Ronnie Earl for a Blackface Vibroverb Today? Surely Something North of $4,000
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Mountainview Publishing, LLC INSIDE the The Truth… Rarely given, we know it when we hear it, and you The Player’s Guide to Ultimate Tone TM can only get it here… $15.00 US, December 2013/Vol.15 NO.2 Report The Kansas Tornado… Another immensely tone- Truth ful classic amp that went unclaimed “Three chords and the truth – that’s what a country song is.” – Willie Nelson Size matters… Pressure is being asked point-blank which guitar, amplifier or pickup to buy. This happens frequent- The Warehouse ly enough that we have learned to pose probing personal questions in search of an answer… Well, G15A Alnico what do you think you might want and why? We don’t always know what we want until we want it, Big Fifteen and we still couldn’t always tell you why. Sometimes the things that last seem to materialize out of no where with little forethought or insight, as if we were meant to have them, and that’s the truth. 4 Richard Goodsell and the evolution of the Goodsell Super 17 Our review of the Super 17 Mark IV 10 The Goodsell overdrive 10 John McGuire Guitars Our interview with John McGuire & review of the McGuire Tradition 14 The Eastwood Jupiter Pro… We also must confess that we don’t always understand what motivates guitar players when it Simply cool comes to choosing amplifiers today. This is nothing new – most of the amps we own are immensely in every way toneful classic keepers that were ignored by potential buyers due to stripped or recovered original cabinets or a replaced transformer. Well, except for our ‘67 Ampeg Gemini II – no one wanted that 16 and it’s dead mint with the original dolly. That we do understand… Ampegs just aren’t considered The great pickup ‘cool.’ The truth is, we routinely search the entire pre-1984 category in guitars for all the vintage quest continues – amplifiers listed on eBay. Yeah, it takes some time, but it’s also the best way to find things you more humbuckers from would have otherwise missed or not even thought of searching for. Ron Ellis 17 So, we’re trolling eBay in October and we find a 1964 blackface Fender Pro, first production Just for Today… run, March ‘64 – the non-reverb 1x15 model that was discontinued the same year – essentially a visit with a non-reverb Vibroverb, as the circuits are nearly identical minus the verb. What would you pay Ronnie Earl for a blackface Vibroverb today? Surely something north of $4,000. We sold one 12 years ago for www.tonequest.com cover story $3,000. We have reviewed the blackface Pro once in the past, know this kind of but you have forgotten all about that by now… No one wants stuff. Eventually the the non-reverb blackface amps, and 1x15 combos remain Pro emerged looking mysteriously if not stupidly overlooked. Why? Does a 15 inch a little rougher than speaker look as if it can’t rock? Stevie Ray rocked two 1x15 the pictures on eBay Vibroverbs with sequential serial numbers now, didn’t he? had revealed. Did You may recall that we had one of Stevie’s original Vibroverbs Farmer John have here after Mr. Valco bought it from ‘Methboy’, who had stolen Photoshop? The cabi- it from Jimmie Vaughan’s storage locker in Texas. See the net had never been August 2007 issue of TQR titled “Double Trouble” for the full cleaned and 40-plus years of accumulated spoodge clung to sordid story. Here’s a shot of Riverhorse supervising with a the tolex, although an earnest dumb ass had attempted to fill gin & tonic on our deck as Mr. Valco kneels in reverent sup- in a few honest corner tears and scrapes in the tolex from plication… Dude with the hat is an acolyte who accompanied the amp being gigged with rubber cement. The grill cloth Valco from Indiana to assist in guitar strangulation and burn- had been replaced with the correct repro silver sparkle, and ing T-bones on rest stop grills along I65. the back panels did not appear to be original. The old Jensen C15N worked and actually sounded OK, but it too had been repaired with a single long tear in the cone sealed with more The Kansas Tornado rubber cement. Unphased, we got on the phone with Farmer John and cordially suggested he send us a refund of $150 to The seller of cover the issues he had overlooked, and why not send us the our Pro was JBL D130F as well? He agreed, happiness ruled the day in located in Hi- Hiawatha and Decatur, and it was time to get to work. awatha, Kansas, which sounded One thing about rubber cement – it’s rubber, and easily vaguely familiar, peeled and cut off with a sharp paring knife. “Honey, my Gala and then we apple slices taste funny… Don’t worry, it’s just a little rubber, remembered all organic.” We had the rubber cement patches off and the having bought bare golden pine exposed as it should be from the Pro being a ‘60s Silver- dragged in and out of tone 1482 from Chevy trunks on countless Hiawatha – same Kansas Saturday nights, guy of course. fireflies twinkling, the pun- We’ll call him Farmer John… The ‘64 Pro looked fairly clean gent mix of skunk and cow online, the caps and resistors on the board, power transformer shit peppering the damp and choke were original, the electrolytics had been replaced summer air. How many with Sprague Atoms, and the original output transformer had dances had the Pro seen been replaced with an old drop-in replacement dating to 1966 when couples slow-groped with an EIA code identifying the manufacturer as Midwest to “Soul and Inspiration” or boogied to “Land of a 1,000 Coil and Transformer Co. Chicago. The speaker was a JBL D- Dances” doing the Mashed Potato… the Swim… the Dog… 130F 15”, but Farmer John added that he had a Jensen C15N the Watusi…the Frug… the Hully Gully and the Alligator? with a 1964 date code if we would prefer it. We did. We pulled the chassis and speaker and broke out a bowl Farmer John was feeling ambitious, having listed the Pro for of hot water and dish washing soap and began to scrub the $1200 with no takers or offers. We offered him $1,000 which funk off the tolex with a heavy wash cloth. It works. We did he accepted, and a week later the Pro arrived in a big old not neglect the black and silver skirted control knobs (who dusty corrugated box knows what might be lurking on them?) or the blackface that looked as if it had control panel, and we scrubbed out the inside of the cabinet been stored in a barn or a too, which turned from sooty black to the deep, sappy ma- storm cellar for 20 years. hogany hue of that fine old aged Fender pine. With the cabi- The packing material net clean, we hit the tolex with the Armor-All and stepped was also covered in a back to admire our work. If you haven’t experienced the sat- dingy film of the sort isfaction of cleaning up an old amp with so much unknown that lives in basements history and future potential, when? What? You wouldn’t have and barns. Hoosiers cleaned it? Read on… -continued- 2 TONEQUEST REPORT V.15 N.2 December 2013 cover story Farmer John had packed character a pair of boxed Ruby that is often 6L6s and a Sovtek 5AR4 missing in in a plastic Ziplock bag, non-reverb and as we were about to blackface open it we noticed sev- amps, and eral mouse turds rolling we suspect around in the bottom of that the the bag. We told you this replacement thing had been stored output trans- in a barn… Mindful of the deadly rodent-borne Sin Nombre former made by Midwest Coil & Transformer Co. in Chicago Hantavirus that killed three campers in Yosemite and was also may have something to do with its gutsy sound. Midwest Coil found in southwestern Kansas, we gingerly chucked the bag also made transformers for Hammond organ amps, and they and its contents into the trash, vowing to do the same with the can be found in some tweed Fender models and Vibro Champ shipping box and packing materials pronto. amps circa 1966. Now, as you surely know, significant variances exist among By the time you reach 5 on the volume control the Pro will otherwise ‘identical’ vintage Fender amps, and this is what begin to growl in either channel with a hard pick attack, while makes finding them so fascinating and potentially rewarding. a lighter touch still produces beautiful Fender clean tones. With accepted variances in actual component values of plus or This is where a dual 6L6 40 watt amp really struts its stuff, minus 10% - 20% at the time the amp was built and random ya’ll… The Vibrato channel is a little brighter, the Normal component drift over 40 years, you can never be sure what channel almost British in tone. Increasing volume beyond 5 you are going to get. Some of us love the gamble and intrigue steadily produces a formidable roar as only a Fender can, and that comes with buying old amps, others just can’t handle the Pro loves pedals, too. The clean tones below 5 are classic it, fearing the worst. We have never bought an old Fender blackface, and with our optimized ‘63 Fender reverb with amp that wasn’t NOS tubes and the working, and most MOD tank, here of them haven’t we sit gloating over needed much in our piece of shit the way of fixing $850 blackface Pro or maintenance – that no one was the tubes, yes, maybe least bit interested filter caps or the in.