[Harp-L] RE: Fender Vibrosonic



Hi,
I had one of these 70s amps for a little awhile. Probably you've figured out, this is the same chassis as a Fender Twin but with an 8 ohm output transformer to go with the single 15. The cabinet is just slightly bigger than the twin reverb (a little taller to accommodate the bigger speaker). Most, if not all of these have the pullout master volume boost to give 135 watts, which you will not want to use. These usually had an orange JBL, or a CTS or Utah 15", whatever, it has to be pretty heavy to handle the wattage if you turn this up, and none of those are going to break up easily if you're going for that kind of sound. Your usable volume as a harp amp is quite a bit less than the 100 watts without feeding back like crazy so you are not likely to be turned up very high. You can get an OK fairly clean but still fat sound with the right mic, and it's worth working with the master volume (I kept that all the way up and the channel volume low, probably someone would tell you just the reverse). I wound up using a shure 545 and an eq pedal with mine until I got tired (quickly) of lugging it around due to the massive weight. I never tried swapping out preamp tubes on this, probably some of you have done it. This is not an amp I'd go out of my way to get, but since you own it, find out what it costs to get it running right and experiment.
One interesting sidenote: I had this for sale on consignment for awhile at a music store, and the amp snobs would sneer at the silverface, master volume, pullout boost, etc, without plugging it in. Then, one of the better guitar players in town tried it out, dialed in the way he wanted. He played some gorgeous steel-guitar style licks through it, then some SRV, snapped it up and said "I wonder why people complain about these amps!"





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