Fender Early 70's Solid-State Amp Schematics

[Steve L]

Here are a few of Fender's early 70's solid-state amp schematics.
These are the ones they likely wish they never made. Enjoy!

Fender Capricorn, Libra Schematics.pdf
Fender Scorpio Schematics.pdf
Fender Taurus Schematics.pdf
Fender SS Preamp Schematic.pdf
Fender SS Deluxe Reverb Power Amp Schematic.pdf
Fender SS Vibrolux Reverb Power Amp Schematic.pdf
Fender SS Pro Reverb, Super Reverb Power Amp Schematic.pdf
Fender SS Super Showman Schematics.pdf
Fender SS Bassman 100W Schematics.pdf

Steve

[Boydie]

Thank you also Steve ....fantastic mate !!

[dodona]

thanks a lot!

[loudthud]

I'm still looking for some kind of historical account that would explain ... WHAT WERE THEY THINKING ???

Wasn't there a low power Bass amp, maybe 50W ? Seems to me I remember a small head with only 3 knobs maybe only 12 inches wide.

This thread was fun: https://music-electronics-forum.com/...e-service-info

It would be really cool if we had a list of all the model names and numbers so this thread would come up when you do a search.

[Enzo]

Like this one?

https://bid.moyerauction.com/lot-det...83/lot/2860549

Or this one?

https://entertainment.ha.com/itm/mus...181119-80216.s

[teemuk]

What were they thinking? Well..

IMO, when these work they are very good sounding amps ...for clean tones that is. Great reverb and tremolo effects too. They are not nearly as awful as stories indicate. I could imagine picking one to play surf, country, jazz, 60's instrumental rock, etc. (Though of course today there is no shortage of amps with good clean tone).

Obviously they were not made for the popular distorted tones, or to be overdriven, and neither were Fender tube amps of the time either. The later Super Showman did have a built-in "fuzz" effect, but of course back then you only had those in modern transistorized guitar amps to begin with. Tube amp owners still had to wait for few years before they could get their amps to distort at convenient volume levels. Sorry. (Super Showman also accounted low damping factor of tube amps, which was rather hi-tech for those times).

What else? Hmmm... maybe high impedance inputs made with new and exciting FET technology, low loss active tone controls, voicing switch, reliability of transistor technology in general... (Fender also tried to improve over poor reliability of earliest transistor amps by e.g. providing better heatsinking, using newest NPN silicon output devices, new "Linn" architecture sans interstage coupling transformers, overload indicator, etc. They did their best at those days knowledge).

Yes, I can totally see what they were thinking: let's make a great new product with the latest transistor technology, and let's also differentiate it from the older tube models. (They had been recycling the model names for a decade so that wasn't unordinary).

Too bad that the transistor technology was still at its infancy and that music genre overall revolutionized, and not much in favour of "clean" guitar amps. Well, one can't always predict the figure. Fender shortly tried to make high headroom clean amps with the following Silverface line but eventually gave up and started to add several half-assed distortion circuits to them, only to realize people really lusted for those older blackface models or... oh, wait... actually a Marshall amp. What were they thinking?