Silver and Black: Last-Minute Fender Saves

In 2013, organizers of the Kongsberg Jazzfestival in Norway reached out in urgent need of guitar amps for Robben Ford and Matt Schofield. I was thrilled—I knew I had the perfect amps for these blues aficionados. Though I had never seen Ford play live, I knew from reading interviews that he liked black panel Fenders. Schofield was more familiar to me. I’d caught him several times, always playing his SVL guitars through Two-Rock amps. I particularly remember one time he taped over the logo of a 4x12" Marshall speaker cabinet, probably because he didn’t want to be associated with the brand.

I loaded my car with my best Super Reverb, a silver panel Vibrolux Reverb, and a silver panel Deluxe Reverb as backup amps, both converted to black panel specs with modern upgraded speakers. The Vibrolux had a pair of 10" Weber 10A125s and the Deluxe a 12" Celestion Century Vintage, the very first guitar amp speaker with a neodymium magnet. Together with a custom pair of 6L6s, this amp was both lighter and twice as loud and punchy as a normal Deluxe Reverb.

For Matt, I borrowed my brother’s Two-Rock Custom Signature v3 and a 40 kg oak cabinet loaded with four heavy-duty Weber 10A150 and 10F150 speakers. It even had a cool Weber logo on the front. At soundcheck, I met up with Simon Law, Matt’s guitar tech and the founder of SVL Guitars. He was a bit unsure about the robustness of the original CTS speakers in the Super, but I assured him that they could take a beating.

We set up both the Super and Vibrolux for Robben and the Two-Rock for Matt on top of the huge Weber cabinet. I remember Matt spending a lot of time rotating the Two-Rock’s knobs to find his tone. Meanwhile, Robben didn’t even look at his amps before he struck a chord, and he was shocked by the loud volume! He walked back a few meters to dial down the level on both amps.

“The whole shop erupted when Kirk demoed a few Albert King licks—powerful bends, vibrato, and those unmistakable facial expressions to match.”

During the gig, I stood right in the line of fire of all the amps and enjoyed the show. Robben’s ES-335 sounded clean and articulate, and Matt had his typical saturated and fat single-coil neck-pickup Strat tone. They both sounded fabulous. It was great seeing them perform, and also meeting them before the gig.

A few years later, I was introduced to two of my all-time guitar heroes, Kirk Fletcher and Josh Smith. The meeting came via the talented Adam Douglas, who also lives in Norway. Adam came up with an idea to do a daytime jam session with Kirk and Josh in a guitar store. So I texted with the owner of Vintagegitar, a high-end boutique shop in Oslo, who immediately said yes. I lifted 15-20 different vintage Fender amps into my Fenderguru trailer and headed for town.

On the shop floor, we had nearly every Fender blackface amp in existence, plus a few great silver panels. Kirk played his flametop Les Paul while Josh had his regular black Chapin T-Bird. I plugged them into different amps and started turning knobs. Josh spent time with my 1966 Princeton Reverb, loaded with a custom '60s Jensen C10n speaker. Meanwhile, Kirk grabbed a Flying V hanging on the wall. I plugged him into a stock 1964 Twin Reverb with Oxford 12T6 speakers. With the volume between 4 and 5, the Twin was loud, and the Flying V's hot humbuckers filled the room with sustaining single notes.

The whole shop erupted when Kirk demoed a few Albert King licks—powerful bends, vibrato, and those unmistakable facial expressions to match. Goosebumps.

Kirk liked that Twin so much he asked to borrow it for his gig that night. A few songs from that October 2015 show at Herr Nilsen are documented on YouTube for anyone wanting to hear some serious blues guitar.