarist use it when you do a session together.
When you've blown up or slightly damaged these 40 year old speakers you'll ask why. Like, why did I follow the advice of an anonymous voice on TB who can't and won't bring it back to it's original condition.
As to why your Dad had it, many musicians have stuff they took in trade or perhaps they let their band use.

 

[spufman]

Aaaa, the worst that will happen is you'll blow the speakers. If that happens just get appropriate new ones. 40 year old guitars and tube amps are great, not so much true with speakers IMO. Play it if you feel like playing it! P.S., good you have at least something to share with your Dad, that's important. I'm lucky enough to have a fantastic (musical) father and a couple sons who at 14 and 12 still like to hang out with me!

 

[Stumbo]

Insurance? I've never thought about it. Maybe if I start gigging?

IME, home owner's policies won't automatically cover collectible items that increase in value. You will need an insurance rider that specifically covers your specific collectible equipment...amps, guitars, etc. I suggest you have your mom call her insurance agent and gather some info for you.

Gigging insurance may be another matter. Ask your agent. Here are a couple of links to check out:
Gear insurance thread
Buying road cases to protect the amp if you gig with it.

Another suggestion: so you won't blow the original speaker, replace the original speakers with new bass speakers. Even though it's open back, at least you'll get some bass tone out of it. Or just treat it as a head and set it on top of a nice, new, more efficient 1x15 cab and enjoy. I'd also have the electronics checked out to make sure it's all up to spec.

 

[steve_rolfeca]

Aaaa, the worst that will happen is you'll blow the speakers. If that happens just get appropriate new ones. 40 year old guitars and tube amps are great, not so much true with speakers IMO. Play it if you feel like playing it! P.S., good you have at least something to share with your Dad, that's important. I'm lucky enough to have a fantastic (musical) father and a couple sons who at 14 and 12 still like to hang out with me!

If (and that's a BIG if) your dad's amp is original and unmolested, this is bad advice.

Clean original blackface amps are practically museum pieces, which is why they command such high prices. If the speakers are original and still in working condition, that makes it rarer still. Those speakers, are old, probably pretty tired, and most likely don't sound all that great by now. Yet they have high historic value for collectors.

For this and other reasons, most responsible guitarists leave these amps pretty much alone. They have a good tech go through the amp, and replace any dry capacitors or cooked components. They pull the stock speakers, and store 'em somewhere safe. Then they equip the amp with something, good, modern, and not collectable. Jensen, Weber, and Warehouse all make good replacement drivers. On a related subject, something else to be careful about with this valuable collectible, is the thin, 45 year old baffle board. It's not a good idea to hang modern high-power bass drivers with big magnets, off the stock baffle.

My Dad gigged with a Pro Reverb. He used it for almost everything- vibes, archtop and pedal steel guitars, and Rhodes electric piano. The only exception when he was subbing on bass, because the open-back twin 12' cab sounded like crap, and farted out early. For that, he used an external closed back cab, with a JBL in it. Another reason to use an external cab with bass, is that the vibration can kill the reverb tank. If you are going to play bass through the internal speakers with any regularity, disconnect the reverb tank (it connects with RCA plugs), and put it in storage along with the original speakers.

So all in all, if you want to use it for bass, the best bet is to do like my dad- disconnect the internal speakers, and use the amp to drive a regular external bass cabinet. It will sound much like a low-power version of an old Showman. Not a bad sound for bass, as long as you remember that you've only got about 40 watts RMS to work with. Best speaker choice would probably be a good quality, high-efficiency 15, like a JBL, EV, or Peavey Black Widow.

 

[chadds]

Wide range of advice. Play it if you want to? Take a '51 P and paint it metalflake black and rout it out and put EMG soapbars and a Badass Bridge cause you want to?
It's obvious that some posters know the value of this amp and are probably older than the amp by ten to twenty years.
All the posters seem to respect that this amp means a lot as a connection to his Dad.

 

[dhsierra1]

IIRC the circuits of those 2-6L6 power tubed black face Fenders were essentially the same, the main variance being whether or not they used tube or solid state rectification (and ancillary power supply filtering).

I believe the tube rectified models, and I believe yours is, tended to run a little lower in output power, 40 watts vs 50 watts, not really significant at those levels.

I own a number of old Fender tube amps and in my own experience I'd really recommend you not play bass through it using those beautiful old guitar 12s, use a proper bass cabinet, there were some good suggestions in one of the above postings, though I'll bet that thing through an SVT 8-10 would be pretty darned loud

Sounds to me you should take it in and have it checked over by a competent amp technician. I highly recommend King Amplification over the hill in Los Gatos (next door to Keith Holland Guitars). They know this vintage stuff backwards and forwards and I use them to service my old Fender gear and they're very cool people.

Congrats on a beautiful find

 

[mikeswals]

If it's blackfaced, then its' 67 and earlier.

Yeah you can use it for bass, just low volume stuff. Sometimes I use a '63 Fender 4x10 Concert amp for our 'acoustic' type jams I play electric bass through it.
Both Joe Osborn and Carol Kaye used the 410 Concert combo for their recording rigs, so it is possible.

 

[keyofnight]

Whoa. Thanks guys. I was bugging out about this because I didn't want it to sit around my mother's house for another 40 years. Now I'm confident I can bring it back with me and make it work somehow. I might even sell my old gear and replace it with the Pro Reverb. (I have an Ashdown Mag300h that I'm unsure of, and a crappy Behringer 2x10 I was going to replace anyway.)

Here's the plan. I'm probably going to take out the old speakers and store them like Steve suggested. I'll replace them with the lowest weight speakers I can find—I believe some newer neodymium bass drivers are fairly low-weight…but I won't know if they'll be safe on that baffle compared to a pair of Jensen reproductions. I'll probably Google to find out more, but any more suggestions on this front?

…and here's the controversial part: I want to restore the amp myself. Please don't beat me and steal my money!

Seriously: I'm not bad with a soldering iron and electronics, and I want to learn how to work on amps myself. What better way to get started than to do the research and jump in? (One day, I'd like to build an AX84 for my little nephew who has expressed an interest in electric guitar.)

 

[timsmcm]

Whoa. Thanks guys. I was bugging out about this because I didn't want it to sit around my mother's house for another 40 years. Now I'm confident I can bring it back with me and make it work somehow. I might even sell my old gear and replace it with the Pro Reverb. (I have an Ashdown Mag300h that I'm unsure of, and a crappy Behringer 2x10 I was going to replace anyway.)

Here's the plan. I'm probably going to take out the old speakers and store them like Steve suggested. I'll replace them with the lowest weight speakers I can find—I believe some newer neodymium bass drivers are fairly low-weight…but I won't know if they'll be safe on that baffle compared to a pair of Jensen reproductions. I'll probably Google to find out more, but any more suggestions on this front?

…and here's the controversial part: I want to restore the amp myself. Please don't beat me and steal my money!

Seriously: I'm not bad with a soldering iron and electronics, and I want to learn how to work on amps myself. What better way to get started than to do the research and jump in? (One day, I'd like to build an AX84 for my little nephew who has expressed an interest in electric guitar.)

Build the AX84 first and then work on your amp.