So, a couple of years ago I got a phonecall from a drummer friend of mine who said he had an old Fender amp that didn't work, which he wanted to get rid of. If I was interested, I just had to come and collect it. It had been stored in a moisty garage, so it was "a little rough" around the edges. At first I thought that it was probably som garbage transistor amp from the 80s or something that he had lying about, but I told him I would take a look at it, as he was going to throw it away if I didn't want it.
A couple of days later, I turned up and inspected the amp. Of course I quickly realised that this was an old Super Reverb, and little more than just garbage... and told him that he probably could get some money out of it if he bothered to have it repaired. He still insisted that I should take it, and if I could make use of it, he would be happy with that.
Of course I took it home and started to investigate to find out how old this amp actually was. Beeing a Silverface, I knew it had to be later than 1968. Posted some pictures on a norwegian guitarforum and from serial number and numbercodes on speakers it was soon apparent that this was a 1969.
From the pictures, you can see it was in a quite sorry state.
Corroded speaker frames, but I tested them with another amp, and was happy to discover they all worked. You can also see that the speakers are the CTS Alnico's which is a very good thing!
On further investigation and cleaning, I found both the reverbtank and footswitch beyond rescue, so when taking the amplifier itself to my ampdoctor, I also told him to replace those.
I was also told that it beeing the AB763 model, it could have the more desirable Blackface curcuit, but more on that later.
With the amp out of the way, I wondered if I should just leave the speakers and cabinet as was, but quickly decided to try to refurbish a little. Took out the speakers, sanded the corrosion on the frames and brushed with some rust treatment firstly, and then sprayed them.
Came out nicely, I think.
My amp-tech soon got back to me, telling me the amp was salvageable, but it didn't have the Blackface circuit. He still recommended "Blackfacing" , and would happily mod it for me without adding too much to the cost, so I went for it, of course. As it came back, it's guts looked like this:
I also had to order new chassis mounts for the amp as they were corroded away, and the top back plate was missing, so that was ordered too. A new reverb tank from Tube Amp Doctor was fitted together with a new original Fender footswitch.
I recorded a couple of samples, but cranking it like this, made things fall off the shelves in my basement room, so I'm using pedals in front of it when using it for gigs.
It's still got the most wonderful glassy clean sound, and it takes pedals extremely well!
The first sample is recorded with a Tele doing some "Keefy" riffs:
https://soundcloud.com/auduneggen/fe...6-tele/s-3912B
Then cranked with a Les Paul R8:
https://soundcloud.com/auduneggen/fe...s-paul/s-OoLRC
At last a little more mellow with my ES-335 with tremolo engaged:
https://soundcloud.com/auduneggen/fe...-es335/s-Xr6yy
Currently I play in a band that has existed since 1968, and a fun fact is that my amp probably belonged to "the captain" in the band, as the father of he who gave it to me, played with the band at the time, and was, and still is, a close friend. The Super Reverb you see at the back in this picture, is without much doubt, the same one...