Menu
Okay, I've had this for about five days now, so the speaker is
broken in and I've got the tone pretty dialed to my taste. First
impressions: this is a very basic amp in the Fender Blackface-
era tradition: two channels, one with vibrato and reverb, the other
with just vol., treble, mid, bass controls. Each channel has two
inputs.
The amp is very clean super clean. Every nuance of my pick
attack comes through. This can be good, but make one tiny
mistake and it comes roaring back at you. Definitely helps you
clean up your technique.
The main difference between this and the Twin Reverb Reissue
is the speaker a big, aluminum dust cap Eminence modeled
after the JBL D130F of the 1960s. After break in, this speaker
sounds great. The amp has a big, deep boomy bass sound and
projects it very wide. A big improvement over the twin 12s that
comes with the standard Twin bigger, wider sound. It should
work well in clubs. Time will tell. Despite its size, it handles
treble and mid tones extremely well almost too well. Overall, it
has nice high, glassy overtones that one expects from a Fender
Blackface.
Without a master volume, you can only get distortion by cranking
it up, which with an 85-watt amp results in a very loud sound
indeed. Since I like a little dirty tone, especially for Link Wray
songs, I put a TS-9 Tube Screamer in front the signal chain. This
amp is so clean and powerful, I had to turn the distortion control
until it was pegged to get good breakup at moderate volume, but
it was so creamy-smooth!
Both the reverb and the tremelo sound good you don't get the
wet sound of an outboard reverb, but it is still formidably deep.
At $1,000 bucks, this amp ain't cheap. But it's a damn nice substitute for =
a vintage Twin and should work excellently for surf.
I've listened to boutique amps at three times the cost that didn't
have as nice and rich a clean tone. I think Fender's gonna sell
lots of these, as they are priced the same as the standard Twin
Reissue but have a much richer sound.
