Accurate specs are difficult to come by, but most accounts rate these speakers’ power-handling at around 12 to 15 watts each, making even a trio of them ill-suited to handling the amp’s 45-watt rating – certainly not able to take it for long when the combo was pumping hard. The speakers in early Tolex combos represent another fragile design element that was eventually rectified by Fender. It’s probably a build from very early in that month. Clearly, this was one of the last protector-less Bandmasters to go out the door before Fender figured out the cabinets were too ding-able without them. James’ amp has no metal corners, and that’s the way it was made, but it does have a tube chart bearing the date-code stamp “JC” J denotes 1960, C denotes March. The 3×10″ Tolex amps continued until the late fall of 1960 – November at least – but without the tweed style grillecloth after about September.”
#1962 fender bandmaster amp serial number
My 5G7 Bandmaster has both April and May stamps on it, and a serial number in the high 500s, which is about the end of the run for the center-volume ones. March and April saw the last phase with protective corners and tube charts. Those from January and February of 1960 had charts, but often, no corners. “The earliest phase had no metal corners and no tube chart, which makes them hard to date.
#1962 fender bandmaster amp professional
“These amps have an interesting chronology that applies, more or less, to all six Professional Series amps that went through the center-Volume transition roughly from late 1959 to about May of 1960,” Linden said. Clearly, Fender’s transition from tweed-covered amps with rear-mounted chassis to Tolex-covered amps with top-mounted chassis – which was also a significant transition in the history of amp design et al – didn’t take us from the former to the more commonly perceived rendition of the latter overnight, and this Bandmaster, along with several of its early Professional Series siblings, displays a fascinating Frankensteinian cobble between tweed and Tolex.įor another perspective on this model’s history, we turned to Paul Linden, an authority on early Fender Tolex amps in general and center-Volume amps, in particular.
The closer you look, though, the more the quirks reveal themselves.
“This amp has the unique and rare features of the very first brown Fender amps, such as the rough pink-brown Tolex, tweed-era grillecloth, light-brown faceplate with matching color in the flat logo tail, center-mounted Volume controls, RCA speaker plug, and mysterious Pulse-Adjust with a plugged hole.” The amp’s owner – musician and VG reader Tommie James, sums it up. Add to that the illusive feature set of this early example and you’ve got an amp that really sets Fender fans’ pulses racing. The tweed 5E7 Bandmaster that preceded it – the first of Fender’s quirkily appealing 3×10″ combos (profiled here in October ’16) – is a rare and exotic beast in its own right, but the short-lived 3×10″ in Tolex with newfangled front-mounted control panel is utter hen’s teeth. Such is the case with the 1960 “center-volume” Fender Bandmaster, model 5G7. The earliest renditions of our gear icons are often the most valuable, but on many occasions it’s the transition models – those that bridged one era to the next – that elicit the most excitement from real enthusiasts.
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