Amp Demo 1978 Fender Twin Reverb Part 1

3 years ago
9

Part 1
The pinnacle of Fender's Silverface era. 135 Watts of pure Ultra-Linear™ power. Face melting volume!
I put Electrovoice EVM 12L speakers in this and it's so heavy it has a minor gravitational field all of its own. I have dropped a small crumb of muesli and later found it elliptically circling this amp. Tasty too!

If you have one of these, you know the perceived wisdom is that these amps are somehow inferior to the 'classic' blackface designs. Just wrong. These amps do what they are meant to. They are superb sounding amplifiers. Lush bass, a sparkling treble and a slightly scooped midrange which is adjustable.

It is a top of the range amplifier and in the late 1970's, this was the big Fender.

They had tweaked the circuit and used an output transformer that allowed the amp to run in ultra linear mode - a design which originated in 1938 and allowed the amplifier to have more output and have less distortion than the previous designs.

It may not be a survivable option to turn this amp up but as a home amp it's actually perfect as it sounds full and fat with a threatening power behind it but you don't need to turn it up loud. The only reason to do that was when you were on stage and you needed projection and headroom. Try getting your 100 Watt Marshall to sound crisp at anything past 5 at stage volume...

I noodle on a Les Paul and Telecaster style guitar with the settings this amp never deviates from:
Vibrato channel input 1 & 2
Volume at 4-5 for a Gibson and 6-7 for a Fender
treble at 5 (bright switch off)
Middle at 3
Bass at 4
Reverb somewhere between 2 and 3 (The new TAD tank sounds lusher and more sensitive)
Master at 3ish (I have never used to pull boost option)

I demonstrate the Reverb and Vibrato (really Tremolo) during the video.

The pre-amp will distort like any other valve amp, so you need to watch the level going in for clean but there is so much power on tap, you can use pedals for grit if need be.

00:00 Gibson Les Paul into Vibrato channel input 1 at 5
04:07 Reverb tank at 7
05:34 Reverb back to 2/3 and Tremolo on speed 4 intensity 6
07:50 Tremolo speed 3 intensity 8
08:31 SC Relics T-Style into Vibrato channel input 1 at 6
11:28 tremolo set to speed 4 intensity 6
13:07 tremolo off

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