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Mid 70's Silver Face Fender Twin Black Face Conversion

I picked up this beat to hell Fender Twin Reverb down in Ann Arbor Michigan last fall for cheap.  It was pretty rough but I could see the possibilities.  I did some quick research and found out that the amp was a late 1973 to early 1974 Fender Twin with a master volume.  Once I got the dates it was a matter of gathering part numbers & parts.

 My plan was simple ~ convert this mid 70's Silver Face twin into a 65-67 Black face Twin.  Not just one that looked like a Black Face but one that sounded like one too.  Luckily there are a lot of helpful resources on the net like (http://www.diyguitarist.com/GuitarAmps/TwinReverb.htm) but unlike most websites that focused on restoring your amp I wanted to make my amp better. 

Before

I learned from my amp guy Gene (amp wizard actually) that the early silver faces were good candidates.  The later you got in the line up the worse off you would be.  Anything after 1977 was going to be damn near impossible to convert with out gutting and rebuilding the entire chassis.

I went to work and stripped off the rotten tolex and was surprised to find the amp had a pine cabinet (excellent for tone) but it needed a little work got get just right.

Once the cabinet was fixed it needed some paint.

After the paint dried it was time for the new tolex.  I kept the old tolex to use as a template so I didn't get too far off from the original pattern.  I also made new back panels from 1/4" plywood because the old ones were falling apart.

It was starting to look the part but of course if you know what to look for you can easily tell it's still a Silver face cabinet.  Black face twins did not have castors.  I didn't want to carry this thing around so the castors were going to stay.  I did find this cool tube chart though.   It looks like the real thing except for the date stamp.

Now it was time for some speakers.  This twin came with a set of Oxfords that actually sounded pretty good but the cones were hard as a rock.  It was just a matter of time before they just fell apart so I found a set of Jensen C12N's.  They're re-issues but sound damn good.

Now it was starting to look like an amplifier again.  You'll notice it still has the silver face grille cloth ~ that's because one of the amp suppliers I dealt with is very disorganized and slow.  (I'm not going to mention the name but they still owe me some grille cloth!)

After a couple weeks of waiting for all the parts to arrive it was finally time to replace the caps & tubes. The amp came with the original RCA pre amp tubes and Fender power tubes.  The power tubes were a little long in the tooth so they were replaced.  All the old brown caps were replaced with orange drops and the old Mallory caps were swapped out for Sprague Atoms.  It took (4) different supplier to get all the capacitors.  The final touch for the chassis was of course the new face plate.

Once I got the chassis back it was a matter of minutes before the entire amp was back together.  As you can tell it's still sporting the silver face grille cloth and the silver face logo.  I'll eventually get the grille cloth changed.  My intent wasn't as much to make it look identical to a black face but to make it sound like one.  Just to let you know it sounds amazing!  Very similar to the dark side of the moon Pink Floyd sound.  Feel free to email if you have any questions or comments - also just incase you're wondering it's not for sale.

Twin Update

After about 6 months of break in time the amp sounds amazing.  The Jensen Reissues didn't quite hold up so a set of Eminence Red, White & Blues were added.  The black face grille cloth had to go too because it made the amp look like a reissue so I settled for something on the wild side.  Behold the amp your mother warned you about ~ the Fender Twin Reefer.  (what's life with out a little fun?)