1941 Fender Amp and a Nacho Banos Les Paul

[rockabilly69]

I thought this might be a fun thing to talk about.

Last night I spent at least 8 hours playing through a really cool historic amp, a 1941 Fender amp, which you could read about here in these two articles...

https://reverb.com/news/the-vibro-set-where-fender-really-started

https://www.fretboardjournal.com/video/hear-one-of-leo-fenders-first-musical-instruments/

(that's actually me playing the Strat and the ES125 in some of the videos posted)

Last night I was recording the tones of the amp with some different guitars than the ones we used last time. All of them belonging to me, except for one (see below). And the owner of the amp, famous guitar historian Lynn Wheelwright, had me test it out with a new speaker that was custom made for the amp by the Jupiter Speaker company. Lynn built an external speaker cabinet for it, which was probably a good idea, because I was playing with the amp at almost wide open volume at times. The amp itself had just gone through a tune-up, so we were checking it out how to see how it was performing. The amp was plugged into a brown box voltage regulator. The amp performed great, and even after 8 hours of being on, there was no sag in tone that I could hear. And it was really a quiet amp compared to many of the vintage amps I've played through (most every model 50's tweed, and 60's blackface amps).

Here's a picture of the Vibro amp (only one volume control which works on the mic channel only, no volume for the normal channel) with the external cabinet miked up as it was set up in my studio (brown box to the right)...

I had some rhythm tracks recorded before Lynn got there, so I just played the lead fills on each guitar, so we could compare the sounds of each if them through the amp.

I played my Strat, my Tele, and my Gretsch G6120T 55VS (DeArmonds) through it. I chose the Strat and Tele guitars because they are partscasters that I built, and both are better than my Fender Custom Shop guitars. They are three of my favorite instruments, which I have played through some great vintage amps, and Lynn really wanted to know how I felt this original '41 amp compared to these amps. We had already tested the amp with vintage guitars a while back (55 Strat, 56 LP Special, and an early sixties ES125).

Lynn may have some reproductions of this amp made in the future, so we were doing some research to see how well the amp played with some modern guitars, and how it compared to modern boutique amps. I say if they got the reproduction right, this would be a cool amp to own because it has some really cool tones. Especially for someone like me, that really likes slightly dirty vintage guitar tones. It gets great clean tones with lots of harmonic content, and some pretty great dirt when cranked, but I really loved it with just a bit of hair on it. It just has a unique voice.

I ran the amp through it's paces playing from whisper quiet, to rattle the external cabinet loud. And like most amps, it had it's sweet spot were it revealed the qualities of each guitar. There really wasn't a guitar that it didn't like!

The only thing we hadn't tested it with was a humbucker guitar.

Well Lynn just got a new Nacho Les Paul, and I told him it would be cool to test the humbucker sound with it. He was thinking the same thing, so he went home got his Nacho, and brought it back to my studio. Here it is...

And we plugged it in and it sounded great. It sounded very vintage. The body was very resonant, and the pickups had the microphonics that people associate with a good PAF. The action was a little high, but low enough for me to get the job done. I got the takes with the Nacho on the first pass.

I really wanted to hear more of the Nacho, but it was getting late, so I asked Lynn if he would leave it and the amp with me, so I could see I could find some really good tones. Only thing, when I was testing out the other guitars, I was going for some fast picking on the Gretsch, which had on some heavier .012 flatwounds, and I developed a blood blister on my fingerpicking hand (I rarely use a pick). So I was mainly looking to play less aggressive with the guitar while testing for tones.

I thought it would be cool to find some tones that would be unique to that guitar and amp combo. While I was twiddling the volume knob on the amp, I heard this really cool acoustic like tone out of the middle position of the Nacho, very Stones like, so I wrote a little slide guitar song around it. There are three tracks, the first rhythm on the middle position, slide guitar with the bridge pickup, and a little solo with the bridge pickup for the third track.

BTW I was plugged straight into the amp, no pedals here  As a matter of fact if you listen closely, you can hear those Nacho pickups getting some cool compression and double tones. And the amp was just turned up enough to get a litte hair.

This is what I came up with...

 

[DetroitBlues]

Very very cool.  Getting ahold of something vintage like that is amazing.  Having the skill and tools to do it justice is even better!

[rockabilly69]

4 hours ago, DetroitBlues said:

Very very cool.  Getting ahold of something vintage like that is amazing.  Having the skill and tools to do it justice is even better!

Thanks DB, I am pretty lucky to know Lynn Wheelwright. When he needs someone one to demo his stuff, he usually calls me, or the other guitar player in our band Vorraro, Ryan Hawthorn. 

We have goten to play some seriously cool guitars and amps, stuff people dream about, and more than once, Lynn has allowed me to keep guitars/amps overnnight so I can really learn about them. Lynn is a a walking encyclopedia of knowledge when it comes to vintage electric guitar stuff, but when it comes to actually using the gear and making music with it, he loves to get feedback from Ryan and I. Check out Lynn's work on this book...

https://pinecasterbook.com/the-authors/