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SurfGuitar101 Forums » Gear »

Permalink Check out my new surf rig

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Was on vacation recently and on the drive back home I stopped in at a guitar store that always has cool vintage stuff. They had a ‘66 Showman with 2x15” JBL D130F cab. I put it on layaway and sold off a few items to pay it off. Just got it a couple weekends ago.

I was previously using a Super Reverb and I love those amps for blues, but this Showman with the JBL’s is just unreal. Out of all of the BF or SF amps I’ve ever owned or played through, this just has the most beautiful clean sound. I’m really in love with this rig. Hoping to get a BF tank soon to match.

image

SWEET !

Can I have everything louder than everything else!

https://thesurfaces1.bandcamp.com/releases

Mighty! congrats.
Yes, a reverb is crucial here to sweeten the monster.

Curiousity - the single Shownan is supposed to out 8ohm, are the speakers 16 each? It could work of course if otherwise, but I wonder how this combo was made to be.

Last edited: May 15, 2019 12:14:16

Very nice. Congratulations;ations!

Bob

Ariel wrote:

Mighty! congrats.
Yes, a reverb is crucial here to sweeten the monster.

Curiousity - the single Shownan is supposed to out 8ohm, are the speakers 16 each? It could work of course if otherwise, but I wonder how this combo was made to be.

Right now I use a Surfy Bear. I did my homework on BF Showman's before I started looking to buy and this is what I found out...

There was the single Showman 8ohm, the "Dual" Showman 4ohm with regular Showman faceplate and the Dual Showman 4ohm with Dual actually printed on the faceplate. So as they were in transition to making the 4ohm Dual Showman, they sent some unknown number of 4ohm Showman's out, intending them to be used with 2 8ohm speakers.

Because of this, I read to check the transformer codes on any Showman head you buy to confirm it's correct load. My head has the 8ohm single Showman tranny code and dates to late '66 according to the stamp on the tube chart.

The cab dates to early '66 according to the stamp I found inside and the JBL's are 2 16ohm D130F's wired for 8 ohm load. I have NO CLUE how this came to be. Perhaps Fender had some 16ohm JBL's around and paired them with a regular Showman head? Or the previous owner found 16ohm JBL's and put them in the cab? I have no idea, but I sure love the mystery.

congrats , thats beautiful

dripdripFL wrote:

Perhaps Fender had some 16ohm JBL's around and paired them with a regular Showman head? Or the previous owner found 16ohm JBL's and put them in the cab? I have no idea, but I sure love the mystery.

Huh! Maybe you did get one of the anomalies. Great score either way. So loud yet so toneful (I got a '65), Enjoy!

Ariel wrote:

dripdripFL wrote:

Perhaps Fender had some 16ohm JBL's around and paired them with a regular Showman head? Or the previous owner found 16ohm JBL's and put them in the cab? I have no idea, but I sure love the mystery.

Huh! Maybe you did get one of the anomalies. Great score either way. So loud yet so toneful (I got a '65), Enjoy!

Thanks! Yeah, it’s such a sweet amp. I’m still in disbelief that such a great rig has landed my way. I’m really really happy. A lot of people plug into the vibrato channel by default with BF Fender amps, but one of the things I read multiple times while I was researching the BF Showman, was that the normal channel has a sweetness to it that the Twin and Bandmaster don’t quite have.

Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. I don’t have a BM or Twin to A/B. BUT, on my Showman, I noticed an increase in volume on the normal channel and this sweetness I can’t describe well. Like the mids were floating on a cloud or something. I was totally surprised to hear such a difference. Cool

That’s soooo cool that you got a 2x15 8 ohm cab!! I would love to have one too.

I have a ‘64 Showman and I’ve always preferred the vibe channel. But I will experiment further based on your comments! It is a 1x15 tone rig affair though.

Daniel Deathtide

You are now set for life when it comes to playing instrumental surf music. Nice score!

MooreLoud.com - A tribute to Dick Dale.

DeathTide wrote:

That’s soooo cool that you got a 2x15 8 ohm cab!! I would love to have one too.

I have a ‘64 Showman and I’ve always preferred the vibe channel. But I will experiment further based on your comments! It is a 1x15 tone rig affair though.

Yeah, try out that normal channel. I’d love to know if you also hear a difference. My amp came with all modern production tubes and V1 and V2 have the same exact Preamp tubes, so it was a pretty fair A/B of the Normal and Vibrato channels. My normal really pops!

SixStringSurfer wrote:

You are now set for life when it comes to playing instrumental surf music. Nice score!

Thanks! Yes, I know! I eventually want a Brownface Bandmaster head too. Just for fun/different sound. I’m totally set though for a long time and incredibly grateful to own this rig.

Looks badass, congrats!

Hey DripDrip! I want to thank you for piquing my interest. I experimented with the normal channel and you're absolutely right! I mean, maybe I have a crappy preamp tube in V2, but what a MASSIVE difference it made. The drip is back, the headroom is back, and the TONE hits me in the gut again.

Okay - but I think it might actually be a phase issue, since Normal Channel phase is reversed from the Vibrato Channel. Maybe the '63 tank doesn't like being plugged into the Vibrato channel. Or more weirdly, the reverb tank could actually be out of phase internally, therefore stealing freqs. But then again, it sounds great through the normal channel. I don't know if the AB763 has the same phase properties.

Full disclosure: I was accidentally playing through the vibe channel without a tube in V1, so in that 6G14A circuit, apparently the V1 & V2 tubes use each other, and pulling V1 drove more voltage into V2. So I may have aged that tube, or just made it noisy. Or it's the phase thing.

I'm not a tech (yet!), so I really don't pretend to understand that much of all this.

Daniel Deathtide

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