NAD/NSD: Vintage Fender Solid State Stuff

HarrySeven

Acquired this today...

ICBM

That gets a definite Wow! Rare as a very rare thing…

Although it looks like the wrong cab for the head, that's a PA amp and should have come with column speakers I think. That looks more like the 3x12" Bassman cab.

Hilarious how dated it looks now, considering it was 'futuristic' at the time compared to the traditional valve amps.

Is it working?

HarrySeven

Indeed.

The head is a PA4100X and the cab is a SPK0312. The head should be the (similar-looking) solid state Bassman.

HarrySeven

Not tested yet. The amp needs a thorough going over.

impmann

Didn't Jan Ackerman use Fender Solid State stuff for a while?

Neil

SOLID STATE!

A badge of honour in those days I assume.

I've only seen pictures of these so I guess pretty rare H?

HarrySeven

Neil said:

SOLID STATE!

A badge of honour in those days I assume.

I've only seen pictures of these so I guess pretty rare H?

Well, I've not seen any "in the wild" for some time!

ICBM

I've never seen one of the amps - just one or possibly two of the cabs, I can't remember. I think it/they were smaller than this one, probably the 2x12". Presumably people kept them to use with valve heads after the solid-state amps blew up.

Solid-state was definitely a badge of honour then - it was the future. Fender were unfortunate that by being one of the first, they got caught by a lot of the problems before the technology matured - and they were doubly unlucky that music was moving from fairly clean, refined sounds to distorted rock sounds at almost exactly this time.

By this time Leo had left Fender and his self-taught repairman's 'thrash it til it breaks, find out what went wrong and change it' method he'd used to make his valve amps reliable had been replaced by college-trained electronics engineers who didn't really understand what musicians did with their equipment.

The PA amp actually has a better chance of having survived than the guitar and bass ones, since it's less likely to have been thrashed as hard - solid-state amps *still* can't tolerate being driven fully into power-stage clipping really, so they had no chance with the relatively fragile transistors of the time.

If it is working, I'd love to hear what it sounds like - I worked on an original '64 Vox T60 some years ago, which was probably the very first production transistor amp, and were notorious for unreliability. That one must have lived a sheltered life because all the transistors were original and it worked fine - and it sounded wonderful, at least clean. I didn't dare overdrive it...

welshboyo

Where the hell do you find all of this stuff!!?

HarrySeven

And this is what the amp should look like...

ThePrettyDamned

Never seen one. 

Never heard of one. 

Where do you find these?! It actually looks amazing, I love how proud it is to be solid state  

solar

Amazing!

Solid state is still the future

earwighoney

Genuine wow.  Never seen an amp like that before! 

What does it sound like? 

HarrySeven

No idea yet...needs a thorough service first!

Bridgehouse

Does it have Valves?

mellowsun

Fantastic piece of history! I last saw and read about this amp in the 'Soul of Tone' book about Fender amps - well worth getting btw.

ICBM

Bridgehouse said:

Does it have Valves?

No! The only things with a vacuum in it are the light bulbs .

Bridgehouse

ICBM said:

Bridgehouse said:

Does it have Valves?

No! The only things with a vacuum in it are the light bulbs .

I need to get my sarcasm filter serviced

ICBM

Bridgehouse said:

I need to get my sarcasm filter serviced

I guessed you were joking, I just think it's amusing that it actually has more light bulbs than most valve amps have valves . (Although technically the bulbs are inert-gas-filled, not vacuum tubes.)