Opinions on 1966 Bassman amps...

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It's the 50 watt 4X10' tweeds from the '50's that are considered the holy grail for guitarists, not the 2X12" or15". Fender has made a reissue of this, but I have no idea if they're any good. The old ones are probably the most valuable of any vintage amp.

Thank the good Lord someone pointed this out. I don't think anyone's goin around with the Bassmans from the late 60s / 70s that had a separate head. The ones guitarists hail as the best guitar amp ever are the 59-early sixties 50 watt 4x10" combo amps.

With a separate reverb tank, they make a very nice guitar amp. It is essentially the same as the Blues DeVille's, without the overdrive or reverb. Of course the elctronics are slightly different in the DeVille, but the general idea is there both in speakers, wiring, and tube compliment.

As for bass, they can push some air, but honestly, I don't trust playing my bass through my 59 Bassman... even with the electronics replaced, I am still playing through the original Alnico Jensens, and I don't want to blow those things out :P
 
I never cared for them. They suck for bass, and for lead they're too muddy.

I don't know how they became the holy grail of anything.
 
For bass they're crappy LOL, regardless of what the market may be for them as guitar amps.
Everyone has their own opinion of course, but for bass they have a distorted fuzzy sound and I'm from the days when they were everywhere so it's not just one bad one I heard.
Yes, there are some folks here saying that they are good but I also see people saying Behringer is the shit so it's amatter of how much gigging experience you may or may not have.
If you're playing bass in a studio they're fine ...... if you're playing bass in an acoustic act that never gets very loud they're fine though I still find them too distorted.
But for bass in any band where the drummer pounds the drums, they don't have any headroom and they won't cleanly anywhere near loud enough to keep up and not sound like a fuzz box. Hell, I heard one by coincidence just a couple of weeks ago when this local guy who is really into having a great vintage collection brought it to what is a fairly low volume jam ............... it sounded like doggy doo-doo!
Yep, what he said!:D
 
Not 'doo-doo' but CERTAINLY not enough headroom for bass in any venue. As for the configuration getting the most vintage play, it would be the 4-10 tweed. This amp was introduced in 1954 and was a mainstay on bandstands for many years until rock-and-roll became.....errr...louder. These amps were actually around 40 watts RMS and past 4 or 5 it wasnt more volume as much as break-up. The early Marshalls are based on this circuit. The piggyback amps were 50 watts when they came out in 1961. (Ok, there were a few in 1959 and 1960)...but by 61 all the tweed line was done. The Bassman 100 didnt show up until the mid 70's and still had no headroom to speak of, though it had a much more muscular sound and didnt clip quite so quickly. The harmonic characteristics of the Bassman circuit made it great for guitars. I've played in many bands from that era where the guitarist used a 50 watt Bassman head, an echoplex and a Fender Reverb tank. Classic stuff.

Sunn, Ampeg, and Acoustic rulled the bass world starting around 1970. Ampeg still does, though the selection has widened somewhat.

In the old days, if you wanted a bit more snap to the Bassman head on guitar you installed a solid-state rectifier. More dirt and harmonics, a 5AU4 tube.

Personally, I used three Showman heads for bass until I bought my Sunn 2000S (two of em) which was then replaced by an Acoustic 360 and an Ampeg SVT.

The BEST sounding Bassman for BASS was the mid 70's Bassman10. 50 watt tube head, 4-10's in a closed back cabinet with casters. Just a slight bit larger than a Super Reverb. Still not all that loud but tone for days.

Seems with all the 4-10 technology out there today, that Leo knew what he was all about with the 4-10's in the beginning for bass.
 
Our bassist uses a blackface Bassman head. I'm not sure of the wattage, but it certainly doesn't have much clean headroom.

Not that it sounds bad, though. The dirt does a lot for the low end, especially since we don't play that chugga-chugga "I'm tuned way too far down" guitar stuff. If you leave some room in the bottom end of your mix for the bass in general, the dirt of that Bassman can do wonders.

That being said, it is certainly no power beast. I'd like to hear him through an Ampeg SVT and an 8x10. Well, it would probably be more like "feel" than "hear".
 
but I have no idea if they're any good. The old ones are probably the most valuable of any vintage amp.

they are wicked, I want one but not a reissue because I'm a sucker for the real thing

the problem is people liuke BB King & Eric Clapton probably have people scouring everywhere known to man for these amps

the bassman head (69 in this case) produced evil tones at about 7 with a 76 strat using 2 wem 2x12 speakers. The 2x15 bassman cab is not even in the ball park. I don't like it on bass as a single amp as I like a loud clean signal. See if you bi amp all the lows to a bassman going into a big speaker OMIGOD look out
 
Sometime in the mid 70's I had a Bassman 400. It was clearly designed to compete with the SVT. It had 6-6550's and amazingly, sounded just like the little Bassman only louder! :D Its' sound turned to mush right away exactly like a regular bassman.
. It was a time when we all traded our gear all the time and I'd traded an SVT for it. It looked great and was so heavy that it literally took two people to carry it!
Sure did sound crappy though it was well built.
One night we were playing a big outdoor thing at LSU and the stage was a couple of big-rig flatbed trailers and I had the amp on a speaker cab so it was probably 8 feet off the ground. I was getting my bass out of the case and heard someone yell, "Look OUT!!!" and turned around just in time to see the amp get knocked off and fall all the way SLAM! to the ground. :eek:
Picked it up ...... plugged it in ........ it was fine. Sounded as rotten as ever!
:D:D
 
you'll hear a guy named Izzy recording an album starting with 'Appetite', if you like that sound...
 
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