My guitar buddy told me that the 1960 Fender Bassman was the amplifier that Jim Marshall based his original design on, I’ve only known two people that had one and they were both guitarists and they swore by them ,2x12 open back, true ?
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1960 open back Fender Bassman
- Thread starter jim nolte
- Start date
Almost kinda true. The Bassman was the basis of the Marshall amps, but which particular iteration of the circuit, I don't know. I do know that 1959 was the last year for the open-backed Bassman with four 10s. In 1960, the new piggy-back amps were introduced and all the cabs, the Bassman 212 included, were closed-backed. The '59 and earlier 410 Bassman was the one prized by guitar and harp players and that interest is what spawned the '59 Tweed Bassman Reissue.
That is interesting and may have answered my questions going back to the mid 60's.
I bought a used Fender Bassman amp back then and it came with a 2-12, open back cab. Some said that never happened from the factory but, it was used and someone could have joined those two together. The speakers were blown (surprise). I was pissed but, at 15 years of age, didn't know the difference.
I moved on and eventually bought a Sunn 2-15 clone and was very happy...
It sounds like you got a head with the(approximately)30w/20h/12d 1960-onward standard cab that someone had taken the back off and lost. Of course the drivers were blown. Was it blond tolex, or black?
If memory serves (and it doesn't all the time) it was blond tolex. I do know it had tilt back legs.
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In 1965 I was living in California on the Ft. Irwin army base outside Barstow. Being a just beginning 15 year old bassist I did have a bass, but was looking for a bass amp I could afford, which was hard to find in the Barstow area in that time frame. A friends dad who was deployed was selling an old Fender amp. I really don't remember exactly what I paid for it, but it was around $75 to $100 bucks. Later I found out it was a 1959 Fender bassman amp 4X10's and 45 watts. It sounded terrible. It sounded nothing like the songs on the radio or the albums I was listening to. I did try it out before I bought it but couldn't turn it up very much in my friends house. Over the next 3 years I played with it trying to get a good bass sound out of it and I did manage to make it sound 'alright', but that was about it. After join my first band I realized just how inadequate it was for what I wanted to do. Thinking back it had no power or projection. There was very little low end, and to much volume with a bass guitar made it distort. I sold it in 1968 for $200 dollars to a guitar player who desperately wanted it, and I have to say it sounded fabulous with a Les Paul.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to test one of the original 4x10" tweed Bassman combos, and it sounded utterly horrible as in completely useless for a bass guitar, IMO. In all fairness I can't say how original or how molested it was on the inside so it might have just been that example...
To me personally, Bassman line in general - up to 70/135 generation - is more of a guitar amp, especially the 50W version. If someone pointed a machine gun at my kids and told me that I had to play a Fender tube amp for the rest of my days it would likely be a blackface Dual Showman.
But, yeah, quite a few guitar players I've known over the years dreamed of owning a tweed Bassman, for better or worse...
To me personally, Bassman line in general - up to 70/135 generation - is more of a guitar amp, especially the 50W version. If someone pointed a machine gun at my kids and told me that I had to play a Fender tube amp for the rest of my days it would likely be a blackface Dual Showman.
But, yeah, quite a few guitar players I've known over the years dreamed of owning a tweed Bassman, for better or worse...
A Sunn 200s with a Sunn 215 cab with JBL speakers.
Perfect!!! That is what I did only it was a dealer-made clone to a Sunn
These heads can be quite good for bass, if you don't need to fill a big venue with 100+ clean valve watts. But please don't play bass through its original speakers! They'll be safer and sound much better through a proper bass cabinet, such as the Sunn 200S.
I had no problem playing my Sunn 200s bass Head into my Sunn 215 D140. speaker cabinet.
I know, I was saying that the Sunn cab is much better than Fender for bass.
It's my understanding that in 1962, Marshall (well, Dudley Craven and Ken Bran) used the 1959 5F6A Bassman as the inspiration for the JTM45. They recognized how great that circuit sounded for guitar, and how rare/expensive Fenders were in England. It made sense to try building an amp. The prototype wasn't a direct copy, but used some parts more easily found in England and had some circuit tweaks to make it louder, more aggressive vs the Bassman. This was coupled to a 2x12" cab as they (and the players that tested it) preferred it to the 4x10". This took off, and led to the JTM45/100 (with 4x12" cabinets) and then the next big boy, the 1959 Super Lead.
The 1959 model designation was a salute to that 1959 Bassman that inspired it all.
The 1959 model designation was a salute to that 1959 Bassman that inspired it all.
They also doubled the power of JTM45 and turned it into the Super Bass. That's a much better bass amp than the old Bassman, but the Brits would have to wait for better bass cabs.
I did have some problems trying to power my 200s with JBLs with my silver faced Bassman head, I couldn’t be heard and had to play with a pick to just cut through the two guitars and drums, eventually got a Ampeg V4B and that solved the volume problem but at lower volume such as playing at home I still preferred the Bassman going through the normal channel, wasn’t the 200s head slightly more watts than the Bassman ?
Yeah that 1959 open-back 410 did nothing but blow speakers if you played a bass through that. The cab needed to be a sealed cab or the speakers would exceed their excursion limits because there was no pressure to stop them. As a result it tore up the cones or got stuck and wouldn't move because it came out of its guides. However guitar players loved it. They actually brought it back a few years ago as part of their "Blues Breaker" series of guitar amps.
I bought a 1966 Fender Bassman, new in 1966. It was the first year they mounted the two twelves vertically in the cab instead of horizontally. They made the cab a lot bigger too. They even put those tilt-back legs on that tall cab. I tried it once just to see if it worked and it seemed to hold it just fine, but I didn't need it to tilt back to hear it so I never used that legs.
Unfortunately since this was before the Theile-Small parameters came into to being, I blew those OEM Jensen speakers out of that cab twice. Hated those Jensen speakers, but couldn't afford the JBL's when I bought the amp. It was a 50-watt rms all-tube amp and if you turned it above #7 on the volume dial it would fart out. Never needed to do that until I started touring in 1971. Was getting buried by a couple of Vox Super Beatle amps, so I traded it in on a piggy-back Standel amp with 215, bass reflex, powered speaker cab and no longer had any trouble being heard at all.
Yeah, an open back bass cab is not good, at all.
Fender didn't really get into any sort of practical/usable bass amps and cabs until the Bassman 100 heads and cabs.
I have a 73 Bassman Ten 4x10" combo. Closed back, so it does have punch, but it's shallow, so no real depth. It's 50W, so can't get loud and clean. Did some tweaks to the circuit and loaded it with Celestions, now it's a fantastic guitar amp.
Fender didn't really get into any sort of practical/usable bass amps and cabs until the Bassman 100 heads and cabs.
I have a 73 Bassman Ten 4x10" combo. Closed back, so it does have punch, but it's shallow, so no real depth. It's 50W, so can't get loud and clean. Did some tweaks to the circuit and loaded it with Celestions, now it's a fantastic guitar amp.
I had a 1962 Concert Amp for a while years ago. Worked fine a reasonably low volumes (acoustic jams) and sounded fabulous through a real bass cab.
