THE GREATEST AMP OF ALL
Last month, I said that my favourite amp is my all-original 1959 Fender Bassman. This month, I’m going to explain why. The Bassman demands attention by way of its yellow tweed covering, aged and abused thanks to more than 60 years’ of use. When it’s on, its 45 watts of power give you massive clean tones that can stand up next to any drummer, plus beautiful tube saturation when pushed to high volumes. The amp also accepts overdrive and fuzz pedals as if they were part of its very DNA. Instead of sporting one speaker like most amps of its era, the Bassman boasts four blue-label 10-inch speakers that are as loud as they look and are positioned perfectly within the 23-inch cabinet, ensuring that it can fill a room without having to be mic’d up.
Go on, plug in any guitar you want – you’ll have trouble finding a bad sound using the amp’s six simple controls. Notes will fall effortlessly from your hands and into your ears thanks to the ideal bass response and the most balanced high end I’ve ever heard.
From a design perspective, the Fender Bassman is legendary – and for good reason. This is the major evolutionary step forward that carried us from the lunchbox-sized 1930s Rickenbacker amps that barely amplified beyond natural projection to the refrigeratorsized amp stacks used by Jimi Hendrix and others
