Fender....the kiss of death.

[Passinwind]

This.

They buy Genz, let them go away, use the tech to bring out the Rumble and Pro Neo cabs. This is pure speculation on my part, but it makes sense.

Except that Andy and Jeff have both said that their footprints are not in the Rumble series. And the part where Fender didn't buy Genz, they bought the parent outfit that happened to more or less own them.

But Fender did apparently get some IP that still just might end up in their amps, of course.

 

[BeardedFrog]

I could be wildly mistaken, but I'm pretty sure fender bass amps have always been reasonably popular.

 

[bobcruz]

Fender is my favorite company because when they closed Genz Benz, I was able to buy my STM900 for $339 shipped. Now Genzler Amplification is offering incredible products and former GB engineer Agedhorse is designing incredible products for Mesa. While I'm sure Fender meant the closure as a "kiss of death," all it did was create more and better competitors. Perfect result if you ask me!

 

[bucephylus]

This.

They buy Genz, let them go away, use the tech to bring out the Rumble and Pro Neo cabs. This is pure speculation on my part, but it makes sense.

Did they actually use Jeff in the design of those amps? My impression was that Jeff was purely sidelined as a nuisance to be ignored.

 

[bucephylus]

Except that Andy and Jeff have both said that their footprints are not in the Rumble series. And the part where Fender didn't buy Genz, they bought the parent outfit that happened to more or less own them.

That's what I thought.

 

[Passinwind]

That's what I thought.

As always, I welcome correction or clarification if I have that wrong.

 

[red_rhino]

Gibson is just as bad, if not WORSE! Anyone ever heard of a defunct brand called "Tobias?" and LOTS of others...

Well, not defunct, but out there as a zombie shadow of its former glorious self. I'd rather them kill a brand outright than cheapen it like that just for quick cash.

The upside being that by doing so, they made the pre-Gibson / pre-Nashville Tobias' more desirable and increased their value (or at least held their value relative to adjusted original purchase price). Thing is, a good design is a good design. I played a number of the Nashville basses that were excellent, and some that were rather lame (in particular, one with a parquet pattern body that played like a chunk of granite with a price of $10k!) I think that in the case of Tobias, Gibson wanted to be a serious mass-producer of high-end basses, but had no real vision beyond that, or understanding that those two things tend to be mutually exclusive.

 

[bucephylus]

The case of Fender's apparent ignorance of the GB technology is, to me rather revealing about the big company's culture, for the following reasons.

I get the capitalism - buy the competitor to make them go away thing. Happened with my favorite coffee company, Coffee Connection, when Starbucks bought them out purely to eliminate them and never used a shred of their assets except to sell them off. You can read all about it on Wikipedia.

But, the GB case was a little different, because GB was part of Kaman, which was a whole bigger corporate "deal." Fender did not target GB at all. They simply weren't very aware of them at the corporate level. Which I can understand. But, the thing is that GB was maybe a 15 minute drive from Fender's amplifier development facility. One would think the amp guys could have at least driven over there over lunch to see what Corporate was ignoring. But, no, they just chose to ignore them altogether.

So, to me, Fender's development culture and management is fairly insular and siloed. They don't pay much attention to anything except their marketing department directives. And, to Fender's marketing types, they sure do sell more of those whiz bang guitars than anything bass related. So, I suspect their bass departments have a lot of turnover in personnel, are not terribly well funded, and are not trying to rock the boat, from an internal perspective. Let's put it this way: some amp staff member deciding to go over and see what GB was doing and then getting excited about it; is not going to be rewarded within Fender's internal culture. The market significance is not there. So, it just doesn't happen.

 

[Ninevolt]

Hamer was another acquisition that got axed.

 

[Linnin]

In my opinion, one of the saddest things Fender has ever done, was their ruination of Sunn.

Sunn had already been dead for some 10 years or so before F.M.I.C. simply bought the name to use for their line of upscale bass amps. That was a failure waiting to happen, and so it did.

 

[Linnin]

I could be wildly mistaken, but I'm pretty sure fender bass amps have always been reasonably popular.

They most surely have and Fender has always outsold ampeg. Always.

 

[Rip Van Dan]

Gibson is just as bad, if not WORSE! Anyone ever heard of a defunct brand called "Tobias?" and LOTS of others...

Dan

Gibson also bought Standel, did warranty replacements for a couple of years (bad modules), changed the name slightly and then did away with them. They obviously didn't see any value in continuing a brand that had just cost them a lot of warranty money. Hard to blame them for that. Standel has since come back as a boutique guitar amp company using original early designs but no bass gear.

I think Sunn was the biggest bass company to be bought out by and absorbed by Fender. Fender didn't have a clue on how to build ported bass cabinets until they bought Sunn. They made Sunn bass amps again for just a few years before they disappeared and then Fender bass amps got a whole lot better. You could arguably say that the new Fender bass amps were just re-branded Sunn designs at the time. Hard to fault them for that as it was a way to acquire the knowledge and build capacity to improve their own brand of products and they improved considerably from there.

One of the few buy-ups that didn't dissolve a well known company was Marshall's buy out of Eden from USM. They still make a core selection of Eden amps and lots of speaker cabs AND they Marshall added some of their own expertise by adding a tube with adjustable effect into the gain section of the new Eden WTP amps as well as the tube in the impedance section that Eden historically used for their warmth of tone. The gain section tube can be turned off or blended in as much or as little as you like which gives it more sound options than the WT800 it was based on. Marshall never did a great business with bass amps and saw the value of adding a well known brand and using their expertise to improve on it and keep it going.

 

[Linnin]

Except that Andy and Jeff have both said that their footprints are not in the Rumble series. And the part where Fender didn't buy Genz, they bought the parent outfit that happened to more or less own them.

This is correct. Jeff Genzler was already a sell out to Kaman in 2002. F.M.I.C. bought Kaman in 2008 to acquire certain patents for lamination and also a goodly stock of tone woods. Eventually F.M.I.C. would sell off everything else. The 'Great Recession' is what killed Genz-Benz. They didn't sell well enough to keep themselves alive, and were simply allowed to die a natural financial death.

 

[Passinwind]

Sunn had already been dead for some 10 years or so before F.M.I.C. simply bought the name to use for their line of upscale bass amps. That was a failure waiting to happen, and so it did.

Buying the factory was a pretty big deal too though, since Fender was essentially just a name at that time in terms of amp production infrastructure.

I was a Sunn warranty tech not long before the buyout. No bueno.

 

[Linnin]

I think Sunn was the biggest bass company to be bought out by and absorbed by Fender.

No. sunn ((O had been dead for some ten years before F.M.I.C. simply bought the name to be used on their new upscale line of bass amps. The sunn ((O name had become so besmirched in the past that no one trusted that name anymore, and Fender's efforts were doomed to failure. They should have known better, but didn't.

 

[Linnin]

Buying the factory was a pretty big deal too though, since Fender was essentially just a name at that time in terms of amp production infrastructure.

I was a Sunn warranty tech not long before the buyout. No bueno.

When did sunn ((O shut the factory down? '84? '85? sunn ((O was very much dead before Fender bought the name.

 

[Chuck M]

BeardedFrog said: ↑
I could be wildly mistaken, but I'm pretty sure fender bass amps have always been reasonably popular.

They were not popular in my area after the tube amps of old were discontinued. I know of one club that has a Fender solid state rig on stage and it is a lousy sounding amplifier. Of course, I understand that is just my opinion but my friends that have used it also think it sounds lousy. The cab is not too bad with a decent head.

 

[dukeorock]

The big companies can't buy anything that isn't for sale. Sunn, SWR and some others appeared to be in trouble, so someone offers to buy them out. Sometimes the bigger companies just can't ressurect an already dead brand (I love Sunn amps, for the record). Even in the case of corporate greed 'buy em to make em go away' decisions, you can't buy something that isn't for sale.

Andy going from Genz to Mesa is probably a huge asset for Mesa (a company I also love) and I'll bet a dollar Genzler amps will be even better than Genz Benz amps. Every time Jeff Genzler has 'sold out' and moved on, the results have always been better. Future looks ok to me

 

[hintz]

This.

That said, probably for the first time in their history Fender has a few solid lines of good bass amps, and their all-tube offerings are world class and some if the best tube amps ever made.

Though I agree that they do make some of the best tube amps, its not 100% accurate to say for the" first time" they are making "good bass amps"... Take this beast as an example

435 watts of all tube glory, though made for guitar or bass it was much preferred by bassists' for its then unmatched clean headroom and sheer power, the big design flaw was you had to run *3* cabs to get that 435 watts going so it wasn't practical for the average club musician!

Next was the son of the 400PS, the 300PS!!

At my fathers house on the mainland I stashed away a 76' version of this amp! It's only 300 watts compared to the 400PS, but its the cleanest and loudest tube head I've ever played through, zero breakup unless you engage the distortion channel!! The EQ section is incredible, I doubt there was anything around at that time as versatile, not to mention it has footswitch for distortion and eq...

Also, You could also get the full 300 watts through just one 4Ohm cab instead of using 3 so it was much more practical for folks without roadies! As I understand it, this was fenders attempt to compete with the SVT, but it just didn't catch on so it was discontinued in 1980!!

Of course there are earlier examples of "good" bass amps from Fender as well...

 

[Passinwind]

When did sunn ((O shut the factory down? '84? '85? sunn ((O was very much dead before Fender bought the name.

There are many more knowledgeable people on here about that exact chronology; frankly, I wasn't paying all that much attention at the time since I was in Seattle and the scene there was blowing up. I remember still buying (many!) parts from Sunn in late '84/early '85, but most what I worked on were the highly problematic PA line and the Beta series amps, both of which had essentially nothing to do with the golden years of the company. I was also trying to clean up the Acoustic lifetime warranty mess at the time, yeesh!