Photo 1
This month I've decided to forgo answering a question—not that I don't have plenty, and thank you for that, loyal readers. Instead we'll explore a mod to a blackface Fender Vibrolux Reverb and the thinking behind it. It's an easy and completely reversible that yields what I consider to be a more versatile amp.
Not long ago, a customer brought me a Vibrolux combo he'd recently acquired. He wanted to make it one of his regular gigging amps, so he asked me to make sure it was roadworthy. He wanted new caps, tubes, and whatever else was needed. He also wanted to remove and safely stash the original speakers while they were still in working condition. His idea was to thrash a new set of speakers on gigs and not be concerned about reliability or destroying a piece of Fender history.
Replacing speakers is actually a great upgrade for any amp of this era because speakers grow tired over the years, and a fresh set can yield a far greater improvement than most players would believe. In fact, when I install new speakers in an old amp, the owner typically experiences a wow moment. (If you have an older amp, try it—you might have that reaction too.)
Before I dive into repairing or modding an amp, I always ask how the owner expects to use it. For example: Do you like to play dirty, or are you after a big, clean tone with maximum headroom? This feedback gives me an idea of what type of tubes to install and how to tailor the circuit to the player.
It turned out this customer performs a lot of music inspired by Jonny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. Great—this gave me a reference and prompted me to offer some suggestions. We all know these players were very influenced by the late, great SRV.
Before I dive into repairing or modding an amp, I always ask how the owner expects to use it.
In my brief time working with Stevie before his death, I saw that his massive backline included two Fender Super Reverb combos, each loaded with four Electro-Voice 10s—his favorite speakers for these amps. How he managed to blow speakers with such massive power handling capability with a 40-watt Super is beyond me, but his tech at the time, the legendary René Martinez, always had spares on hand. Anyway, let's see what this knowledge can do for my customer.
First, a Vibrolux Reverb is a bit like a mini Super Reverb. With a dual-6L6 output stage, the amps offer about the same power, but the Vibrolux has two 10s instead of the Super's quad set. But they're voiced differently: While most blackface and silverface Fenders use the same value capacitors in the tone stack—a 250 pF, a 0.1 µF, and a 0.047 µF—the Super Reverb has a 0.022 µF cap in place of the 0.047 µF.
My suggestion was to modify the tone stack in the Vibrolux's first channel. This way, one channel would remain stock, the other would be a bit more like a Super, and he could use an A/B switch to access either channel as desired.
Regarding speakers: Unless you can afford a roadie, I wouldn't advise loading a Super or even a Vibrolux Reverb with EV 10s. These bad boys are heavy! Instead, I suggested swapping in a lighter set of contemporary 10s that sound similar to the EVs. The owner agreed, so let's look at what we did.
Photo 1 shows how I've installed not one but two new caps in the amp's first channel. I like replacing both the .047 and 0.1 µF caps with .022 µF caps. It makes the channel a bit beefier, and that's nice for a guitar with single-coil pickups. It also leans more towards a Marshall tone stack at this point ... but not quite. Of course, Stevie was also a Marshall guy (got to love those 200-watt Majors), so if you really want to go all the way, you can replace the 250 pF treble cap with a 470 pF, but that's not something I wanted from this particular amp.
Photo 2
Now, at this point I'm sure some of you are saying, "Yeah, cool, but there's no reverb on the first channel." Well my friends, I have a bonus for you. Look at Photo 2 and notice the blue wire. That's the audio signal wire from channel 1, which was originally connected to the circled eyelet on the right. Simply remove the wire from this connection at the input of the phase inverter and connect it to the input of the reverb drive circuit, as illustrated on the left of the photo. This routes the channel 1 signal to the reverb and tremolo circuits.
Photo 3
Cool—one more bonus! Finally, for just a little extra push, I like to move the unused 220k resistor and place it in parallel with the other 220k resistor at the input to the phase inverter (see photo).
After making these mods, I installed a new pair of 10" speakers (Photo 3), and the amp was ready for the road.
[Updated 9/1/21]
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Bluegrass music is bigger than a genre. It’s become an entire world of ideas and feelings in the popular American imagination. And musician Jerry Douglas has been a key part of its celebration and revival over the past 30 years. “It's an old form of music that came from people in the south playing on the porch and became this juggernaut of a genre,” says Douglas. “It’s a character. It's a physical music.”
Douglas has racked up an impressive cabinet of accolades, including Grammys, American Music Association Awards, and International Bluegrass Music Association Awards. He’s been dubbed the CMA Awards’ Musician of the Year three times, and played with everyone from Allison Krauss and Elvis Costello to Bela Fleck and John Fogerty. He’s an encyclopedic guide to contemporary American roots music, and on this episode of Wong Notes, he walks Cory Wong through the most important moments in his 50-year career.
Tune in to hear Douglas’ assessment of bluegrass’ demanding nature (“Honestly, there's not so many genres nowadays that require as much technical facility as something like bluegrass”), what’s required of roots players (“Get it right, get it fast, make it hook”), and why the O Brother, Where Are Thou? soundtrack connected with so many listeners. Wondering how to get involved with session work? Douglas says there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, and what worked for him might not work today. The key is to be dynamic—and know when to keep your mouth shut.
There are plenty of gems in this interview, like Douglas’ thoughts on what makes a good solo, but the most significant might be Douglas’ big takeaway from decades of sitting in on communal roots-music sessions. “We can play in all genres,” says Douglas. “We just have to listen.”
Orangewood Juniper Live Acoustic Guitar
- Equipped with a high-output rail pickup (Alnico 5)
- Vintage-inspired design: trapeze tailpiece, double-bound body, 3-ply pickguard, and a cupcake knob
- Grover open-gear tuners for reliable performanceReinforced non-scalloped X bracing
- Headstock truss rod access, allowing for neck relief and adjustment
- Light gauge flatwound strings for added tonal textures
After decades of 250 road dates a year, Tab Benoit has earned a reputation for high-energy performances at clubs and festivals around the world.
On his new I Hear Thunder, Benoit still proudly plays the Fender Thinline Telecaster he purchased for $400 when he was making his debut album in Texas, 1992’s Nice & Warm. After that heralded release, his eclectic guitar work—which often echoes between classic blues-rock rumble-and-howl, the street-sweetened funk of New Orleans, and Memphis-fueled soul—helped Benoit win a long-term deal with Justice Records. But when the company folded in the late ’90s, his contract and catalog bounced from label to label.
Tab Benoit - "I Hear Thunder"
This bucked against Benoit’s strong desire to fully control his music—one reason he settled on the trio format early in his career. And although his 2011 album, Medicine, won three Blues Music Awards—the genre’s equivalent of Grammys—he stopped recording as a leader because he was bound by the stipulations of a record deal, now over, that he deemed untenable.
“I wanted to make records that reflected exactly how I sounded live and that were done as though we were playing a live concert,” Benoit says. “So, I formed my own label [Whiskey Bayou Records, with partner Reuben Williams] and signed artists whose music was, to me, the real deal, honest and straightforward. I couldn’t do anything on my own, but I could still continue putting out music that had a positive impact on the audience.”
Benoit’s new album, which includes Anders Osborne and George Porter Jr., was recorded in the studio at the guitarist’s home near the bayou in Houma, Louisiana.
Those artists include fellow rootsers Eric McFadden, Damon Fowler, Eric Johanson, Jeff McCarty, and Dash Rip Rock. Benoit also spent plenty of time pursuing his other passion: advocating for issues affecting Louisiana’s wetlands, including those around his native Houma. His 2004 album was titled Wetlands, and shortly after it was issued he founded the Voice of the Wetlands non-profit organization, and later assembled an all-star band that featured New Orleans-music MVPs Cyril Neville, Anders Osborne, George Porter Jr., Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, Johnny Vidacovich, Johnny Sansone, and Waylon Thibodeaux. This ensemble, the Voice of the Wetlands All-Stars, has released multiple CDs and toured.
Essentially, Benoit comes from the bayous, and when it’s time to record, he goes back to them, and to the studio he has in Houma, which he refers to as “the camp.” That’s where I Hear Thunder came to life. “George and Anders came to me and said, ‘Let’s go make some music,” Benoit offers. “So, we went out to the camp. They had some songs—and George and Anders and I go back so many years it was really a treat to put everything together. It only took us a couple of days to do everything we needed to do.”
“George Porter and Anders Osborne and I saw this alligator sitting around the boat where we were writing the entire time. I guess he really liked the song.”
I Hear Thunder has become his first number one on Billboard’s blues chart. Besides the fiery-yet-tight and disciplined guitar work of Benoit and Osborne, the latter also an esteemed songwriter, the album features his longtime rhythm section of bassist Corey Duplechin and drummer Terence Higgins. Bass legend Porter appears on two tracks, “Little Queenie” and “I’m a Write That Down.” Throughout the album, Benoit sings and plays with soul and tremendous energy, plus he handled engineering, mixing, and production.
Once again, that ascribed to his aesthetic. “My main reason for taking on those extra duties was I wanted to make sure that this recording gives the audience kind of a preview of how we’re going to sound live,” he declares. “That’s one of the things that I truly don’t like about a lot of current recordings. I listen to them and then see those guys live and it’s like, ‘Hey, that doesn't sound like what was on the album.’ Play it once or twice and let’s run with it. Don’t overdo it to the point you kill the honesty. All the guys that I love—Lightnin’ Hopkins, Albert King—they played it once, and you better have the tape machine running because they’re only going to give it to you that one time. That’s the spontaneity that you want and need.
“One of the reasons I don’t use a lot of pedals and effects is because I hate gimmicks,” he continues. “ I’m playing for the audience the way that I feel, and my attitude is ‘Let’s plug into the guitar and let it rip. If I make a mistake, so be it. I’m not using Auto-Tune to try and get somebody’s vocal to seem perfect. You think John Lee Hooker cared about Auto-Tune? You’re cheating the audience when you do that stuff.”
Tab Benoit’s Gear
Benoit in 2024 with his trusty 1972 Fender Thinline Telecaster, purchased in 1992 for $400. Note that Benoit is a fingerstyle player.
Photo by Doug Hardesty
Guitar
- 1972 Fender Telecaster Thinline
Amp
- Category 5 Tab Benoit 50-watt combo
Strings
- GHS Boomers (.011–.050)
The I Hear Thunder songs that particularly resonate include the explosive title track, the soulful “Why, Why” and the rollicking “Watching the Gators Roll In,” a song that directly reflected the album’s writing experience and environment. “George and Anders and I saw this alligator sitting around the boat where we were writing the entire time. I guess he really liked the song. He’d be swimming along and responding. That gave it some added punch.” As does Benoit and Osborne’s consistently dynamic guitar work. “I’m not one of these people who want to just run off a string of notes or do a lot of fast playing,” Benoit says. “It has to fit the song, the pace, and most of all, really express what I’m feeling at that particular moment. I think when the audience comes to a show and you play the songs off that album, you’ve got to make it real and make it honest.”
When asked whether he ever tires of touring, Benoit laughs and says, “Absolutely not. At every stop now I see a great mix of people who’ve been with us since the beginning, and then their children or sometimes even their grandchildren. When people come up to you and say how much they enjoy your music, it really does make you feel great. I’ve always seen the live concerts as a way of bringing some joy and happiness to people over a period of time, of helping them forget about whatever problems or issues they might have had coming in, and just to enjoy themselves. At the same time, I get a real thrill and joy from playing for them, and it’s something that I always want the band’s music to do—help bring some happiness and joy to everyone who hears our music.”
YouTube It
Hear Tab Benoit practice the art of slow, soulful, simmering blues on his new I Hear Thunder song “Overdue,” also featuring his well-worn 1972 Telecaster Thinline.