SRV Vibroverb real deal not reissue...tonequest report amp..

[Teleguy61]

ok. cool martin. that makes sense and it sounds like you know what you're talking about.

Um, yes. Yes he does. Very much so.

[ampmike]

Diaz wasn't a genius, he was a huckster.

Yea people tend to give him a little too much credit.There are guys here in this thread that know a lot more about how amps work.Mikey

[matt h]

(deleted)

[rooster]

Um, and the speaker will deliver 60-6K kHz so what has this (increasing the grid stop resistor value from 68K to 100K) actually reduced at the speaker? Nothing.

Cesar was a great spirit, full of energy. And in his time, he was smarter than many, no doubt. I'm very sure his thought here was simply to offer some more series resistance prior to V1A in an attempt to limit the impact of SRV's pick attack. I read as much somewhere along the way. It didn't really do that much but I remember at the time reading that Stevie thought it made all the difference. Go figure.

As to the Bassman OT swap, I always thought it was a BF Bassman OT. Certainly Cesar could get his hands on these parts because he was authorized Fender Repair at the time. But the '59 Tweed Bassman OT? No one was making these at the time and I doubt there was any inventory at Fender. And if the Tweed Bassman OT is the same as the SR OT, why didn't Cesar simply say 'either the Bassman or SR OT'? Certainly he understood these were similar if not identical.

And of course, the BF OT was 4 ohms, for the record.

[rooster]

Can't let this go, sorry....

The other thing that Cesar did - apparently - was to disable the tremolo. The thing is, if you've ever done this mod you would quickly realize that it completely screws up the typical SR/VV circuit by adding too much gain at the PI. Couple this with whatever you had reduced at V1A and it's worse than a wash - the PI gain increase from Channel 2 is much greater. In the end, you see that, ha, SRV was quite a guitar player. And he used a TS anyway, why bother with any of this?

But I do think the bigger OT, a 4ohm BF Bassman type, with its 25% output reduction by running into an 8 ohm speaker, was a good move. And in this case, maybe the only one.

[groovtubin]

i think jazzguitargimp's post seems a pretty logical explanation. i read cesar diaz stating he used the super reverb OT's in the vibroverbs to give them more power, so that make sense to me.

I`ve done that to a 60 watt dumble SSS facade ( no filters) used a Fender HR Deville power tranny...absolutely killer!

jim@Omegaamps

[212Mavguy]

I have a '68 blackline silverface SR that I had some work done to and I do like the results as a reconfigured 1/15 using JBL G135-8 with a new baffle courtesy of fleabay... Sourced parts from Mike at vintagefenderamprepair.com and had the work done because my tech skills would have likely insulted the patient during the process.

The amp was purchased as a non running condition beater for 350 bucks. Two of the four CTS 10's in it were bad. Would have cost a lot to have four mediocre speakers reconed.

Stuck in a tube in place of the SS rec plug someone put in it and it passed signal and worked fine, except for some crackling noises.

All the old cc resistors were yanked and new properly spec'ed old stock Allen Bradley's went back in for a blueprinting job. Crackle gone and great tone. Committed the great sin of drilling holes in a Vintage fender chassis…for the bias probe jacks, right in the middle of black lettering, they barely show.

Using the stock 2 ohm OT. Sounds very nice with great sustain. I prefer using the less hot input with hum buckers and the hotter one with single coils. The sound is full, harmonic content is rich, and lots of sustain. A bit less clean headroom with more compression overall happens with mine than if using proper impedance matching into the four 10's I hear with my buddy's BF SR. I like this reconfigured amp better sonically than a stock one. Using Sylvania 6bg6ga's with adapters for the power tubes, think Sylvania 7581a tones. V1 is yanked, V2 using RCA 7025 short plate. All vintage old stock tubes in rest of preamp.

Final mod will be after rolling an Altec 418b 16 ohm in place of the JBL and hearing if there is enough potential for an OT swap. Would be sticking in a Classic Tone unit with 4/8/16 ohm taps. I love the sound of this amp as it sits, though.

I have occasionally connected my Leslie G27 cab to the auxiliary speaker jack, with the JBL 15 and the Leslie going at the same time I have a semi-ultimate Gospel amp. Then the impedance mismatch is less, 2 ohm tranny into 4 ohm load. The sound is simply fantastic.

[sck1001931]

dont go Classictone buddy!

ive tried them and their distortion is crappy for a fender amp.
spend the extra money for a better one and you'll be happy.

hoffman is only a little more and their sound is alot better.

Mercury magnetics costs twice as much but are worth it in my opinion.
i wish someone had told me classictone was a waste of my money....
because it was.

[vibratoking]

...Final mod will be after rolling an Altec 418b 16 ohm in place of the JBL and hearing if there is enough potential for an OT swap. Would be sticking in a Classic Tone unit with 4/8/16 ohm taps. I love the sound of this amp as it sits, though.

If you loved her that much, you wouldn't trying to change her...again.

[sck1001931]

i changed the output transformer to the SRV oversized one from mercury magnetics and it sounds incredible. Better than the 2 ohm. very full. i also put all the ajax blue molded caps back in and .033 blues for the mids in the tonestack which sound so much better than the orange drops for me. orange drops are just a little too harsh.
this amp has some of the best tone ive ever heard now and i think im going to leave it this way. its all personal preference but i just really dig this tone better than when it was a super. plus i have another 64 super reverb that i still jam with the vibroverb..