My Father's Fender Pro Reverb

[keyofnight]

Key I'm not biased at all.

Trust me in 20-30 years you'll be kicking yourself for ever screwing around with this as a Bass amp. If you get rid of it you'll regret that too.

That being said it's your amp and if you want to make fire wood out of it you can.

I remember a certain 1953 Fender P Bass that I mutilated when I was 13 years old. Man would I go back and change that.

Save up your pennies and get yourself a bass amp. Put the Pro away for when you may better appreciate it.

If you must have a bass amp I'll gladly send you a Shuttle 9.0 and cab for the Pro.

I'm curious. What did you do to your '53 P Bass? Did you route it?

Certainly my changing the speakers (internally or externally) wouldn't harm the circuitry or original speakers. I wouldn't use her for tinder, and I wouldn't do anything to her that I couldn't easily reverse. I suppose it'd be sacrilige, even if it's temporary.

The best argument against it would be that the design of the enclosure isn't right.

When would I better appreciate it? When I learn to play guitar?

 

[dhsierra1]

glad you checked w/King Amps. Yes, they have to make a living but they're not trying to rip you off, either. There's no one on this side of the hill that knows much of anything on amps, alas. Some good luthiers, to be sure, though.

I realize you're getting a lot of mixed advice here, but, I'll say it again: go ahead and have King Amps do a servicing, but leave those old speakers in there. You can definitely use this thing for bass BUT a few folks as well as I suggest you use an external bass speaker cabinet. Just unplug the speakers (you'll see a jack on the back/bottom of the chassis) and plug in an extension cab. Might need an adaptor so King or Radio Shack or Santa Cruz Electronics can help you there. Your choice of whatever you like in terms of configuration, but as was suggested something of relatively high efficiency and 4 ohms impedance. You will have a rockin' little amp that could be used for practicing or coffee house gigs. And nothing needs to get modded or replaced other than dried out old capacitors and such. If you want to play guitar through it, unplug the bass cab and plug the 12s back in and you're good to go.

It's a connection w/your dad, and as one that means something. I have a bunch of stuff my kids will get eventually and hopefully that'll be a tangible connection for them when I'm not around. It's yours to choose what to do w/it, but you can have your cake and eat it in this particular case.

Feel free to PM me if you like, I'm in Aptos.

 

[Red Planet]

I'm curious. What did you do to your '53 P Bass? Did you route it?

Certainly my changing the speakers (internally or externally) wouldn't harm the circuitry or original speakers. I wouldn't use her for tinder, and I wouldn't do anything to her that I couldn't easily reverse. I suppose it'd be sacrilige, even if it's temporary.

The best argument against it would be that the design of the enclosure isn't right.

When would I better appreciate it? When I learn to play guitar?

I was not implying you would make fire wood out of it; just it's your amp do what you will.

FWIW this amp aint gonna make much of a bass amp.

I can't add to what I've already said.


Good luck with all you do.

 

[chuck norriss]

I wish I had anything that belonged to my father

but he did buy me the fretless Pbass I have now. you'll have to kill me for it.

 

[keyofnight]

I wish I had anything that belonged to my father

but he did buy me the fretless Pbass I have now. you'll have to kill me for it.

+1

My father has a Fretless Guild that he wore down the fretboard on. He hints at giving it to me. I hope he does, before his greedy family steals it from him.

 

[keyofnight]

(Sorry about reviving an old post, but I didn't want to start another.)

It has been a while—a little over a year—since I last checked in about this amp. Back then, I wanted to get the amp serviced but I couldn't afford it: all of my money was tied up in a move from Santa Cruz, California to Seattle, Wa. It took a year to get back to a place where I could even think about fixing up my amp. It's in the shop now—finally.

I've also given some more thought to the use of the amp. I bought a strat and I'm learning to play. (; Of course, I can always play around with the amp using a bass cabinet, and it will perform well for recording (given how close the schematic is to the Bassman). Even still, I need to play the amp as it was intended.

Thanks again for all the help, guys!

 

[Stumbo]

looks to me that you've made some pretty good choices based on all the advice given.

Btw, who's the tech working on it? If everything goes well, be sure and list him inthe Good Amp Tech thread.

 

[Johnny DeVille]

That is a fine piece. I am pretty good with an iron too. It IS possible to do enough good research to restore it yourself. But don't start on a pristine blackface. Ultimately something will seem perfectly logical to you and in 5 years you will regret it.

I am a pretty good to really good shade tree auto mechanic. But I ain;t no real mechanic.

Don't play bass though the orig speakers. Even if you want to play guitar through it, don;t crank it past may 3 or 4 with those speakers.

Get it recapped at the tech, put in some webers or celestions or Jenson RIs.

It's not just the value of a pristine backface, it's your dad's pristine blackface. Love it hard and deeply. Wait to save the cash. it will be beautiful eye candy until then. I bet it smells nice too - even off.

Congrats man !

 

[keyofnight]

looks to me that you've made some pretty good choices based on all the advice given.

Btw, who's the tech working on it? If everything goes well, be sure and list him inthe Good Amp Tech thread.

His name is Craig, and he works out of a new guitar shop that just opened a year ago here in Seattle. I hope he does a good job. He does work on the amps the store sells, and they sound great to my ears. Unfortunately, I know instruments better than I know amps, so my opinion isn't cultivated yet.

(It's only a matter of time before I learn, though.)

That is a fine piece. I am pretty good with an iron too. It IS possible to do enough good research to restore it yourself. But don't start on a pristine blackface. Ultimately something will seem perfectly logical to you and in 5 years you will regret it.

I am a pretty good to really good shade tree auto mechanic. But I ain;t no real mechanic.

Don't play bass though the orig speakers. Even if you want to play guitar through it, don;t crank it past may 3 or 4 with those speakers.

Get it recapped at the tech, put in some webers or celestions or Jenson RIs.

It's not just the value of a pristine backface, it's your dad's pristine blackface. Love it hard and deeply. Wait to save the cash. it will be beautiful eye candy until then. I bet it smells nice too - even off.

Congrats man !

Oh! Certainly! I have an extension cab…I wouldn't dare risk blowing out old speakers, and you're right: I shouldn't even risk blowing the old speakers with this here strat of mine. It would suck to have to re-cone them.

Could you (or someone) make a suggestion for what speakers I should replace these with? I want to stay as close to the originals as possible—it has a pair of Oxford 12L5-1s. But I won't know what those sound like until I get it back from the tech, and only god knows when that'll be.

Also, I believe irreversible or dangerous modifications to a blackface amp like this are sacrilege. From my research, amp repair isn't too difficult: it's just about having respect for the device, following directions, not cutting corners, using a multimeter, being safe. Other than that... it's the same old. I want to do it myself in the future because I don't trust anyone to not "hot rod" my gear inadvertently. I don't trust techs, and I'm biting my finger nails waiting to see what he does to it.

 

[Stumbo]

I don't trust techs...

Why? Have you dealt with them all. Seems to me to be an unreasonable thought process to go through every time you need to get something repaired, musical or otherwise.

I would guess that you don't trust many people at all. Tough way to go through life.

You might want to check out to ease you mind: Tube amp techs- recommendations

Or check out Yelp.com when you need to have other things repaired. Do your due diligence and find someone with a good reputation.

IMO, there's not enough time in life to learn how to professional repair everything you own. I suggest you pay the repair person and spend your time doing things you love to do instead of spending hundreds/thousands of hour learning something and spending $$ in tools so you can do one off repairs because you don't trust someone you don't know.

Good luck with that.

 

[bjabass]

Glad you kept the amp. I'm glad you decided to learn some 6 string too. I had several black face Bassman amps with external cabs with JBL 15's back in the day and let me tell you, they were THE BOMB at LOW VOLUME ONLY. And they were 'bass amps'....

I believe your dads amp would be a disappointment to you with a bass anywhere other than the bedroom but a great guitar amp. At gigging sound levels I think you would be unhappy with it compared to just about any modern bass amp. Nice find, congrats.

 

[echoSE7EN]

....

Could you (or someone) make a suggestion for what speakers I should replace these with? I want to stay as close to the originals as possible—it has a pair of Oxford 12L5-1s. But I won't know what those sound like until I get it back from the tech, and only god knows when that'll be.

Invalid Link Removed This site has a wealth of knowledge regarding Blackface (and silverface) Fender Combos; including which "mods" and/or updates are considered the "best". If you choose to replace the original speaker, make sure you keep it. Actually, keep everything that isn't going to eat a hole through your sock drawer. The more original an amp is (sometimes regardless of condition) equates to more value. You're probably not looking to sell it, but just keep everything together.

 

[Johnny DeVille]

I have a Celestion Alnico blue in my Princeton Reverb. But they are 15 Watt speakers and 2 of them in your 35-40 watt pro may not be cool. They make an alnico gold but its a 50 watt speaker and 2 may be overrated and not sing so well. Go the the Weber Speaker site and send them an email of what is closest to your original speakers. Not too much help but am glad you sent to a tech and are keeping it for guitar.

An external cab will be cool tone for low volume apps. Don;t become a guitar player. I am one and want to become a competent bassist. Still working on it. The bottom end rules !

Peace and love Brother !

 

[dhsierra1]

(Sorry about reviving an old post, but I didn't want to start another.)

It has been a while—a little over a year—since I last checked in about this amp. Back then, I wanted to get the amp serviced but I couldn't afford it: all of my money was tied up in a move from Santa Cruz, California to Seattle, Wa. It took a year to get back to a place where I could even think about fixing up my amp. It's in the shop now—finally.

I've also given some more thought to the use of the amp. I bought a strat and I'm learning to play. (; Of course, I can always play around with the amp using a bass cabinet, and it will perform well for recording (given how close the schematic is to the Bassman). Even still, I need to play the amp as it was intended.

Thanks again for all the help, guys!

Hey, great to hear the update, glad to hear you're getting the amp some professional TLC. Got a strat recently as well so now I'm doing some rhythm guitar in a country band on top of my other musical chores

As far as getting more informed opinions on that amp, you may want to check in with the big Telecaster site, though they cover a lot of info on all guitars and amps, very good resource:

Invalid Link Removed

Drop me a PM/email sometime and let me know how that Peavey cab with the Emi 2010s are working for you.

 

[keyofnight]

Invalid Link Removed This site has a wealth of knowledge regarding Blackface (and silverface) Fender Combos; including which "mods" and/or updates are considered the "best". If you choose to replace the original speaker, make sure you keep it. Actually, keep everything that isn't going to eat a hole through your sock drawer. The more original an amp is (sometimes regardless of condition) equates to more value. You're probably not looking to sell it, but just keep everything together.

This is a great site…thanks for the link.

I was planning on keeping everything. These damned speakers go for good money on Ebay by themselves, and I refuse to throw out valuable things.

Why? Have you dealt with them all. Seems to me to be an unreasonable thought process to go through every time you need to get something repaired, musical or otherwise.

I would guess that you don't trust many people at all. Tough way to go through life.

…

IMO, there's not enough time in life to learn how to professional repair everything you own. I suggest you pay the repair person and spend your time doing things you love to do instead of spending hundreds/thousands of hour learning something and spending $$ in tools so you can do one off repairs because you don't trust someone you don't know.

Good luck with that.

You know…you're right in many ways: I do have apprehensions trusting people with technical things, information, things like that. Even looking at reviews I ask, "Does this guy know what he's talking about?" I'm not sure if this is unreasonable: some take the paradigm of reason as doubt in we haven't confirmed. Gallons of ink have been spilt on this subject alone, so I won't waste everyone's time with philosophy. It will suffice to say this is my lot in life, but it can be extremely helpful and isolating at the same time.

Fortunately enough for me, I love fixing things and things break enough that the knowledge is worth having. I don't play music professionally, so fixing and building gear is as much a hobby as playing music is at this point. I do setups on all of my instruments, build and mod guitar pedals, repair guitar electronics, and it'd be great to be able to repair amps. I don't do the best work, but it's a lot better than stuff I've seen people pay hundreds of dollars for. :scowl: I do a lot of other stuff outside of p

Of course being broke doesn't help either—I live on a teaching assistant / graduate student's budget, so I can't spend $50-$150 every time something goes wrong with something.

(I also hardly think a multimeter and a soldering iron count as expensive tools for one off jobs. I think people ought to have these tools, and learning to use them…well…let's just say I would teach my kids how to use them.)

There are some things I know I'll never be able to learn—no matter how much I want to: I'll never be a luthier, I'll never be a physicist, and I'll never be a doctor. But IMHO, life is too short to not learn and do all that you can do.

I have a Celestion Alnico blue in my Princeton Reverb. But they are 15 Watt speakers and 2 of them in your 35-40 watt pro may not be cool. They make an alnico gold but its a 50 watt speaker and 2 may be overrated and not sing so well. Go the the Weber Speaker site and send them an email of what is closest to your original speakers. Not too much help but am glad you sent to a tech and are keeping it for guitar.

An external cab will be cool tone for low volume apps. Don;t become a guitar player. I am one and want to become a competent bassist. Still working on it. The bottom end rules !

Peace and love Brother !

Excellent! I'll send Weber an email and give it some more research. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. (;

No worries about me becoming a guitar player: I'm such a bassist at this point—I'm trying to learn to play guitar fingerstyle just so I won't have to ever use a pick.

Drop me a PM/email sometime and let me know how that Peavey cab with the Emi 2010s are working for you.

It's funny we both bought a strat. Weird!

You've got a long email coming, brother! Long story made short: the eminence speakers are well broken in, the cab is holding up well, and the amp kicks out all the jams. I've disturbed the neighbors more than once with this thing.

 

[keyofnight]

Alright, guys… this is probably the last post I'll make about this damned amp. It's been a roller coaster ride. Thanks for all of your support, ideas, and suggestions.

I got the amp repaired! As it turns out… the amp was likely modified/repaired at Red Rhodes' shop in Los Angeles—this alone makes the amp an interesting piece of history for me. The GZ42 socket was gunned shut, and diodes were soldered directly onto the socket. Solid state mods are common, I hear. According to the amp tech I went to, everything else is bone stock.

But how does it sound? It sounds freaking amazing—clear, crisp, "sparkly." I've never understood that term "Fender sparkle," but now I do. Wow. This is worth learning to play the guitar, and I'm glad my father accidentally left this for me to play around with.

I barely know how to play guitar, but here's the owner of Seattle's "Guitar Store" fooling around with it: . He called it a "religious experience." I wish I got more footage, but oh well.

Thanks guys… it's been real.

 

[Kirk Bryant]

Hey Key: FWIW I own two Vintage Fender Pro's (Not Pro Reverbs) One is a 52' Tweed and the other is a 63' Brownface (with a JBL D-130). I play bass through them regularly. BUT and a BIG BUT: I don't gig them with a bass as they are worth too much to kill. Yes you can fry a transformer or do other types of damage driving them with a bass.
I DO play them at home at bedroom levels to pracitce. And yes they sound awesome but please be carefull not to stress them too much.
PS: I own about 20 vintage tube amps and use several to pracitice at home no problems. I did fry the transformer in my Magnatone 260 just diming the vol's and wailing away on guitar and it had an ungodly wonderfull tone just before it melted down haha. Luckily Mercury Magnetics made a direct replacement speced especially for that amp.

 

[keyofnight]

Hey Key: FWIW I own two Vintage Fender Pro's (Not Pro Reverbs) One is a 52' Tweed and the other is a 63' Brownface (with a JBL D-130). I play bass through them regularly. BUT and a BIG BUT: I don't gig them with a bass as they are worth too much to kill. Yes you can fry a transformer or do other types of damage driving them with a bass.
I DO play them at home at bedroom levels to pracitce. And yes they sound awesome but please be carefull not to stress them too much.
PS: I own about 20 vintage tube amps and use several to pracitice at home no problems. I did fry the transformer in my Magnatone 260 just diming the vol's and wailing away on guitar and it had an ungodly wonderfull tone just before it melted down haha. Luckily Mercury Magnetics made a direct replacement speced especially for that amp.

Wow! I didn't see this post until now (a year and a half later)!

So, from what I can tell from your post: you can melt an old transformer by pushing it too hard…but it sounds like you can push it hard using a guitar too. I guess the morale of the story is that we just shouldn't push our old amps too hard. Maybe playing bass through it (with less-sensitive speakers) is a temptation to crank it even louder than a guitarist might?

 

[Red Planet]

I'm curious. What did you do to your '53 P Bass? Did you route it?

Certainly my changing the speakers (internally or externally) wouldn't harm the circuitry or original speakers. I wouldn't use her for tinder, and I wouldn't do anything to her that I couldn't easily reverse. I suppose it'd be sacrilige, even if it's temporary.

The best argument against it would be that the design of the enclosure isn't right.

When would I better appreciate it? When I learn to play guitar?

Yes I routed it out and installed a Gibson Les Paul Custom Humbucker in it. It worked but I ruined the thing. Sorry for the late reply.

 

[40Hz]

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.)

A classic amp in playable condition like that is not an amp to learn the vagaries of tube electronics on.

Build a tube kit or two and do some serious study first. Tube circuits have their own requirements with regard to routing wiring, construction techniques, and safety. They're not like most (but not all) solid state amps where you can meddle with them fairly safely. Screw up big time with a tube amp and you run the risk of winding up a story on your local evening news.