Original 59 Fender Bassman - holy sh*t!

Blacksheep

I had a 59 Bassman for a couple of years. Glorious tone with a Strat but you had to wind it up to about 6/7 and then it was window-rattling loud.
Never had an amp with a such a tightly-defined sweet spot.
Push the volume above 7 and it got mushy. Below and it was too glassy.
The problem for me was it was too loud for home and I would have destroyed it dragging it around pubs. It was already well road-worn.
Finally I took a deep breath and got Chandlers to flog it for me. Dave Gilmour was interested at one point but in the end bought a vintage tweed twin they were also flogging.
I now, of course, regret not keeping it.

Dave_Mc

ICBM said:

ESchap said:

What speaker change impressed you @ICBM?

To be honest now I've listened to it again on bigger speakers I'm surprised how many of you are raving about that clip. Yes, it sounds good - but really, not much different from any other Tweed Fender cranked up, old or new. The touch-sensitivity is standard for any low-gain amp cranked into power-stage overdrive.

That's what I was going to say, but was afraid I was going to be accused of being a philistine I haven't tried the original, and I'm only listening on laptop speakers, but yeah. I always find it a bit weird when people say that vintage style amps are so much more touch-responsive, when they just have less distortion. I can go from clean to (fairly) dirty just by picking strength on a master volume amp if I dial in the amount of preamp (or pedal) distortion just right.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, it sounds good, but plenty of amps do.