CBS era silverfaces

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In Reply to: RE: Fender Twin Reverb - Black vs Silver posted by Thairback on February 3, 2010 at 16:44:11:

If you peruse the schematic of the CBS era amps versus the blackface Leo-era amps, it becomes obvious. CBS techs tried to make many models more linear by increasing the plate voltages and fudging with cathode current and global feedback. In general the results were a very sterile, loud amps, with no life. Nearly every SF amp I've worked on for ppl & ppl that have silverfaces with this problem convert them back to blackface standards. This usually means dropping voltages on the pre-amp tubes, reducing the global feedback, and other such things. It's easy to do, just wire the SF to BF circuits. And keep the old parts in case you decide to sell it. For some reason, most guitar amps will hold better value in genreal, if sold as ORIGINAL. I think that's because there are a lot of ppl out there that tried to hot-rod or revert SF amps and totally mucked them up, to a point where it would be hard to get the thing back to original reliable status.
One other note, after many misguided attempts, it's usually NOT a good idea to do wholesale coupling cap and/or resistor changes to these older vintage amps. You will almost always lose some of the original tone. I've tried using new, modern made caps and they tend to make the amp sterile. I only replace caps (expcept the electroltytics, which I always replace if more than 10 years old), if it needs to be replace. And usually with Sprague Mylar caps. My BF Princeton still has the original blue coupling caps in it & still sounding pretty good. Oh yeah, carbon comp (yeah, I know, how primitive) where there is carbon comp OEM. You can use fancier parts in newer amps which were voiced with more modern parts. Like Trainwreck, Buddah, etc.

Edits: 02/05/10 02/05/10

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Follow Ups Full Thread

Topic - Fender Twin Reverb - vibrato issue - Thairback 16:45:38 02/02/10 (8)

RE: Fender Twin Reverb - vibrato issue - FenderLover 00:40:01 02/03/10 (7)

RE: Fender Twin Reverb - vibrato issue - PdL 05:08:40 02/03/10 (6)

RE: Fender Twin Reverb - Black vs Silver - Thairback 16:44:11 02/03/10 (5)

CBS era silverfaces - FenderLover 19:41:13 02/05/10 (0)

RE: Fender Twin Reverb - Black vs Silver - PdL 04:13:17 02/04/10 (3)

Iron = depends on model - FenderLover 12:03:23 02/05/10 (2)

Thanx for - Thairback 15:43:13 02/05/10 (1)

Fender book - FenderLover 17:58:14 02/05/10 (0)

Follow Ups

CBS era silverfaces - FenderLover 19:41:13 02/05/10 (0)

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