By George Petersen

EVERYTHING SEEMS TO HAPPEN IN THREE’S. I’m not sure if it was my good or bad luck, but all three of the Fender tube amps in my studio have died in the past couple weeks. I’ve got a 1972 Deluxe Reverb, and two 1969 Bassmans—one with a stock 2×15 cab (we use that for bass) and the other set up for guitar with a Fender Showman Tone Ring single-15 cab, with the original JBL D130 woofer and the bizarre—yet cool-sounding—ported design.

The good luck part was that these things have run for decades (some, like the Deluxe—with the original tubes) and almost no maintenance. The bad luck part was that they all finally stopped working. Anyway, I figured it was time to go through these thoroughly, clean ‘em up inside and out and start from scratch—with all new tubes. I called Groove Tubes and they were very helpful with suggestions on exactly what tubes to use. They rate their power tubes with individual distortion ratings, so you can tailor the tunes to the spacific application/musical style/tone you’re looking for. So getting the tubes was the easy part.

I must be getting old, because I had nearly forgotten the weirdness one encounters when disecting old Fender amps, with their arcane (those four long screws) method of hanging the amps upside down—bat style—inside the cabinet. That itself isn’t so weird as trying to figure out who actually has hands with fingers skinny or long enough to hold the nut in place while reassembling the thing. But reassembly wasn’t the problem. The hang-up (pardon the pun) came from the amp assembly getting stuck on part of the sheet metal that shields the top of the amp (under the handle) from stray cosmic radiation from other galaxies. So on one of the Bassman heads, I had to completely remove the front grille and take the amp chassis out the front of the cab. Yuk!

From, there, things were a lot easier, especially when I saw that all the caps looked good. Somehow I was expecting to see sweatly blobs of goo and drippy caps, but these looked fine. But ALL of the pots exhibited noise, so each one got a shot of Caig DeoxIT and came out sweet—no static at all… And besides blowing a ton of dust out, I also hit the tip contact on each jack with a couple light file strokes—just to clear the light corrosion that can build up. Then came a cabinet wipedown and reassembly the retubing, which was all Groove tubes, except for a favorite Mullard 12AX7 that went onto one channel on the “guitar” Bassman. I did have some Groove Tube 12AX7M’s (these are the modern recreations of the vintage Mullards), but since I did have one nice NOS Mullard, it went in anyway.

After a quick bias check (highly recommended) and a couple hours burn-in—probably not necessary, but after spending an afternoon working on the amps, it was Miller time (actually Dos Equis time) at the local taqueria, which provided a nice respite before giving the amps the listening test. All were greatly improved, but the Deluxe Reverb was absolutely amazing, with exceptional tone and sustain. Morale: if an amp’s worth having, it’s worth retubing—definitely.

When not working on Mix stuff, George Petersen records and performs with the SF Bay Area-based rock band ARIEL. Click here www.jenpet.com and check ‘em out.

________________________

Got a comment/experience to share?

CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW AND SPEAK OUT!