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Like many of you, we service a steady stream of vintage fenders. We've got a customer who's one of our Super Reverb guys. He seems to go on these benders where he'll acquire a few, one right after the other.
Anyway, I've always been a fan of a black face Super, and I've had the opportunity to work on many of them. But, the last one he brought in really stood out to me. I mean, it sounded outstanding. It seemed to display a really nice sounding punch in the attack, chimey quality, with quite a bit of output.
I can't remember what was serviced in the amplifier, but I do remember working in the chassis and bench testing the amplifier before I was able to audio test it. This is what struck me about it. There was nothing internally which would have lead me to think there was anything special about this particular amp. No "voodoo" transformers, coupling caps, resisters, or NOS tubes which set this apart.
But there was something which I hadn't seen, at least to my memory. It had these 4 grey, unbranded alnico speakers I didn't recognize. They looked old, if not original to the amp, but I didn't think they were CTS. I made sure to take some pictures before it left the shop so I could find see if I could identify them. The only identifier was a numerical code on the end bell. Here are some pics:
At first I thought the manufacturers code was the "038" number, but it wasn't. The manufacturer/date code are the bottom digits.
Much to my surprise, these turned out to be vintage Eminence speakers (manufacturer code "67"), and were made in Week 39 (Sept 22-28) of 1969. I didn't realize that eminence was in production at that point. But, now that I know, I'll be on the lookout.
Anyway, I've always been a fan of a black face Super, and I've had the opportunity to work on many of them. But, the last one he brought in really stood out to me. I mean, it sounded outstanding. It seemed to display a really nice sounding punch in the attack, chimey quality, with quite a bit of output.
I can't remember what was serviced in the amplifier, but I do remember working in the chassis and bench testing the amplifier before I was able to audio test it. This is what struck me about it. There was nothing internally which would have lead me to think there was anything special about this particular amp. No "voodoo" transformers, coupling caps, resisters, or NOS tubes which set this apart.
But there was something which I hadn't seen, at least to my memory. It had these 4 grey, unbranded alnico speakers I didn't recognize. They looked old, if not original to the amp, but I didn't think they were CTS. I made sure to take some pictures before it left the shop so I could find see if I could identify them. The only identifier was a numerical code on the end bell. Here are some pics:
At first I thought the manufacturers code was the "038" number, but it wasn't. The manufacturer/date code are the bottom digits.
Much to my surprise, these turned out to be vintage Eminence speakers (manufacturer code "67"), and were made in Week 39 (Sept 22-28) of 1969. I didn't realize that eminence was in production at that point. But, now that I know, I'll be on the lookout.
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