theklanch said:
How do you tell what the specs for a vintage Fender amp are?
The "specs" are published in a variety of print and on-line places.
As to what model you have, its hard to pinpoint the year, except by the code on the transformers, which hopefully are close to each other. At this point in time, cabinet codes are very often faked or we just dont see the right cabinet and chassis together because they were swapped at some point. Some folks have bought three amps, taken parts to make one really nice one, then sold the other two as working but cosmetically not so nice.... so its really the transformer codes.
In general for Bassman amps
Early tweed - dual channel, 5881 or 6L6 tubes (pair) and a single 15 inch speaker. The very first had a remote "sub" chassis via multiprong corded connection.
Later tweed - still two channels, still 5881's but the more familiar 4x10 combination. There are variations on the 4x10, with some having cathodyne inverters vs long tail pair etc etc. They're all good, I prefer the cathodyne inverter, but to each his own medicine.
Early brownface - a very few brownface were made with single fifteen inch piggyback cabinets These have tan tolex and brown and white faces with oxblood grills, and VERY few were made. Essentially the transition was from tweed to white tolex....
White tolex - with black faces, single fifteen deep cabinet, wheat grills. Not many made these are essential transitional blackface amps
Black tolex - a few designs there each one a little quirky but very moddable and these make great amps. They had single fifteen inch cabinets, still running the 6L6 combination (or 5881s).
Silver face with gutter strip - a 1968 to early 69 amp, like the blackface but with upgraded cosmetics
Silver face - made from mid 69 to 84ish, these were in several variations as to bias and such, tone stacks varied but all are good workable amps and with a spare wire or minor rearrangement of stuff, can be made to sound like the excellent blackface ones
Notable - Bassman 100 is 100 watts, Bassman 10 is a 4x10 silverface combo, some made with the terrible master volume control that push/pulls for boost.... and other "bassman" series. The Bassman 50 was the mainstay of 50 watt amps. This is when fifty watts was driven by valves and had balls enough to do what todays 300watt silicon amps try and do. And all that with natural compression too.
When you get an old amp, pull the chassis and have a real good look at the layout and compare it to the schematic or wiring diagram. Thats how you can fully know for sure, which sub variation it is.
