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Topic: My new Steel amp, Chris L take notice ! |
Tony Prior
From:
Charlotte NC
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Posted 28 Jun 2010 4:14 am |
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this past Saturday I was at a small guitar show in SC, I had a few items of value to trade and came home with this baby...
Chris, I know you would LOVE this amp... this is the ONE...
"Don't ever turn your back on one of these"
Initially very dirty but "clean" overall, excellent untouched original shape other than a few caps and tubes done by a quality tech. Stock Utah's. Tolex and metal in very good shape way better than average for a 39 year old amp. When I say this amp was never fully taken apart for spring cleaning I mean never, yes dirt from 39 years but basically a 9 on the scale after cleanup, just shy of a ten.
When I plugged in at the show it took maybe 5 seconds to know that this amp "had it all"...home it came...
1971 Twin Reverb, amazing clarity, bottom end and gain. I think this amp is probably the best Twin I have ever played thru, certainly better than the one I bought new in 1970, certainly better than others I have owned thru the years.
pic 1, as it was when I took it home
pic 2 all apart after the full blown bath
( speakers not cleaned yet )
pic 3 this morning after re-assembly/chassis check
pic 4, rear view
_________________
Emmons L-II , Fender Telecasters, B-Benders , Eastman Mandolin ,
Pro Tools 12 on WIN 7 !
jobless- but not homeless- now retired 9 years
CURRENT MUSIC TRACKS AT > https://tprior2241.wixsite.com/website |
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Chris LeDrew
From:
Canada
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Posted 28 Jun 2010 1:09 pm
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Oh ya, Tony. This is a beauty! I can only imagine how it sounds. You hooked in for sure with this one. My old '71 looks just like that one and sounds amazing as well. I love the '71s with the torquoise grill cloth and matching straight lettering. Is your faceplate drilled for a master volume? Mine was, but the master was not installed. Must have been a late '71 just before the MV's were installed.
You did a killer job of cleaning it up, which is half the fun right! Looks NOS now. A big congrats on this find. Enjoy all that loud, clean, crispy tone!
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Jackson Steel Guitars
Web: www.chrisledrew.com |
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Dan Beller-McKenna
From:
Durham, New Hampshire, USA
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Posted 28 Jun 2010 1:57 pm
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Tony Prior
From:
Charlotte NC
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Posted 28 Jun 2010 2:24 pm
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Hey Chris, no hole for the MV but it does have the next version Output Trans per schematics,the build date is Oct 71...
Cleaning starts as fun and gets less fun as time goes by. The end result is good though, ya just can't rush it. I sold my 70 which I bought new and always wanted another in that era, I never expected to find this amp on the weekend, I was thinking of grabbing another piggy back of some sort if they were at the show..
Now, I do have a 71 Dual Showman Reverb head expected this week...I bought that before the Twin was even a twinkle...or Twinkie...I like them by the way...
More cleaning in the very near future I guess ! I have a few different cabs I can use with the head, I hope it's a nice amp, should be...
and yeh, the Twin above kicks some serious sound levels !
t
_________________
Emmons L-II , Fender Telecasters, B-Benders , Eastman Mandolin ,
Pro Tools 12 on WIN 7 !
jobless- but not homeless- now retired 9 years
CURRENT MUSIC TRACKS AT > https://tprior2241.wixsite.com/website |
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Chris LeDrew
From:
Canada
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Posted 28 Jun 2010 3:40 pm
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Two SF's in one week? you must have a darling of a wife, or else the amps are getting into the house when she's gone to the grocery store. 
My '65 Deluxe has its original Utah which looks exactly like the ones in your Twin. My '71 came with the blue Oxfords.
PM incoming with advice request.
_________________
Jackson Steel Guitars
Web: www.chrisledrew.com |
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Tony Prior
From:
Charlotte NC
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Posted 28 Jun 2010 6:28 pm
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Ha...the wife actually assists in the cleaning !
Yeh 2 in a week, that actually was not supposed to happen but I did trade my 95 Custom Vibrolux for the 71 Twin so it was a wash on the overall amp count. The CV was nice but it didn't really wake me up like I thought it would...
I have come to learn though,the hard way, that if able, don't pass up a good deal on a nice Fender amp or Guitar, good clean amps and guitars move fast if you need them to...but don't sell them for dirt either...
I'm still of the opinion that nice SF Twin Reverb's are maybe the best deal out there right now for vintage Fender amps, maybe for amps in general . There is nothing a Twin Reverb cannot handle and yes, they are heavy but so are Nashville 400's and 1000's.
My life's plan is to buy every Twin Reverb available for dirt cheap , hold them for a year or so, then sell them all for 5X the price to all my Steel Guitar friends ! The real good friends I'll only charge a 4X mark-up.. 
t
_________________
Emmons L-II , Fender Telecasters, B-Benders , Eastman Mandolin ,
Pro Tools 12 on WIN 7 !
jobless- but not homeless- now retired 9 years
CURRENT MUSIC TRACKS AT > https://tprior2241.wixsite.com/website |
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Dan Beller-McKenna
From:
Durham, New Hampshire, USA
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Posted 25 Jan 2011 4:27 am
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Tony,
I picked up a twin on ebay Sunday (arriving today) that, like yours, has the name straight across between the intensity knob and pilot light and has the tail on the logo. Those details seem incompatible to me; is this a particular 1971 phenomenon?
Dan |
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Chris LeDrew
From:
Canada
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Posted 25 Jan 2011 6:33 pm
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Seems to be that way, Dan. The drip-edge and later 69-70 amps had "amp" underneath "Twin Reverb", and in '72 they added the master volume which took up space and caused "Twin Reverb" to be piggybacked. So this very well could be a distinctly '71 feature. Here's my '71 (w/original Oxford blues):
Congrats on the score, by the way!
_________________
Jackson Steel Guitars
Web: www.chrisledrew.com |
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Tom Wolverton
From:
Carpinteria, CA
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Posted 25 Jan 2011 7:24 pm 1971
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Totally unrelated, but 1971 is my all time favorite year for VW vans. It's a transition year...the best of the old and the new, coming together for one year only. Just like this Twin Reverb.
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To write with a broken pencil is pointless. |
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Dan Beller-McKenna
From:
Durham, New Hampshire, USA
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Posted 27 Jan 2011 4:04 am
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Thanks Chris,
arrived last night and seems to be in descent shape. Tone is a little dull, but I haven;t really had a chance to test her out yet. Probably need to schedule some time with Bob Metzger to have a thorough exam.
One quirk (that I didn't notice in the smallish ebay photos) is that someone installed a skirted knob on the back of the chassis, right where the "UL" sticker goes. I'm guessing it's either a master volume or hum balance; I'll experiment (carefully) with it when I get some time to check things out this weekend.
Dan |
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Rich Hlaves
From:
Wildomar, California, USA
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Posted 27 Jan 2011 10:54 am
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All the Twin Reverbs after the AB763 had hum balance bias from the factory. I would guess you have an AA270 circuit so that pot is most likely a master volume.
That being the case it may be the cause of your dull tone if not set wide open. Even then.......
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On man....let the smoke out of another one. |
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Tim Marcus
From:
San Francisco, CA
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Posted 27 Jan 2011 11:50 am
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I highly suggest checking the bias on any siverface fender amp.
I have seen the tubes in silver face amps idling at as low as 8mA! 35mA is conservative - and there is probably not a stock bias adjustment.
What you can easily do is scrap the "balance" pot on the back and re-arrange the parts to make a proper bias adjustment pot. Then you can change the bias voltage and set the tubes to idle where you like them. This will most certainly take care of that "dull" tone!
Another thing you can do is go in and cut out many of the ceramic caps - they are only in there to filter out parasitic oscillation that may or may not exist from ugly wiring. This will open up the amp a lot, because not only are those terrible sounding caps filtering out noise, but they also filter out harmonics from your instrument.
If tweaked properly, a Fender Twin should have a huge tone for pedal steel, with no shortage of clean headroom. Hitting the low A on the C6 should make you need to change pants.
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Milkmansound.com |
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Rich Hlaves
From:
Wildomar, California, USA
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Posted 27 Jan 2011 3:46 pm
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| Tim Marcus wrote: |
What you can easily do is scrap the "balance" pot on the back and re-arrange the parts to make a proper bias adjustment pot. |
The bias balance pot on a SF Twin is located in the same place a bias adjust pot is on a blackface amp. Sorry if I confused anyone. Switching the amp to "fixed adgustable bias" is a good idea if you ask me.
I think the knob on the back may be an added master volume or ?? since the amp already had bias balance.
I agree with Tim. The bias should be checked on any vintage amp before it is pressed into service. I worked on a brown Concert this last weekend that had one tube at 28ma and one at about 12ma. The amp is fixed bias so it turned out to be one bad 6L6 and a bias resistor that was 50% out of spec! We ended up at 43ma with about 410 on the plates with line voltage bucked down 5%. Oh boy did it wake up. The owner had just done a cap job and thought everything else was ok.
I wouldn't go clipping all the caps on the tubes etc. just yet. Figure out what is going on first but they may end up chopped in the end. BTW, conversion to fixed adjustable bias and removal of the caps on the power tubes and reverb is just about a complete blackface conversion.
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On man....let the smoke out of another one. |
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Tim Marcus
From:
San Francisco, CA
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Posted 27 Jan 2011 4:49 pm
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| Rich Hlaves wrote: |
| The bias balance pot on a SF Twin is located in the same place a bias adjust pot is on a blackface amp. |
not necessarily. Sometimes they are on the rear of the chassis. My mid 70's SF Twin has it on the back, which means that now the bias pot is on the back, which is actually pretty darn convenient!
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Milkmansound.com |
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Dan Beller-McKenna
From:
Durham, New Hampshire, USA
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Posted 27 Jan 2011 5:15 pm
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Knob turns out to be a master volume. It was already dimed, so no help with the volume there. I A-B'd it with my '77 twin to confirm it was quiet; it was. Also tried it through the speakers for the '77 and no change in volume.
That said, I played it for about twenty minutes and was really loving the tone, when it started crackling and intermittently cutting out a bit. I shut it right down. No foul transformer-y smell or anything, but I'm definitely going to have my local trusted tech give it a thorough once over before proceeding farther.
Dan |
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