Which Fender amp would pair with this breezy ’65 Gibson ES-125CD?
With a few simple tweaks, you can get any classic Fender amp to cooperate with whatever guitar you like.
I find endless fascination in experimenting with different combinations of guitars and amps. Many of you may also have made surprising discoveries with certain amps and guitars as “killer” combinations. In this column, we’ll delve into the reasons behind these magical pairings, and discuss how you can modify your amp to achieve the elusive tone that lingers in your mind day and night. While having a variety of amps at your disposal is one solution, it’s undeniably an expensive and impractical one. Fortunately, knowledge is a more accessible asset. In my previous column, I explored speaker cabinets that can expand the versatility of your amp. I recommend giving it a read, as it closely ties into this topic.
Let’s begin with the Les Paul. Its mahogany body and neck contribute to a warm tone with exceptional sustain and attack, attributes further enhanced by the fixed bridge and solidbody construction. While most people associate the Les Paul with Marshall amps for classic rock tones, I find its clean tone more intriguing and often overlooked. Recently, I have discovered several live performances by American blues guitarist Mike Welch on YouTube, showcasing a fantastic Les Paul tone: bright and clean, with crucial attack that heightens dynamics and “fingerspitzengefühl”—in short, intuition and sensitivity.
Here’s my approach to achieving a fabulous clean Les Paul tone with classic Fender amps. I’ve found that amps with all EQ controls (bass, mids, treble, and a bright switch) work best for me. This allows me to rein in the bass and add top-end sparkle. For amps lacking a mid control, such as the Princeton, Deluxe, and Pro, I recommend installing a 25k mid pot in the amp’s ground-lift spot. This modification widens the tonal range from extremely icy and scooped to full British warmth. The Les Paul’s humbuckers, with their significant bass and mids, pair well with larger Fender amps that offer clean headroom and a firm low end. Personally, a Twin Reverb or Super Reverb loaded with firm, American-style speakers is my preferred mate for a Les Paul, providing enough attack to prevent muddiness in the tone.
“Hollowbodies pose a challenge, as they can generate unpleasant, squealing feedback when too close to a loud and bass-y amp.”
Now, let’s shift our focus to Gibson’s semi-hollow and hollowbody ES guitars. These guitars exhibit a bit less attack and a more vibrant, acoustic flavor. The semi-hollow ES-335 pairs well with most Fender amps, given there’s enough clarity. However, hollowbodies pose a challenge, as they can generate unpleasant, squealing feedback when too close to a loud and bass-y amp. To counter this, I prefer smaller amps for smaller venues, such as the vibrato channel of the Deluxe Reverb, thanks to its bright cap. The Princeton Reverb and the Deluxe’s left, normal channel lack the sparkle and clarity I prefer with the airy Gibson ES guitars. Since I installed a 100 pF bright cap in my 1966 Princeton Reverb, it has proven to be a perfect match. But newer, brighter speakers can compensate for the missing bright cap, too.
If you predominantly use humbucker guitars with older Fender amps, consider swapping to a low-gain preamp tube to expand the amp’s volume control range. The 5751 tube, with a gain factor of 70–80, makes it easier to dial in a sweet spot, providing more usable span on the volume control than the original 12AX7, with its gain factor of 100. Using the amp’s second, low-impedance input can also lower volume and gain, but keep in mind that you’ll lose a bit of treble in the process. Therefore, reducing the preamp tube gain is a better option.
In the single-coil league, the strategies for achieving a desired tone are almost the opposite of the humbucker league. Here, the focus is on taming brightness and generating enough warmth, especially with Stratocasters that have bright and low-output pickups. Thicker strings and increased pickup height contribute to warmth, but pushing the amp hard enough is equally crucial. This causes it to break up in both the power amp and preamp sections, creating rich harmonics in the upper mid and treble frequencies. These harmonics balance and smooth out the guitar’s scooped tone. With larger Fender amps, I may want to reduce clean headroom by disengaging speakers to increase speaker impedance, or by swapping to less efficient speakers. An easy tube mod involves replacing the 12AT7 phase inverter tube with a 12AX7 to decrease clean headroom in the power amp section. You can find details on these well-known mods in my past columns.
Hopefully, these examples can inspire you to discover golden tones with the amps and guitars you already have.
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Why don’t master-volume Twin Reverbs get any respect?
Hello Jeff,
I just got a '70s silverface Fender Twin Reverb that needs a little TLC. Surfing the various forums, I've learned that this master-volume edition of the Twin is one of the most (unfairly, to me) maligned designs. The only indication of power is the "300 watts" label on the back.
I've wanted a silverface Twin or Pro Reverb since I was a teen. To me they are loud, clean, blank slates to color with different guitars and pedals. I'd appreciate any thoughts you might have on this amp.
Thanks, John Gilbert
Matt Alcott
Hi John,
The Twin Reverb design has been through many iterations since its 1963 debut. The amps Fender produced between 1963 and 1967 are known as "blackfaces" because of their black control panels, and their designs remained largely unchanged during this period. Blackface Twin Reverbs are the most coveted versions of this amp. With their stated power of 85 watts, they are the most powerful Fender amps of the era.
In 1968 Fender changed to the "silverface" control panel. The circuitry was altered as well: There were changes to the bias and phase inverter circuits and, most important, the output stage. For whatever reason, the engineers at Fender added seven additional components to the output stage, effectively turning it into a semi-cathode-biased output. While these amps were supposedly rated at 100 watts, they are nowhere near as potent as their predecessors. Some players actually prefer these models, however, because they tend to compress more easily than any other Twin. According to the dates on Fender schematics, these "improvements" only lasted for a year. You can easily identify these 1968 amps by the silver-metal band around the perimeter of the grille cloth.
The 1969 schematic revision shows a return to the standard fixed-bias, 100-watt output-stage configuration, though the bias and phase inverter changes remained. An additional change occurred in 1970 with the addition of a capacitor to eliminate "ticking" in the tremolo circuit. The next change was the addition of a master volume control in 1972. This brings us to the era of your amp.
Now, having a master volume control on a Fender Twin Reverb, or most any other Fender amp of this era, seems like a useless addition. Master volumes are generally associated with and necessary in amps that use considerable front-end gain to overdrive the preamp section. The signal level can then be reduced prior to the output stage to control overall amp volume. There is not a huge amount of gain in the preamp stages of a Twin Reverb, at least not enough to achieve significant overdrive. So why incorporate a master volume?
Most post-black-planel "improvements" can be returned to pre-'68 specs, yielding a pretty toneful amp.
One explanation might be to allow the amp's preamp section to be overdriven by an external gain-boosting device, such as the Electro-Harmonix LPB-1 or the Dallas Rangemaster, both popular in the late '60s and early '70s. Turning up the channel volume allowed increased overdrive in the preamp section, with the overall volume of the amp controlled by the newly added master volume. Okay, now it makes a little more sense. But the engineers at Fender took it a step further, adding the ability to access more gain internally. This boost is activated via a master volume control with a push/pull switch.
So where did this extra gain come from? From the most unlikely of places: the reverb drive signal! The reverb drive circuit in most tube-driven reverb amps is actually similar to a small, low-power, single-end output stage. The tube is fed a signal (from channel 2, or the "vibrato" channel, in the case of Fender reverb amps). The tube's output connects to a transformer, exactly as in a single-ended amp like a Champ. But instead of being connected to a speaker, the output of the transformer in the reverb drive circuit is fed to a transducer in the reverb pan. It's similar to a speaker, except instead of driving a cone, it drives a spring. As you can imagine, a signal derived from this circuit could have substantial level, which could easily overdrive a preamp tube—and since the overdrive comes from a little tube power amp, it should sound pretty good.
Yeah … in theory.
In reality, the result was far from stellar, and I'm not sure I know anyone who actually uses this feature. I've never ascertained if this is because the reverb drive signal simply doesn't sound as good as you'd expect, or because of where this signal is applied in the amp. Either way, this under-whelming overdrive tone—together with the master volume and other post-1967 circuit changes—is why your amp is, in your words, maligned. But don't lose sleep over this, as most post-blackface "improvements" can be returned to pre-'68 specs, yielding a pretty toneful amp. Hmmm—food for thought for my next column.
I hope that sheds a little light on your amp, but remember: It's only a bad amp if you don't like it!
[Updated 11/8/21]