Collecting Guitar Amplifiers - Part 2
Part II - 1965 to Present
by Don Corbett

(This is the concluding instalment of Don Corbett's article on guitar amplifiers. This article has generated a lot of interest, and serves to illustrate the variety of topics OVRC members find both informative and entertaining. Ed)

I should say more about CBS and Fender. Leo's health was poor and worsening in 1964, and he finally sold out to the Columbia Broadcasting System on January 4th, 1965 (to paraphrase Roosevelt, "a day which will live in infamy" Ed). All along, Leo had employed some design engineers who were itching to make circuit changes in the amps to improve reliability and stop speakers from blowing out - they probably thought the circuits were as obsolete as Leo. When Leo departed, the engineers had their big chance. There are Fender employees who say that the changes were in the works before Leo left and others who say they were approved and implemented by CBS. Whatever is the truth of the matter, the circuits were changed and the sound of the amps changed too. The control panels were also changed from black to silver so that everyone would recognize the "new" amps. I guess that the engineers who made the changes thought they were making amps (because the customers were buying "amplifiers"), so they were sure to approve of a "better" circuit.

The company, of course, wasn't selling amplifiers at all. They were actually selling musical instruments and their customers were buying musical instruments, so when the sound changed the customers raised hell. They didn't give a tinkers dam about electronics, but they sure did about sound. The production line could not be changed immediately, so it was some time before the "improvements" actually appeared in production. There were blackface amps with the changes and silverface amps without. Blackface amps were still being made in 1968, but by 1969 they were all silverface. There never was a single change-over date for all amps and not all amps were changed when the control panels went to silverface. I don't have a list of what models were changed, or when, or even what changes were made. I don't think the smaller amps (under 20 watts) were changed at all. I have attempted a chronology as best I know, but confusion still exists. The only sure way to date a Fender amp is by the factory labels on the speaker frames and control potentiometers. It is generally accepted that any blackface amp is pre-CBS (not true) and that any silverface amp is post-CBS. Blackface amps bring premium prices, while their silverfaced relatives sell for much less. Apparently, there are still bargains to be had if you know how to date these amps positively.

As I have already mentioned, some amps were never changed. Those that were, however, didn't sound as good as the old ones, and the company started getting a bad name from musicians. Sales of Fender amps nosedived. The dealers screamed, and by 1970, all of the amps were back to pre-CBS specifications. By then, however, the damage had been done, and to this day there are still a lot of people, young and old, who wouldn't be caught dead playing a silverface Fender amp.

There was another problem. CBS put in corporate managers from their own company. These executives were birds of passage with no commitment to Fender Musical Instruments, except to show a bottom line profit. All they wanted was that their record look good for the couple of years or so that they were with Fender so that they could return to bigger and better things with CBS. This was very bad for Fender -cost cutting at the expense of quality and workmanship was no way to build an amp that could stand beside Leo's old ones, no matter how good it may look on the balance sheet.

As I have already said, this is a confusing time in Fender's history. It would take a lot of effort and research to really straighten it all out, and I will leave that for the future. Suffice it to say that silverface amps are not collectible and leave it at that!

I know of no definitive texts on amp collecting. Most of the information is available only in dribs and drabs of serial number lists or single-manufacturer data. Old catalogues by Kay, Gibson and Fender et al are very helpful, are increasingly scarce and themselves collector items. Most old amps have had the holy hell kicked out of them and have been serviced by unqualified and unknowledgeable persons. Unless you know exactly what you are buying and can assess the condition, you can easily take a king-size rooking. Beware of anyone who offers you a "collectors item that only needs a little work. Repair parts are hard to find and fearfully expensive.

The Fender "4X10" 1959 Bassman is considered by many to be the best amp ever made, but the criteria are, as always, subjective. My l9~2 Harmony is not a hot collectors item, but by my standards it is my best amp. Fender designed amps to be overdriven, as did Marshall, Vox and the like. Gibson, Harmony and others bet their futures on clean, low distortion output stages. They lost. Dating an amp, other than vintage of components is esoterica or on how much left. Are the speakers by tube line-up and often dependent on of the original amp is original? Are the manufacturer's labels still in the cabinet? Have the potentiometers been replaced? Pot manufacturers used date codes, which can be read if you have the information. Fender and others stamped codes on the speaker frames, but again you must have the codes to read them.

The present "bible" of amp people is Aspen Pittman's The Tube Amp Book (Vol 3). In the October, 1993 issue of "Guitar Player" magazine, the foremost publication for guitarists, I counted 13 ads for tube amplifiers, most priced at over $1000.

As I have said before, tube amps are alive and well in the music field. Collecting old classic amps is full of pitfalls and pratfalls, and the new tube amps may not impress the purist who won't plug into anything made after 1959. Nevertheless, it certainly is encouraging to those of us who bull-headedly refuse to go solid-state to see the present proliferation of tube amps and musicians who are willing to admit that nothing sounds like glowing tubes no matter what the advertising may say.

Figure 1: A Rare 1965 VOX AC30

The following is a rough chronology of some of the major events in the history of the electric guitar:

Pre 1945 Gibson, National, Dobro, Rickenbacker, etc
45 - mid 46 K & F amps
Mid 46 - 48 Fender, natural wood cabinets, model 26
Late 46- early 47 First tweed covering, Dual-Professional
Mid 48 - late 52 Tweed, large rectangular speaker opening
1949 & 50 Alnico PM speakers, some two-tone leatherette
Late 52 - late 54 All amps tweed
1955 Tremolo introduced
Late 59 - 63 Brown tolex covering
1961 - 64 Blond (white) tolex
1965 Reverb introduced
Mid 63 - 68 By 1965, all amps black tolex. Different coverings used at the time, no sharp transitions from one to another
1965 CBS buys Fender, changes made to amp circuits
1967 - 69 CBS silverface amps
1969 - 70 Most silverface amps returned to blackface specs but damage was done. By 1970 the silverface was again identical to the former blackface. Silverface amps worth much less than (older) blackface - magic words are "pre CBS"
1970 - 80 silverface, tube and semiconductor. Semiconductor amps not collectible.