A $400 Transition-Era Twin Reverb

Until then, I had never heard of Fender’s “transitional era,” the time from roughly late 1964 to early 1966 when Fender Musical Instruments’ ownership passed from Leo Fender to CBS. “Too bad it’s not a ’65,” several other players told me when I shared the story of my acquisition. “In ’65, Fender made really great Twins. The CBS stuff is hit-or-miss.” As far as I was concerned, my Twin was a hit. It could punch through my band’s wall of sound and took to pedals wonderfully, yielding all kinds of gnarly noises with a Tube Screamer and a RAT, and creating open, spectral spaces with a DigiTech PDS 1000 delay and Boss CE-2 Chorus. Eventually I paired it with a 50-watt Marshall Super Lead and a channel switcher, so I could have the best of both classic-tone worlds. (Yes, I threw my back out a lot in the ’90s.)

I’m good at ignoring gear snobs, but given how great this Twin was for recording and gigs, I was puzzled by its second-class status. It was only after an onstage mishap that I learned there was more to this amp than my cork-sniffing friends knew. One night, mid-gig, my Twin simply went silent. I learned that the output transformer had blown. Bad caps? An overload? I dunno. But when I took it to my local amp resurrectionist, he started probing around inside and informed me that my Twin was essentially a ’65 in ’66 clothing—right down to the Fender Musical Instruments lettering on its black panel. All the components—including the factory-installed JBL D120F speakers—were the same as he’d seen in most ’65s he’d worked on, and he told me that during the transitional era, many of Fender’s products were made exactly as they’d always been. It was only after the CBS ownership was firmly established that the company shifted to a more cost-conscious style of mass production, with resulting compromises in quality. (In 1985, Fender employees bought the company and restored its reputation.) I felt like I’d lucked out a second time.

At 85 watts and two channels, any Twin is a monster tube amp, and it’s hard to imagine just how loud and clean one can get unless you’ve opened a Twin up all the way. (I only did that once, just to see what it could do, and regretted the ringing it left in my ears for days.) With tremolo and the reverb that defined what the word means in a Fender, the Twin is the sound you’ve heard and loved on myriad classic rock, jazz, blues, and R&B records. I confess that I’m no longer sure what replacement transformer my amp tech installed, but the sound remained the same.

Since I’ve always had a player’s, rather than a collector’s, mentality, eventually I did alter the amp to fit my shifting tastes. I needed to replace the caps at some point, and when a speaker burned out, I put Celestions in both slots—a 30- and a 35-watt, because mixed-wattage speakers were kind of a trend at the time, so I figured I’d try it. The amp still had an absurd amount of headroom, but just a little grit, which is what I was looking for. I last used it for recording an early ’70s psychedelic-rock tone for an album I was working on in 2017, and just before the pandemic I sold it for $1,500. In the case, it came close to 90 pounds, and I just didn’t want to cart it around anymore. If it was a mint ’65, the asking price would have been around $5,000, but I felt I'd gotten more than my money’s worth.

“I’m good at ignoring gear snobs, but given how great this Twin was for recording and gigs, I was puzzled by its second-class status.”

The moral to this yarn is simple: Don’t turn your nose up at gear that doesn’t fit a trope, because you might be pleasantly surprised. Also, if it sounds great and does the job for you, what else really matters? It’s good stuff! Now, are you ready for the story of the ’68 factory-painted cherry sunburst Les Paul Standard I picked up for $650?