FENDER BASSMAN '59 help please!

C

Colwarter

New member
Hey guys,
I'm a guitar player and I am looking for a nice vintage fender amp. Has anyone ever tried the Fender Bassman '59 ltd ? I was wondering if I could get any distortion out of it. Is it just a clean amp? Do you have any other suggestions for an amp? I'm also considering a Fender Hot Rod Blues Deville or an Orange amp. Please help me taking my decision guys. I don't care if there's only one channel I just need a little bit of distortion. Thank you !
 
I have a couple hot rod devilles, there's not much useable distortion there. It develops a nice sag at about 5 on the dial and is very bluesy, but not distorted. I use a Bad Bob Booster for a little extra fizz, and TS9 ot SD9 for real disto.

If you want to hear a fabulous '59 Bassman sound, check out any Lee Roy Parnell record. He uses two in tandem that are practically dimed, and he plays slide as well as anybody you've ever heard.
 
mikemorgan said:
I have a couple hot rod devilles, there's not much useable distortion there. It develops a nice sag at about 5 on the dial and is very bluesy, but not distorted. I use a Bad Bob Booster for a little extra fizz, and TS9 ot SD9 for real disto.
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Ummm, there is no "sag" in the HotRod series. You get sag from a tube recifier, and those amps don't have that. :D You mean a nice tube compression I take it?
 
Colwarter said:
Hey guys,
I'm a guitar player and I am looking for a nice vintage fender amp. Has anyone ever tried the Fender Bassman '59 ltd ? I was wondering if I could get any distortion out of it. Is it just a clean amp? Do you have any other suggestions for an amp? I'm also considering a Fender Hot Rod Blues Deville or an Orange amp. Please help me taking my decision guys. I don't care if there's only one channel I just need a little bit of distortion. Thank you !
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You can get some very nice and smooth overdriven tones. Everything from a jangle to a really raunchy bark. They are very nice amps and I would say they fit your description.

The HotRod amps have a decent clean that will breakup into a nice overdrive on the 1st channel. I personally didn't like the 2nd channel on the one I had. It was too noisy IMO.
 
Thank you guys for your quick replies. I'm very glad you took some time to help me. One of you guys made me realise something. I could buy a Fender '59 Bassman for its amazing clean tone and use a decent vintage distortion pedal with it. Something like a Fulltone full-drive. The only thing i'm worrying about is: Will my distortion be as good as if I bought an amp with a drive channel on it? I mean, I don't want a heavy metal distortion I want a vintage distortion. What do you guys think? Should I take an amp with 2 separate channels so i can have my distortion channel on my amp? Or I could get a nice drive tone from a pedal through the Fender Bassman? Cause that's what I would like. Thank you very much
 
Colwarter said:
Thank you guys for your quick replies. I'm very glad you took some time to help me. One of you guys made me realise something. I could buy a Fender '59 Bassman for its amazing clean tone and use a decent vintage distortion pedal with it. Something like a Fulltone full-drive. The only thing i'm worrying about is: Will my distortion be as good as if I bought an amp with a drive channel on it? I mean, I don't want a heavy metal distortion I want a vintage distortion. What do you guys think? Should I take an amp with 2 separate channels so i can have my distortion channel on my amp? Or I could get a nice drive tone from a pedal through the Fender Bassman? Cause that's what I would like. Thank you very much
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Here the thing with the Bassman, and any good tube amp that isn't super high gain. You can get an extreme good drive sound and then either pick lighter to get a clean, or if you are driving it too hard, you can roll off the guitars volume a hair to get a nice clean. You really need to play one to fully understand.

And on the flip side, you can get a boost pedal to drive the amp from a slight breakup/clean sound into a real powerful rock tone. I would recommend the Fulltone FatBoost, as I had one and its a very transparent pedal.
 
If you have a space you can turn the Bassman up in you won't be disappointed.

I've messed arounds with a couple of them, you really don't miss the reverb either. I didn't, anyways. :)
 
I own an old bassman and would never sell it. Its my main recording amp that I put every guitar player on that comes to me. It gets semi clean and semi distorted. Put a pedal in front of it and its great. Two of my favorites are my vintage big muff and the zvex superhardon. You can't go wrong with a bassman in my opinion. I own a hot rod deluxe as well and it stays at my parent's house for my dad to play on. It never gets recorded.
 
Bassman's great (with a couple pedals), Super Reverb is a little nicer to my taste and if you can get a hold of an old 70's twin, I think you'd like that as well, the Stones sure did.
 
The Bassman is a pretty cool amp.......but..........for good tube saturation it will be very loud. I like them but don't have opportunity to crank one up.
 
Its also really cool to play bass through the bassman (I know, hard to believe). But its a neat rock sound.
 
Bassman all the way! The thing's a beast. Even if it can't do the distortion tone you're looking for by itself, pick it up. It's a great amp.
 
If I had my druthers I'd go with Bassman's and Super Reverb's all day long but my back doesn't like hauling them around anymore. Now I stick with a 64 Deluxe and an Allen Accomplice, which is a boutique tricked up 65 Deluxe. That Allen sounds like the best Deluxe Reverb you ever heard.
Still, I do miss that extra wattage pumping through those 4-10's!
 
I think i'm gonna pick up the Bassman. You guys helped me a lot taking this decision. Is that amp that loud? I mean, can I get any drive without cranking it to 10? Today I played on a Fender Blues Deville (410 with tweed covering) I was impressed by the sound but damn it was loud! It's an older version I think it was made in the 90s. It reads behind 180W. Is that possible? I thought the Blues Deville was something like 50 or 60 watts. Since that amp sounded very good, I just can't imagine how the Bassman sounds. It must be really amazing. The only thing I'm gonna miss is the drive button which is on the Blues Deville. When I turned it up a little I could have sweeeeeet sound. What do you guys think of this Blues Deville 410 combo comparing to the Bassman? Is there a huge difference? The drive button keeps me hesitate. Thank you very much for your time.
 
It will be just as loud as the DeVille. You will get a nice break up well before it is dimed. But if its too loud I would just get a THD HotPlate for it. That is better than a master volume anyday of the week.

If you can, go play a '65 Deluxe Reverb Re-issue. Its a single volume knob since there is no master volume w/gain knob, but it will show you how an amp goes from clean, to a nice breakup, to a serious rock sound all at the turn of a single knob. Then you can experiment with light picking, heavy picking, and using the guitars volume. Its just for reference though since they are very different amps.
 
If you are looking at an Orange amp, I'd recommend the Rockerverb 30 or 50. VERY versatile amps. The bassman is a cool amp for certain things but it's not a gainful amp at all. I have an old Blackface Bassman from around 67 and I never use it for anything live as I don't like pedal distortion.
 
Micter said:
The bassman is a cool amp for certain things but it's not a gainful amp at all. I have an old Blackface Bassman from around 67 and I never use it for anything live as I don't like pedal distortion.
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A Blackface Bassman has nothing in common with a 59 Bassman other than name.
 
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