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Re: reissue 59 bassman-any good?

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8/28/2000 11:36 PM

Re: reissue 59 bassman-any good?

Joe, a few weeks ago, I repaired a 58 bassman. It was the first "Original" of the tweed bassmans that I had the chance to see opened up. Either Fender didn't always go by the 5F6-A schematic or someone made a few changes inside the amp and made it look original. The solder joints looked original to me. I was curious so I compared the schematic to the actual amp and these are the changes from the schematic that I found:

1) In the tone stack, the slope resistor was 100K instead of 56k like the schematic says. The bass cap was .1uf instead of .02 like the schematic.

2) In the phase inverter circuit, there was a 6.8K instead of a 10K between the 470 ohm and the presence control.

3) The presence circuit was like the 6G6 (Blonde) schematic. 25kL pot with .1uf in parallel with a 4.7K to ground instead of the 5K pot/.1uf.

I have never seen the inside of a reissue, but some of the differences described above seem to be like the original amp I was looking at. I have no idea if these kinds of changes were common during production runs or not? Maybe some of the people here that have repaired other bassmans that were built on the 5F6-A chassis would know. All I know is what that amp had inside it. BTW, It sounded great! Wish it was mine!

8/29/2000 3:14 AM

Gary,
If you get 5 or 6 original Bassmans in your shop at once you are likely to find alot of factory built differences between them. Also, the 5F6 is a little different in that the feedback resistor and presence circuit is tied to the bottom of the middle control and the brown and blue primary OT leads are reversed. I love these. Also, some had a 25uf bypass cap on the second gain stage.

Peter S

8/31/2000 7:31 AM

Actually, the Reissue 59 Bassman can sound pretty good. Fender is shipping them now with Reissue Jensen alnico speakers and for better or worse, the Groove Tubes "red white or blue" tubes seem to be better matched and biased than what they've shipped in earlier incarnations.

The solid state rectifier would be the first thing I'd change, then the other tubes, depending what they are. I'd also tweak the bias point a little cause it probably needs it.

Having played real 4-holer and 2-holer's plenty of times, they don't sound exactly the same. A little tweaking seems to help the reissue along quite a bit. Out of the box, they tend to be kind of lifeless and harsh. The originals have a warmth and a tendency to be a bit wooly.

Kendrick was doing a lot of output transformer swaps on the reissues, and it seemed to be a pretty popular mod. Transformers have a lot to do with tone, particularly when things are cranked up. Fender claims to have followed the original design, but since I've never unwound them and compared side by side, I don't know for sure.

The rest of the differences are fairly minor in terms of parts and values.

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