Hacking a Blackface Fender for Monster Gain, Blasphemous or Badass?

Rabs

ICBM

I'll maybe watch that later if I can be bothered… but my philosophy is pretty simple - it's not blasphemous, but it's just stupid. You're going to hack a nice old amp which sounds great the way it is, and create something which doesn't sound as good as a purpose-built high-gain amp *or* as good as it does now… so what exactly is the point?

In the days before you could easily buy proper high-gain amps for very little money, I could maybe see the point - I even did a few myself. But I soon realised that it wasn't really sensible.

I always used to say that the best high-gain mod for an old Marshall costs £25 to do, is yellow and says Boss on the front...

ThePrettyDamned

Sounds pretty good. Before, being a transition amp with anomalies, there is the chance it sounded... Pants. 

I've certainly heard old amps before that sound underwhelming. 

timmysoft

All old fender amps should be hacked up and thrown in the bin. 

Sassafras

Don't really see the point. There's about a zillion high gainers out there.
Fenders are nice amps in their own right.

ThePrettyDamned

ICBM said:

I'll maybe watch that later if I can be bothered… but my philosophy is pretty simple - it's not blasphemous, but it's just stupid. You're going to hack a nice old amp which sounds great the way it is, and create something which doesn't sound as good as a purpose-built high-gain amp *or* as good as it does now… so what exactly is the point?

In the days before you could easily buy proper high-gain amps for very little money, I could maybe see the point - I even did a few myself. But I soon realised that it wasn't really sensible.

I always used to say that the best high-gain mod for an old Marshall costs £25 to do, is yellow and says Boss on the front...

The difference with this one is that there were various anomalies in the circuit - so it might not have sounded the way a proper good blackface fender would. 

That said, I don't really disagree either... Especially when for the cost of the work you could get a decent gainy amp. 

He doesn't make it a high gain fire breathing monster - he tweaks the eq, bias and a couple of other things to make it dirtier and a bit more Marshally/tweedy. It's all reversible, too. So.. Not a disaster, even if it would have been better to just buy a df2 and get on with it