Fender Sliverface Musicmaster Bass Amp

[NizzRooster]

i just bought an all original musicmaster bass amp from the 1970's. im not sure when it was made. i dont really know anyting about it. if anyone has any info at all please let me know.

[NizzRooster]

i forgot to mention this amp has 1-12" speaker and 2-6AQ5A tubes and 1-12AT7 tube.

[drlowlow]

http://www.ampwares.com/ffg/
scroll on the left and find the music master bass. you can get a more definate year by looking at different parts inside for dates ie. transformer, pots, and so forth. There is a schematic on the music master page.

[Rob Mercure]

Hey NR,

Not sure what you want to know about this amp - in this day of kilowatt bass amps you might find it just a tad 'under powered" <grin>. And, as best I remember, it's the only Fender design with a transformer PI that was produced. While not spectacular as a bass amp this little thang makes a nice small guitar amp with a speaker change. But if you're a bass player perhaps the best use of the amp - in good condition - is to pass it on to a Fender collector and use the $$ to build (or buy) a bass amp more suitable for stage/practice. Other lower wattage bass amps - such as the Ampeg "B" series ("fliptops") - are "holy grail" for studio use but these small Fenders don't seem to have caught on in the studio.

Rob

[Steve Conner]

Yes, I remember seeing one of these in a local junk shop and ROFL. Even in the 70s Fender had a lot of nerve calling it a bass amp. It has an open backed cabinet, too. The Ampeg fliptops have a ported cabinet that gives them half a chance of actually reproducing bass, not to mention being three times the power of this thing.

The guy wanted $100 for it, the 6V6s had been replaced with EL34s, and the sticker said "Needs attention", so I reckoned there was a fair chance the tube swap had burnt out the transformers and passed on it.

The Fender 300PS and 400PS also had transformer PIs, and were much more suitable as bass amps :D

[NizzRooster]

i do in fact use this amp for bass and i think it sounds just fine for what i use it for. i do wish it would get just a little bit louder tho. do you know if there is anything i can do to make the amp louder (new/different tubes, mods....)??

[Steve Conner]

You could swap it for a 300PS with the W bin cabinet, it'll sound like a whole new amp ;)

Seriously, loudness is probably about the hardest thing to change about an amp. Once you've turned all the knobs up full and overdriven it to as much dirt as you can stand, all you can do is replace the speaker for a more efficient one, and/or replace the whole power section as well as both transformers.

Because of the way ears work, it takes about a 10 fold increase in power to make a noticeable difference in loudness, so that would mean gutting the amp and rebuilding.

You could always try sealing the back of the cabinet to let the bass resonate more, but watch that the tubes don't overheat.

[bob p]

That wasn't a bad little practice amp. I remember playing through one in the music store lesson booth back in the 1970s when I was taking lessons.

If you need more volume, the most effective way to effect a volume change is to swap to a speaker of higher efficiency. If you've got an inefficient speaker in there, a more efficient speaker could make a significant difference. It still wouldn't convert it into a stage amp though. The amp will always be a little amp.

[Steverino]

Even the cab is great for a Champ/VibroChamp chassis.

[NizzRooster]

it has the original speaker in it. a jensen i believe...

[Chippsta]

I've got one of these and Yea, i remember the speaker being kind of 'farty' sounding. It's my favorite studio and practice amp of all time. Much bigger and better sound than a Champ.

[Amp Kat]

I just repaired one and did a cap job that was deserately in need of. We replaced the speaker with a higher wattage as the magnet of the original is very small and light-weight. A larger speaker will help the volume situation but IMHO this amp is a guitar amp. Sounds better with a guitar thru it and performs better with a guitar. Take the advice of the above posters. Want a Bass amp get a Bass AMP. IMO this is a guitar amp !, and a very nice sounding one at that.

[capnjuan]

Hi Nizzrooster:

Nothing to add directly about the amp but I had a Gibson GA-5 (Crestline) that ran on 6AQ5s. I replaced the as-bought set with NOS 6AQ5s; maybe didn't stay with them long enough to let them break in but went to a pair of NOS 6005s, a direct substitute for the 6AQ5; a little softer and sweeter tone.

Get a fresh(er) speaker; 25-30 watts max. Finally, consider being nice to the amp and replacing the speaker feeds with 'stereophile' type OFHC #14 wire; no point in killing yourself to clean up the amp then listen to it through a tinny little set of cheesy wires. Good luck.

[Steve Conner]

Well, better rewind the output transformer secondary with #14 OFC while you're at it too; after all, the current has to pass through all that cheap, cheesy magnet wire before it even gets to the speaker leads. What do you mean you can't get #14 to fit? :rolleyes:

IMO, just about anything will do for a speaker lead. Just don't use the cord from a vacuum cleaner, it will make your tone suck :)

[capnjuan]

You're right about the transformer winding but if wire doesn't matter, why does the 'stereo crowd' go through so much trouble with their speaker wiring?

The several times I've upgraded speaker drops, I've gotten a little more width and depth in the output; not as dramatic as a newer, fresher speaker but noticeable.

I always wonder what older amps would have sounded like had cost not been a consideration in their manufacture. Given the choice between the #18 or #20 and #14, I wonder what they would have used.

[Steve Conner]

Probably because they like the look of it, or like bragging to their friends that they spent $200 on speaker cables.

I guarantee you will fail to tell the difference between #14, #18, and #20 speaker drops in a properly controlled blind test. Heck, most people can't even tell the difference between tube and transistor stereo amps in a blind test, and nobody that I know of can tell the difference between two different brands of transistor stereo amp.

Having said that, I use #14 speaker cable for hooking a head to a cabinet. I like the Van Damme brand because it coils up easier, and doesn't look cheap and nasty. 20 gauge zip cord looks ghetto and gets broken easily. But the orange line cord Home Depot etc. sell for lawn mowers and power tools sounds just as good as OFC :eek:

[capnjuan]

Well, it's possible that people spend alot of money on speaker cables for reasons other than sound quality. I'm just a guy with a soldering iron but I think everything in the audio chain, including speaker feeds, influences sound quality.

For the effort in re-habbing my gear that I go through, I'm not gonna just sit there and listen to a pair of stiffened-up, usually spliced, heavily oxidized #20s but it's okay with me if you do.

To put an end to splicing the OT outputs, I usually put a new wiring strip next to the OT, tie the OT output there, and attach new speaker drops. Since the drops are new, the choice is between whatever is laying around or something that gives the amp the best shot a saying whatever it has to say.

Like I said, having made the effort, not going to cap it off with anything that's in the least restrictive. Needless? Maybe, but I don't like to leave out any step/tweak that I think might help.

[Steve Conner]

Oh, so wire sounds different if it's stiff now? All I'm trying to say is, sure everything in the signal chain affects the sound to some degree, but if I had to pick the one thing that affected it least, it would be the wire that hooks the amp chassis to the speaker. So when building, I pick the wire based on how it looks. I would replace those speaker drop wires just the same as you, but just because they looked tatty.

I built a small home studio that has about a quarter mile of patch leads and interconnects in it, and if I worried about how each piece of wire coloured the sound, I would go insane, broke, or both. I've lately been rewiring it all with a couple of patch bays, and I bought a bulk pack of $0.25 stereo jack plugs and a huge reel of the cheapest balanced mic cable I could find.

[capnjuan]

You're killing me:)

I've cleaned up several early 60s Gibson amps; GA1RT, GA5, GA18, and a GA19 although the GA19 isn't out of the woods just yet - I'm begging for 7199 / reverb hum help elsewhere on this board.

Each amp had nasty, spliced, and due to the surface oxidation on the wire, stiff speaker leads - though once new, they now have resistive coating of corrosion. The OFHC is prettier, more flexible, I'm replacing the drops anyhow, and IMO for the cost of the relatively short lengths, worth the money although I'd have to confess that if I thought gluing stacks of newspaper on an amp would 'help' the sound, I'd probably do that too.

The GA1RT has an 8" Celestion and the others 10" and 12" Webers. For the money I have in the amps, speakers, and parts, I can't bring myself to close up before covering this detail but I gotta tell you that after the Celestion went in the GA1RT, I upgraded the drops and got noticeably more width and depth...it's an 8 watt amp...everything makes a difference.

Imagining things? I guess it's possible but when I'm sipping my Stoly and beating something out, I know that I've done all I can do to get as much sound as the stock circuits can produce - they are as good as I can get them.

FWIW: I also take little brushes and alcohol and clean all the grungy amp cheese off the insulation on the inside wiring. Obsessive? Too little to do? Maybe but I have several wonderful-sounding examples of early 60s Gibson student amps to show for my trouble; after all in for a dime, in for a dollar.

Warm regards,