Built a New House for my Fender BJr'

saltyseadog

Around a year ago I decided to build a 50's style finger jointed pine cabinet and finish it in tweed cloth. I have always had a yen for a tweed amp but being a play at home retiree I could never justify the expense so at the start of last year I decided to take my 1997 green board black tolex Fender BJr' and build it a new house instead. After a lot of research and some probably stupid questions I decided on a Bassman/Bandmaster style cab. As I already had a 4ohm 8" Eminence Patriot 820H left over from another amp I bought a second one which I wired in series giving me 8ohm. Together with the original Eminence special design 12" 8ohm wired with a separate jack I would swap between the 2 x 8" or 1 x 12" options keeping everything at 8ohms. It took me around a couple of months to finish and I am pretty chuffed with the outcome and add some photo's for the perusal of those interested. Since then I found that I could get an upgraded power transformer with 4, 8 and 16 ohm options which would allow me to play all three speakers at once but the guy who I sent my amps to for the dangerous electronic stuff died and I haven't found a trusted replacement for so I just play it with either the 2 x 8" or the 1 x 12" seperately for the moment although truth be told I really prefer the 2 x 8" Patriot 820H which sound so very different from the Eminence 1 x 12".

https://i.imgur.com/Orn68JY.jpg https://i.imgur.com/1tpPSqy.jpg  

Rocker

Nice work.  Enjoy.

Winny_Pooh

Interesting work

hoops

Looks like a good job. 

Jalapeno

I'd have replaced the original speaker - that's the easiest improvement to the BJ sound

But a great job nonetheless !

longjaw

Looks excellent!

ICBM

Jalapeno said:

I'd have replaced the original speaker - that's the easiest improvement to the BJ sound

But not the most effective - the cabinet is a bigger problem. I've done a couple of re-cab jobs for a customer with 5E3-size pine cabinets and Jensen speakers, and they sound *much* better than just with the speaker changed. At least "double the difference" if that could be quantified...

saltyseadog said:

Around a year ago I decided to build a 50's style finger jointed pine cabinet and finish it in tweed cloth. I have always had a yen for a tweed amp but being a play at home retiree I could never justify the expense so at the start of last year I decided to take my 1997 green board black tolex Fender BJr' and build it a new house instead. After a lot of research and some probably stupid questions I decided on a Bassman/Bandmaster style cab.

Very nice job - it really looks like a mini-Bassman or Bandmaster as long as you don't see the speaker layout.

saltyseadog said:

Since then I found that I could get an upgraded power transformer with 4, 8 and 16 ohm options which would allow me to play all three speakers at once but the guy who I sent my amps to for the dangerous electronic stuff died and I haven't found a trusted replacement for so I just play it with either the 2 x 8" or the 1 x 12" seperately for the moment although truth be told I really prefer the 2 x 8" Patriot 820H which sound so very different from the Eminence 1 x 12".

If you're not cranking it right up it should be safe to run all three speakers - almost any 8-ohm valve amp will take a 4-ohm load without any harm if it's not being pushed into power-stage overdrive.

saltyseadog

Very nice job - it really looks like a mini-Bassman or Bandmaster as long as you don't see the speaker layout.

No mini about it. It is the same size as a narrow panel Bandmaster/Bassman approx 23.5"x22.5"x 11" With that speaker combination and leaving room for the valves a the 2 x 8" magnets that is the size it works out at. My pal calls it the Blues Senior.

tone1

Yep, that’s ace 

saltyseadog

ICBM said:

Jalapeno said:

I'd have replaced the original speaker - that's the easiest improvement to the BJ sound

But not the most effective - the cabinet is a bigger problem. I've done a couple of re-cab jobs for a customer with 5E3-size pine cabinets and Jensen speakers, and they sound *much* better than just with the speaker changed. At least "double the difference" if that could be quantified...

saltyseadog said:

Around a year ago I decided to build a 50's style finger jointed pine cabinet and finish it in tweed cloth. I have always had a yen for a tweed amp but being a play at home retiree I could never justify the expense so at the start of last year I decided to take my 1997 green board black tolex Fender BJr' and build it a new house instead. After a lot of research and some probably stupid questions I decided on a Bassman/Bandmaster style cab.

Very nice job - it really looks like a mini-Bassman or Bandmaster as long as you don't see the speaker layout.

saltyseadog said:

Since then I found that I could get an upgraded power transformer with 4, 8 and 16 ohm options which would allow me to play all three speakers at once but the guy who I sent my amps to for the dangerous electronic stuff died and I haven't found a trusted replacement for so I just play it with either the 2 x 8" or the 1 x 12" seperately for the moment although truth be told I really prefer the 2 x 8" Patriot 820H which sound so very different from the Eminence 1 x 12".

If you're not cranking it right up it should be safe to run all three speakers - almost any 8-ohm valve amp will take a 4-ohm load without any harm if it's not being pushed into power-stage overdrive.

No mini about it, it is the same size as a 50's tweed narrow panel Bandmaster/Bassman amp 23.5"x22.5"x11" or thereabouts I don't have the exact sizes to hand but that is pretty close. With that speaker configuration and room for the valves it works out to that size.

saltyseadog

ICBM said:

Jalapeno said:

I'd have replaced the original speaker - that's the easiest improvement to the BJ sound

But not the most effective - the cabinet is a bigger problem. I've done a couple of re-cab jobs for a customer with 5E3-size pine cabinets and Jensen speakers, and they sound *much* better than just with the speaker changed. At least "double the difference" if that could be quantified...

saltyseadog said:

Around a year ago I decided to build a 50's style finger jointed pine cabinet and finish it in tweed cloth. I have always had a yen for a tweed amp but being a play at home retiree I could never justify the expense so at the start of last year I decided to take my 1997 green board black tolex Fender BJr' and build it a new house instead. After a lot of research and some probably stupid questions I decided on a Bassman/Bandmaster style cab.

Very nice job - it really looks like a mini-Bassman or Bandmaster as long as you don't see the speaker layout.

saltyseadog said:

Since then I found that I could get an upgraded power transformer with 4, 8 and 16 ohm options which would allow me to play all three speakers at once but the guy who I sent my amps to for the dangerous electronic stuff died and I haven't found a trusted replacement for so I just play it with either the 2 x 8" or the 1 x 12" seperately for the moment although truth be told I really prefer the 2 x 8" Patriot 820H which sound so very different from the Eminence 1 x 12".

If you're not cranking it right up it should be safe to run all three speakers - almost any 8-ohm valve amp will take a 4-ohm load without any harm if it's not being pushed into power-stage overdrive.

No mini about it, it is the same size as a 50's tweed narrow panel Bandmaster/Bassman amp 23.5"x22.5"x11" or thereabouts I don't have the exact sizes to hand but that is pretty close. With that speaker configuration and room for the valves it works out to that size.

ICBM

Ah, that’s a bit of an optical illusion then! It looks like it should be smaller for some reason.

If you’re interested, I think I have a couple of old impedance change auto-transformers somewhere. (Like a Weber Z-Matcher.) You could use one to run the speakers together at a correct match without having to modify the amp.

hollywoodrox

Fantastic job, looks great