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Fender 57 bandmaster reissue review4/6/2023 History The 5B6 Bassman ĭuring 1952, the Fender 5B6 Bassman amplifier was introduced as a combo amplifier cabinet that included the amplifier chassis combined with one 15" speaker. Besides being a popular and important amplifier in its own right, the Bassman also became the foundation on which Marshall and other companies built their high-gain tube amplifiers. Initially intended to amplify bass guitars, musicians used the 5B6 Bassman to amplify other instruments, including electric guitars, harmonicas, and pedal steel guitars. The Fender Bassman is a series of bass amplifiers introduced by Fender during 1952. Plug in and do the research, because there are a lot of tonal options available with each.Fender Silverface Bassman amp AB165 amplifier, with a 2×15" speaker cabinet Players that love their amps to break up a little sooner or want to incorporate more pedals into their sig-along with loving the Silverface look-lean towards the ’68 Customs.īut the reality is that you’ll only know if your try them yourself. Generally, players that love the original versions of Fender’s Blackface amps but might not have the ability to afford an original model gravitate to the ’65 Reissues for that Stevie Ray Vaughan vibe. That’s why they’re pedal friendly.”Įach amp family has their devotees. So we just didn’t put it on the ’68 Custom Deluxe Reverb because the benefits outweighed anything else. “A lot of times, when people buy those vintage or reissue models, they’ll cut the bright cap off the volume pot so they can use pedals. But an overdrive or distortion with the bright cap sounds horrible. If you play this amp and don’t want it to distort naturally by turning it up, you’d use a pedal. “The downside of that is most people use guitar pedals to get distortion nowadays. When you turn the amp up, it distorts,” Heins said. “When the volume is low, it had a lot of top-end sparkle. The ’65 Deluxe Reverb Reissue has the bright cap like the original, while the ’68 Custom Deluxe does not. Meanwhile, the ’65 Reissues have the same Blackface tone circuit on both channels.Īlso separating the ’68 Customs from the ’65 Reissues, specifically the corresponding Deluxe Reverbs, is the bright cap. Installed on the “Custom” channel for the ’68 Customs, it boasts more low midrange and an earlier breakup (although the ’68 Princeton Reverb only has one channel, so it solely features the Bassman tone circuit). The Bassman tone stack is an important addition. “We also thought that because both channels now had reverb and tremolo, we modified the second channel with what is considered a ‘Bassman tone stack’.” We thought people would want reverb and tremolo on both channels. “Channel 1 on those amps did not have reverb or tremolo. “One of the biggest things that people modified was with Channel 1 (because all the amps of that time had reverb for the most part),” Heins said. This was because of several common modifications that Heins noted people would perform on the classic Silverface amps. When Heins was working on the ’68 Custom project-which includes a Custom Deluxe Reverb, Custom Vibrolux Reverb, Custom Princeton Reverb and Custom Twin Reverb-he wanted to modernize them with a few improvements on the original models. That’s a pretty blanket statement and not entirely true.” Some of the old-guard will only swear by Blackface amps. But my first guitar was a ’74 Strat with a big headstock, so for me, that will always be an important thing. “It’s similar to how there was a time when if you had a Stratocaster with a big headstock, it was considered bad. “To this day, you see a lot of people who couldn’t afford the Blackface amps playing Silverface amps. “There were a lot of guitarists who eventually turned to the Silverface amps,” said Fender Amplifiers Product Product Development Manager Rick Heins. Even though their guts weren’t that much different than their predecessors, there were a few internal circuit changes that didn’t hit the mark for players.Įventually, however, Fender’s Silverface amps were being played more and more people were priced out of the beloved Blackface line. The amps that came out in late 19 ushered in the silver face plate, a departure from the black control panel that had been so popular in previous years.īut those Silverface amps didn’t go over so well with guitarists of that time. The story dates back to the mid 1960s, when Leo Fender sold the company to CBS. When it comes to Fender’s family of ’65 Reissue amplifiers and ’68 Customs, one might think that they are both period-perfect recreations of their legendary predecessors.īut while that might essentially be the case for the ’65 Reissue Deluxe Reverb, Twin Reverb, Princeton Reverb and Super Reverb, the ’68 Custom models have actually been updated to offer even more features that will appeal to players looking to combine traditional “Blackface” sounds with the look of classic “Silverface” amps.
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