Tell me about the Fender Concert amp

vasselmeyer

We used a new rehearsal place today and it's at the top of a long flight of stairs I didn't want to haul my Engnater up them so I used the house amp which was a Fender Concert. I just set the EQ to 5 on each dial and then used the master volume to get a clean tone. I'm not a Fender amp guy at all, I lean much more to British sounds but I have to say this thing was really very very nice indeed on the clean channel. I didn't even use the dirty channel as I got dirt from pedals.

The guy mentioned that he might be selling it and I weas so taken by the clean I was wondering if I might make him an offer. What can people tell me about the Concert amps?

EricTheWeary

Nothing much, although I did once have a conversation with Trev at Tipton Amps ( like you do...) and he said something like they were the best clean amp Fender ever made.

monquixote

I nearly bought one once. They are very nice sounding amps. 

I think I'm right in saying they were designed by Rivera. 

ICBM

They are the last hand-wired normal production Fender amps ever made, arguably the best built, and very good-sounding, although the distortion channel possibly leaves a bit to be desired by modern standards (but can be improved relatively easily). All-ply cabinets and very good Eminence speakers with a factory option of EVs. Very loud and quite heavy.

Values are not all that high despite this. Depending on condition, probably £400-£600 for the most common 1x12", a little more for the rarer 2x10" and 4x10" versions.

They are also quite valve-sensitive and need good ones to get the full power and dynamics - if you're lucky you may find most of the original preamp valves, but the power valves will usually have long since gone.

There is one known maintenance issue, which is an under-rated resistor in the bias supply that can fail and kill the power valves, but if replaced by a higher power one is then totally reliable.

They were developed with Paul Rivera as a consultant although he didn't actually do most of the design.

If you're going to buy one and want to use the distortion channel, make sure it has the footswitch - it's unique and expensive to replace or build a copy of.