Fender Amp Recovers and Other Amp Stuff

[Drak]

I haven't done one in a long time, but I used to recover (and modify to various extents) nearly all the tube amps I ever bought.

I've probably owned over 40+ old tube amps of various makes and models over the years.

This was one of my favorite recover/remakes I ever did.

I think I sold this to a guy in Alaska, probably 20+ years ago.

I'm an awesome box packer but I remember freaking out a little as I packed it for shipping to Alaska.

I still wonder where it is today, its not like it would just 'blend in', it definitely stands out.

I believe every single bit of hardware got changed, switched, or in some way manipulated.

The tilt-back legs (and some other pieces) I had genuine gold-plated by a local plater, then thin coat of lacquer shot over it to protect it.

The tolex is Marshall White Elephant, I remember that.

If I find more, I'll post them here.

Before

After:

[Drak]

I re-did all three of these at about the same time.

The Twin, a Deluxe Reverb, and a Bassman.

The Deluxe Reverb I modified to a 2-10 format (you can see it through the grille)

I used to buy these amps for stupid cheap, like $2-300.00, the more beat, the cheaper they were, the more I liked it.

The prices for these now are ridiculous, I still own the Deluxe Reverb along with a second that I'll post in a bit.

All these amps looked like beat-to-shit raggedy-ass old Fenders when I bought them.

[Drak]

Here is an interesting one.

The chassis was a 1971 Super Reverb (I love Supers) bought as a head only (oh, those were the days)

The cab was an old blackface Vibrolux Reverb, I can't even remember how I came by it, but there was never a Vibrolux chassis to go with it.

So I made my own custom baffle for it, a 1-12, 1-10 combo.

And covered it in Sherry Iguana, and more gold hardware.

I also sprayed the faceplate kind of an amber color, then clearcoated it.

It lasted for about a year, but I own boxes and boxes of guitar speakers of all descriptions.

So this thing went through multiple speaker swaps before I concluded it was a shite idea.

No matter what I put in it, the 12 always overpowered the 10, no matter the combo.

And, TBH, I just absolutely adore Real Super Reverbs (the real 4-10 Supers)

So after a year or two, I swapped the chassis back into a real 4-10 cab and ditched the Vibrolux cab.

Sherry Iguana version with 1-12, 1-10 baffle

 

And After I moved the same chassis into a modded (real) 4-10 Super.

I had it re-grilled with gold screen, and old-school gold nameplate, which totally matches the amber-sprayed faceplate.

Still own this amp, and it has been kept up and modded by my local amp tech, one of my all-time keepers.

Goodbye Sherry Iguana!

 

[Drak]

Here is my second Deluxe Reverb in Snakeskin.

One is a 1971, this one is a 1973.

Bought both as your standard old ragged-ass SF Fenders for about $350.00 back in the day.

Both are now awesome and totally running at 100% peak performance.

I'm totally lucky that I have a custom amp builder near me.

I do all the cosmetics and light maintenance, he does the deep state work.

Snakeskin recover with black grillecloth and an old EV SRO coffee-can alnico speaker.

Makes the amp weigh a ton., but so what, its worth it.

[Drak]

I'm going to toss this in here since its amp-related and I built it.

The heart of my 'rolling rack rig' is a Rivera TBR-1SL from the late 90's.

After owning it forever, and since its rack-rig ready, I decided to build a rack rig.

I need to update the pics as I've added to the rack since I took these several years ago.

But it was really cool designing and building my own rolling rack rig.

It has filled out considerably since I took these pics tho.

[Drak]

Semi-Kinda guitar top related.

This is a 3-10 custom baffle I made probably 20 years ago.

1/4" Quilted Maple face over Baltic Birch.

I still have this thing, never made an amp cab to pair it with yet.

Always so many irons in the fire at the same time...

Behind it you can see one of my old Traynor YBA-1's I recovered in Orange Ostrich.

Not one of my better choices IMO...

[ScottR]

That's a bunch of fine looking Fender's Drak. And the cabinet and baffle are cool too.

I do believe a man would go crazy without some sort of project going on.

SR