What makes a Fender Blonde..."Blonde"?

[ruger9]

I know the blondes are from the brownface era, in general, but what is it about the blondes that makes them different from tweeds & blackfaces? is it just differences in tone stack values, or what?

[blackba]

I am not expert on the Blonde/Brown era, but I can tell you what I hear from my Brown super. The Brown/Blondes have more mids than the blackface amps, but less mids than the tweeds in general. They are meaner than the Blackface amps when they breakup, but not as crunchy as the tweeds. They are kind of the halfway point. The tonestack is different from the blackface, but I haven't studied it in detail to know exact differences.

I have heard people say they have never met a Blonde or Brown era amp that they didn't like and after hearing my Brown super I believe it.

I would love to get a blonde bassman or bandmaster head at some point....

[epluribus]

There's a good starter description at The Fender Amp Field Guide. (http://www.thevintagesound.com/ffg/) They're some of the most revered vintage Fender circuits goin'.

--Ray

HoJoMoJo

[brack23_5]

I have a 63 Blonde Bandmaster 6g7A and it just simply has mojo...hard to explain but there's just something special about that blonde tone...smooth

[ROKY]

I am not expert on the Blonde/Brown era, but I can tell you what I hear from my Brown super. The Brown/Blondes have more mids than the blackface amps, but less mids than the tweeds in general. They are meaner than the Blackface amps when they breakup, but not as crunchy as the tweeds. They are kind of the halfway point. The tonestack is different from the blackface, but I haven't studied it in detail to know exact differences.

I have heard people say they have never met a Blonde or Brown era amp that they didn't like and after hearing my Brown super I believe it.

I would love to get a blonde bassman or bandmaster head at some point....

Good enuff description - I agree.

I have a Blonde Bassman(6G6-A) that has one of the best tones I've
ever heard coming out of an amp .

[Ronsonic]

I know the blondes are from the brownface era, in general, but what is it about the blondes that makes them different from tweeds & blackfaces? is it just differences in tone stack values, or what?

The designs are simply different. Some are fairly similar, but these are distinctly different amps.

[GTRJohnny]

I have heard in several places that the Brown/Blonde years were the highest in gain.

[Bulldog]

Headroom and Biasing. That's the difference.

Blondes/Browns - Increased headroom from the Tweeds. Changeover of biasing from cathode to fixed.
Blackface - Increased headroom from the blondes/browns.

Remember, Fender (much like Ampeg) was trying to build amps that stayed clean, not amps that distorted. Jazz guitarists were their big bucks as they saw it, and jazz players were after amps that didn't distort. So the Browns/Blondes were designed to stay cleaner at louder volumes than their tweed predessesors, just as the Blacks were designed to stay cleaner louder than their brown/blonde predessesors.

I'm no expert, but that's what I get from reading books. =)

[ruger9]

I guess what I'm really wondering, what would it take to "blonde" a blackface? Change some resistors/caps, & re-bias? For example, is there a "prototypical blonde tonestack" like there is a "prototypical blackface tone stack (scooped mids)"?

[slider313]

I short answer would be no. The voltages in the power section are higher and the preamp section lower in the brownface amps. Many brownface amps used 600 volt electrolytric caps in the power supply because of these higher voltages.

[epluribus]

Tech stuff eh? Hokay, I hadda go look at the schematics at The Fender Amp Field Guide (http://www.ampwares.com/) to refresh my memory. Generally, Brown and Blonde amps fell in between Fender's Tweed and Blackface circuits. Trouble is, the Browns and Blondes were around at the same time, and filled two different parts of the model line. Blondes tended to be Fender's larger iron, like the Bandmaster and the Bassman, while the Browns showed up in Princetons, Deluxes, etc. There are not only several differences between Tweeds, Blondes/Browns, and Blackfaces, there's significant differences within model lines. So to make things easier, I'll take the case of the Bassman.

Tweed came in several eras, one of the better-known early ones was Wide Panel. (http://www.ampwares.com/amp.asp?id=22)The Bassman of this era generally used 6SC7 preamp tubes that were unintentionally set up to be fairly easy to overdrive with a bit of boost put in front. Within the preamp was a single-knob tone stack of very middly voice, and the volume knob--in other words, the volume/tone controls consumed very little gain, and so the amp preserved a lot more signal strength both for cleans and overdriven sound. The phase inverter could also rather easily be overdriven (sweetly in many folks opinions) as it was an early type known as Paraphase--they were not known for hi-fi linearity, nor their ability to properly push the power tubes into saturation. The power section ran a pair of 5881 tubes, cathode biased (which made them compress easily), with a relatively small power supply and rectifier (Edit: originally put "phase inverter". A mind is a terrible thing...), which further contributed to compression as well as sag. Finally, generally speaking the plate voltages throughout tended to be low by modern standards, which further contributed to the ease with which the amp would enter dirt. The sum total is that Tweed amps are known for being highly dynamic off the pick, hot and compressed, and more than ready to dive into a smooth, wooly, but scrappy flavor of dirt. They aren't crisp and defined mid-scooped sweethearts like their modern cousins.

Just FYI, the later Tweed Bassman, the famous Narrow Panel 5F6A (http://www.ampwares.com/schematics/bassman_5f6a.pdf)circuit, is the design cribbed note for note by Jim Marshall for the very first JTM45s.

Blondes (http://www.ampwares.com/schematics/bassman_6g6a_schem.pdf) came along after several increasingly clean and higher-fi iterations of Tweed. The preamp tubes had long since become standard audio types--the venerable 12AX7, often used in hi-fi preamps of the day. They had learned to run the tubes at higher plate voltages to give them more headroom, which the guitar input of the Blonde Bassman certainly had. The guitar side ran one 12AX7, through a two-knob tone stack for minimal impact on signal strength and available overdrive, and then out to a second 12AX7. Still a fairly hot setup, but cleaner than a Tweed. Such a setup, btw, persisted well into the Black and Silverface years, with the addition of a the much lower-gain 12AY7 in the first tube position, and eventually the three-knob tone stack that consumed much more signal level, therefore cooling the front end considerably. Plate voltages also went up as time went on.

But the Bass input channel on the Blonde Bassman was a very unique beast, and it was built very hot. Your guitar first saw two 12AX7s running in series, and with Tweed plate voltages to boot. That's a remarkably hot setup for Fender anything. But then your signal ran into a single-knob tone control and the volume for very little signal reduction, and then on into yet two more 12AX7s before encountering a treble control. In other words, four cascading gain stages in the preamps before hi-gain was even heard of. Cool. From there, the two input channels merged into a type of phase inverter still in use today--the Long Tailed Pair. This is the most linear and clean of the PI architectures, and has the added advantage of adding more clean gain to the signal than earlier types--which meant you could hit the power tubes nice and hard. The power tubes were still 5881s, but newly employing the cleaner Fixed Bias design, and running at higher plate voltages than their Tweed brethren. Cleaner yet, the power supply featured a solid-state rectifier, thus eliminating much of the sag, compression, and feel of the tube variety. Overall, it resulted in a very sweet and Tweedy character, but with a lot more note definition and clarity than the earlier circuits. That said, stick a clean boost in front of one of these and look out!

You can kind of see where this is headed. Blackface (http://www.ampwares.com/amp.asp?id=27) and Silverface (http://www.ampwares.com/amp.asp?id=28) Bassman amps continued refining the higher-fi design techniques to the point where the Silverface was too successful, and is generally thought to be sterile, numb, and generally lifeless by comparison. That said, the SF amps have a small but rabid following of their own. Tweaked properly, they're great amps. These last two eras came to define much of what we know as modern Fender sound, with their trademark mid-scoop, their "shimmering" high end, and their unique way of being overdriven. In addition, by now they've evolved into the Fender breed of pedal platforms, such that a pedalboard set up for a BF Fender rig may not work well with the earlier Fenders (not mention Marshalls) and vice versa.

These are huge sweeping generalizations that may well generate lots of very valid debate about my analyses and version of the technicals. But I hope this will get you pointed in the right direction as you research this stuff and ultimately get to play some of these amps--either the originals, the Re-Issues, or even as (gasp) patches in a modeller.

--Ray

One mo' thang...cross-breeding species: It's not easy. Blackfacing a Silverface is done all the time, and is very debatably successful. But Blond-ing or Tweed-ing an amp would represent such a radical departure that IMHO, you're in a tenuous world where you're "fighting the design." Better to simply start with a clone or a kit, rather than trying to cobble a really nice old Blackface into a psuedo-Blonde. After all...who wants a bleached-blonde?

[rhythmrocker]

good god almighty man, you know some sht.

[wgs1230]

Your guitar first saw two 12AX7s running in series, and with Tweed plate voltages to boot. That's a remarkably hot setup for Fender anything. But then your signal ran into a single-knob tone control and the volume for very little signal reduction, and then on into yet two more 12AX7s before encountering a treble control.

Brief clarification for anyone new to the subject: what epluribus means here is gain stages, of which each 12AX7A has two, not the full tubes. The preamp of the 6G6 Bassman contains 2x 12AX7A before the phase inverter & power tubes, which equals the four gain stages mentioned above. It's a brilliant bit of design, even if the tone stack wasn't exactly voiced for guitar frequency range: by running the two "ganged" series pairs around the gain gate and tapped-treble filter, the Bass channel "sweetens" the sweep of the Treble control with minimal gain loss.

Another big difference between the brown and blackpanel Bassmans is the Presence control: adding additional high treble effects both the clipping ceiling and the apparent treble:upper mid content, especially when the circuit is pushed into overdrive. You can add a presence control to the bf/sf circuits, I've done it a few times, in fact you can almost (almost) drop in the 6G6 design... but it doesn't work the same way, both because the signal it's seeing isn't nearly as hot (the AA864 only uses half of its second 12AX7 in the Bass channel) and the plate voltages are generally higher. A fun mod, but the Brown circuit is its own thing.

(And then there's the difference between the brown-era, 5-stage tube "Harmonic Vibrato" and... well, just about any other tremolo effect you can think of...)

[ruger9]

Wow. That's as good as it gets.

Thanks epluribus!

[epluribus]

Brief clarification for anyone new to the subject: what epluribus means...

Thanks Wgs...but can you think of a way to put that in a little stompbox? My wife would love it...The What Epluribus Means To Say box... :)

Actually, she'd probably want the What Epluribus Should Have Said If He Even Remotely Valued His Sorry @ss Box...

Ruger9, no problem. Lotta folks around here have put me on to so much of this stuff...just passin' along the good karma. :BEER

--Ray

Oh yeah, and terrific call on the Presence control. Amazing, really, what they do to gain structure that's beyond simply adding high end. I like to think of them as a Ratty control. Ya turn it up, the amp gets meaner and rattier. It's oversimplifying by a mile to say that, but I'm kinda simple anyway so that's all good. :rolleyes:

[Jahn]

Brownface Harmonic Vibrato still makes me get a little funny in the head. I had to tone down to the Bias-driven tube trem in my Brownface Transitional Princeton instead (it helps that it's 1/4th the size of the Concert I had, my wife is happier). But yeah, I miss those ethereal warbles. opto trem on black/silverfaces do nothin' for me.

[WahmBoomAh]

Brownface Harmonic Vibrato still makes me get a little funny in the head. I had to tone down to the Bias-driven tube trem in my Brownface Transitional Princeton instead (it helps that it's 1/4th the size of the Concert I had, my wife is happier). But yeah, I miss those ethereal warbles. opto trem on black/silverfaces do nothin' for me.

As Jason Lollar once so wisely said about the brownface trem ...
"It makes the drunks throw-up"

[wgs1230]

Thanks Wgs...but can you think of a way to put that in a little stompbox?

Unfortunately, none of my own prototypes have reached the beta stage. I've had to rely on the "I'll be on the couch" combination volume pedal/signal limiter myself.

One other side note about the Browns: while much of the difference in midrange content compared to the later bf/sf can be attributed to the circuits, the fact that Fender transitions from alnico to ceramic speakers during the Brown period also factors- e.g., anything driving the Jensen P12N (the 6g8 Twin) is likely to put out more apparent midrange when pushed than the same brown-era circuit driving the C12N or the ceramic Oxford.

[epluribus]

Fosse-natin', hadn't really gotten around to diggin' into speakers on this subject--I'm still learning circuits on the chassis. But that's a great point, AlNiCo to ceramic would indeed make a big difference in a lot of ways.

...Great call on the limiter. Eliminates the need for all those other pesky boxes. Good thinkin'!

[GTRJohnny]

As Jason Lollar once so wisely said about the brownface trem ...
"It makes the drunks throw-up"

Hahahaha!! :drink