Hey Steve,
Where do you stand on the common amp mods that folks have been doing to Fenders for years? Such as pulling the V1 tube, disconnecting tremolo or swapping 12ax7s for lower gain tubes, etc.
Do you do you any of the above (or others) regularly for any particular reason?
Thanks!
SK
9 May 2023
1:02am
9 May 2023
1:02am
Some of the tube substitution stuff seems essential to me.
Phase Inverter 12AX7 vs AT7, juggling rectifiers to taste, 12AU7 reverb send, various shades of gain for V1 in some amps, tweeds maybe.
I used to pull V1 normal channel until I figured out “normal” is my normal preference and I prefer less voltage to more voltage in the preamp generally.
“Less voltage” is huge if you can get a handle on it.
I have a couple of Brown Box voltage adjusters, those are great.
Sub 117 volts to the amp is always better for me. 110-112 usually. The other big one for Fender amps is juggling impedance, between the overall better sound of lower voltage and being able to push the EQ around with impedance mismatch, a lot of the tube nuance stuff doesn’t make much diff. Most of the time I’m using my own Fender amps there’s impedance mismatching happening. Typically twice the rated load, a single 8 ohm speaker on a 4 ohm OT, like my Bandmaster combo, or on the low side, 3×8 ohm speakers in parallel on the 4 ohm OT. A couple of other worthy trims for me would be tube shields on or off depending on the amp, and loosening the chassis and speaker mounting hardware if I have the time. My experience with tightly coupled speakers and chassis’s to cabs has my leaning looser. There doesn’t seem to be any benefit to shaking the chassis extra hard, and the more tightly coupled speaker to baffle just aggravates cab issues. All speaker cabs have issues. Driving ‘em harder only makes ‘em worse. Of course the hardware’s tight for transport to avoid bending/breaking, but if I have a minute at sound check with my own gear I’ll take a few turns off to relax things. I don’t bother with backline. Hope that helps!! Good question. . The wiring is super simple, one volume control for each pickup and a three way switch. I tend to leave the pots alone on that guitar when swapping pickups so probably 250K pots.That’s it, doggy ‘70 something Strat, still doing its best to be useful. : )
I used to pull V1 normal channel until I figured out “normal” is my normal preference and I prefer less voltage to more voltage in the preamp generally.
“Less voltage” is huge if you can get a handle on it.
I have a couple of Brown Box voltage adjusters, those are great.
Sub 117 volts to the amp is always better for me. 110-112 usually. The other big one for Fender amps is juggling impedance, between the overall better sound of lower voltage and being able to push the EQ around with impedance mismatch, a lot of the tube nuance stuff doesn’t make much diff. Most of the time I’m using my own Fender amps there’s impedance mismatching happening. Typically twice the rated load, a single 8 ohm speaker on a 4 ohm OT, like my Bandmaster combo, or on the low side, 3×8 ohm speakers in parallel on the 4 ohm OT. A couple of other worthy trims for me would be tube shields on or off depending on the amp, and loosening the chassis and speaker mounting hardware if I have the time. My experience with tightly coupled speakers and chassis’s to cabs has my leaning looser. There doesn’t seem to be any benefit to shaking the chassis extra hard, and the more tightly coupled speaker to baffle just aggravates cab issues. All speaker cabs have issues. Driving ‘em harder only makes ‘em worse. Of course the hardware’s tight for transport to avoid bending/breaking, but if I have a minute at sound check with my own gear I’ll take a few turns off to relax things. I don’t bother with backline. Hope that helps!! Good question. . The wiring is super simple, one volume control for each pickup and a three way switch. I tend to leave the pots alone on that guitar when swapping pickups so probably 250K pots.That’s it, doggy ‘70 something Strat, still doing its best to be useful. : )