[Harp-L] RE: Fender Vibrosonic

[John Kally <jkally3@xxxxxxx>]

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!"