NAD- Funky old Fender Bandmaster

[bender]

This has been in the pipeline for a little while now- bought on the cheap via Reverb, imported via Youshop (painlessly), then off to Clarry for a transformer rewind and full check-up. I picked it up on Tuesday and finally had a chance to give it a test drive this morning.

It was in pretty rooted condition when it arrived, but the circuit was mostly sweet. Clarry has worked his magic and given it a clean bill of health as well as some really nice subtle tweaks to make it as robust as possible. It's a 1967 Silverface Bandmaster, but that was a transition year so the specs are identical to a Blackface model. Running on 5881 power tubes @ roughly 25watts clean and 40watts max. It's ball-rattlingly loud.

I've been playing it through the Celestion Gold in R2D2 (Reverberocket based custom build by Ryan @ The Amp Shop) and it sounds awesome!

This is my matched set- 1967 Fender Coronado -> 1967 Fender Bandmaster. Utterly glorious.

[Bg]

Nice not keen on silverface but as its really a blackface in sheeps clothing, then big thumbs up

[bender]

Nice not keen on silverface but as its really a blackface in sheeps clothing, then big thumbs up

From what I can tell, a lot of the early Silverface amps are pretty good as-is. It's only the higher wattage ones with master volumes that start getting a bit pants. I'm going to convert this to a combo, and am toying up getting a blackface front panel for it.

[Bg]

they're pretty easy to convert back to blackface anyway, according to Gerald Weber, and he should know

[vintage52]

Lovely!!

[mrmofo]

very nice.

[Slowy]

Time to arrange the Battle of the Bandmasters?

[StrummersOfThunder]

Don't convert it, or get a blackface thing. It looks cool as fuck with its shining blotchy silver face plate.
It's cool. Tres cool.

[MattAnt]

How much did the clarryfication cost? Always wondered about doing something like this

[StrummersOfThunder]

How much did the clarryfication cost? Always wondered about doing something like this

From memory I was quoted around ? $150-170 by him recently

[Slowy]

How much did the clarryfication cost? Always wondered about doing something like this

I asked him to 'do everything' on my Jansen. When I picked it up, he said he'd lubed, checked and replaced whatever needed it, added an impedance selector because he thought it would be useful and proclaimed the amp good for another 50 years.
Then he charged me $110.

[Dharmajester]

Glad to see you got there eventually Ben. Looks very cool in the smaller non reverb case.

[MattAnt]

How much did the clarryfication cost? Always wondered about doing something like this

I asked him to 'do everything' on my Jansen. When I picked it up, he said he'd lubed, checked and replaced whatever needed it, added an impedance selector because he thought it would be useful and proclaimed the amp good for another 50 years.
Then he charged me $110.

Clarry is a legend

[Slowy]

How much did the clarryfication cost? Always wondered about doing something like this

I asked him to 'do everything' on my Jansen. When I picked it up, he said he'd lubed, checked and replaced whatever needed it, added an impedance selector because he thought it would be useful and proclaimed the amp good for another 50 years.
Then he charged me $110.

Clarry is a legend

He's a national treasure for sure.

[bender]

How much did the clarryfication cost? Always wondered about doing something like this

Depends on the state of it. $150 ish for the transformer rewind plus whatever additional parts and labour are required.