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Amplifiers
1985: two blackface Fender Super Reverbs (4x10 EV’s), a 150-watt Dumble Steel String Singer (4x12 with four 100-watt EV’s, and 6550 tubes), another Dumble 150-watt 4x12. The 4x12 cabinets were non-angled homemade cabs. Sometimes a 200-watt Marshall Plexi-Major was substitued for the second Dumble head. Stevie had two Fender Vibroverbs ca. 1963-64, (1x15) one often used to power a Fender Vibratone. The Vibroverbs and Supers had 3/4” plywood baffle boards to accommodate the weight of the speakers. The EVM’s larger magnets required repositioning some of the transformers in the chassis. In the later years, the Vibroverbs had Super Reverb-style transformers. The first channel from the phase inverter tube was disconnected and the tremolo disabled (by disconnecting the wires from the intensity control - don’t try this at home unless you want to turn yourself into a light bulb). In the summer of 1990, Stevie also took a couple of 4x10 Fender reissue Bassmans on the road, but the speakers were replaced.
The two Vibroverbs are often referred to as “sequentially numbered” 5 and 6, but the serial numbers were in fact 36 digits apart. 5 and 6 are references to the Dumble amps, which were numbers 005 and 006.
Tubes were typically Philips 6L6’s and 12AX7’s and GE 6550’s. Mesa Boogie STR415’s and STR387’s were also used when they could be found.
Volume settings on stage usually started at 7 or 7.5 but would end up at 10 for “Voodoo Chile.” Roadie Cutter Brandenburg recalls that Stevie would often run his hand down the bottom of the knobs, turning them all up as far as they would go.
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