Hi Stuart. In the Gitec-forum you can find a three-part article with a detailed extplanation of the schematic of the Fender Twin Solid State Amp. That's really interesting. Unfortunately it's impossible to send you a link in the comments. Greetings from Germany, Wolfgang
Hey Mr. Stuart, I must confess I was laughing my butt off at your consternation and grumbling over this amp. That's a Twilight Zone amp for sure. Stay out of that thing. Cool looking combo though. Thanks for the video.
Unbelievable! Amazing piece of history. Thank you for showing this. This was quite entertaining as you provide a unique opinion on things like the "thing you screw off." It is obvious why people didn't buy these amps. Sound bad!
Hi Nick, ah but your premise is wrong here. I didn;t know one end of a valve from another until I was 50! My background is solidly in microelectronics. Designing microprocessor systems, writing all the code etc etc. The only 'scoffing' I do about solid state is that it's harder to repair than valve gear. Often it's impossible due to surface mount chips etc. Plus of course a standard tranny amp sounds crap compared with a decent valve amp.
In his book "Amps! The Other Half of Rock'n'Roll", Ritchie Fliegler wrote: "I can only assume low sales at the time and their legendary unreliability rid the earth of this terrible sonic blight".
For some reason I couldn't edit my previous post, but wanted to add the following. In the Oct 1968 price list, the tube Twin Reverb listed for $499, with $9 additional for the cover. Go figure, a premium of $80 for the solid state amp.
The late 1960's were not a good period for Fender. Some guitar production was good, but there was a lot of 'cost cutting' and corner cutting going on . Opening up the amp , it looked like a prototype which is never a good sign for a second year production example. Well done for fixing it Stuart. It looked a nightmare and some components would have been almost impossible to source had it come to that.
I had a gentleman bring me a Gibson solid state about the same vintage had separate pre and power amp chassis's. Crappy small speakers. He bragged how he got a good deal on this great "lead" amp. Over $200 in early 2000s. I left a note it was not worth fixing.
Ha ha! Yes several comapnies trashed their brands in order to try and make profits. E.g. I always tho9ught it was a mistake for Mercedes to bring out their C class, 'low' cost Merc for the masses. Trashed their brand. WOuld be like Rolls Royce introducing a 20k hybrid runaround car.
The point here is that transistor POWER stages are very clean and distortion free. Remember chasing 0.0001% THD in those HiFi amps back in the day? Guitarists HATE this super clean sound. The reason they love valve amps is because of the distortion - well over 2%! They perceive this as 'warm' etc. BTW there is a HUGE market in top end HiFi valve amps, yes with 1%+ distortion!!! Again, perceived as 'warm'.
@@stuartukguitarampguy5830 Tube amps for guitar, but when it comes to hi-fi I prefer solid state all the way. Not class D, but ordinary class A/B with overbuildt power supplies, and high rail voltage for maximum headroom and dynamics.
I give you full marks for finding, and effecting repair on this abortion of an amp. If it is only worth a few hundred quid in working condition, this example is as mint as it can be. It was smart for the owner to keep it under its dust cover. The assembly looks rushed, and amateurish. It is of course important to point out that Leo Fender was no longer with Fender at the time this tip destined junk was designed and marketed. It was nevertheless revived to its former operating condition. Well done, Stuart. Cheers.
I’d rip the guts out and build a valve amp inside it. Depending on the current and voltage output of the original power transformer, you could build a quadrupler or even hextupler to create a decent power supply, add a small filament transformer and output transformer and the rest is caps and resistors
Well, I don't think the construction quality is that bad, early PC boards and all. And, serviceability wasn't as important in a solid-state device that didn't need to be serviced as much as a tube rig. I kind of like the styling and think that the tone is ok, maybe with better speakers...? It's not a Baldwin, that's for sure.
Early solid state amps were way less reliable than tube amps (which had decades of r&d behind them at that point). HH and Carlsbro were about the first vaguely reliable solid state guitar/bass amps.
CBS engineers, shortly after the CBS takeover of Fender, though they could make better solid state amps and get rid of that "nasty distortion" and made a series of shiny metal turds, this being one of them. They were so badly designed that strumming your guitar hard while plugged into one of these amps was all you had to do to overload and blow it up. When CBS debuted the lineup in 1967 at a trade show (which may or may not have been NAMM), people plugged guitars into the new amps and so many of them were quickly blown up that they stopped allowing people to try to play them. The line was a failure with a very poor reputation and they weren't sold for very long. While I collect old Fender amps I won't bother with those.
@@stuartukguitarampguy5830 , British fingerpicker Martin Simpson took banjo lessons from Peggy Seger as a kid, and she wrote "slowly!" on the back of his hand with a marker to remind him to work towards accuracy first before trying to increase his speed! (He's now one of the best fingerpickers around, incredibly precise as well as incredibly fast, but with a very light touch).
