1966 Fender Super Reverb. Also known as a Blackface.



Here’s what I know about my amp.

I can’t decide whether to describe the tone of my Super as warm or dirty. Today I’d say, warm. The only amp I’ve ever used that was tougher sounding was my brown Vibrolux. I sold that amp over 30 years ago because it didn’t have reverb. That’s not a good enough reason, but that’s what I did. The distortion (nowadays it’s referred to as tone) gives you wonderful sustain and old-timey sounds. Seriously, I've had people ask me how I get the tone I have and what the secret is. Easy, you just leave it alone. I almost never use the amp below 10 and never have in 30 years, and it has never left me stranded.

Someone told me years (decades) ago that Fender blackfaces and brownface amps are identical, the only difference being, brown amps don’t have reverb, and that if you unplug the reverb tank, as it supposedly puts a load on the signal, your blackface will sound just like a brown amp. Don’t quote me. You’ll have to ask around. I’d say there is a difference between the two amps, because the way I remember the brown Vibrolux, that was one raw sounding amp.

My Super starts to break up at 4, but it has mods that I’ll tell you about later. Other blackfaces I’ve read about don’t break up until 6. Turning up the volume knob on mine makes it louder and more distorted as it goes up. 4 is pretty loud for bar band rhythm playing.

For the longest time, I wanted to "fix" my Super. They just don’t sound right by modern standards. In fact, they don't sound right by even 1970's standards. You've got to know that you want that certain tone. A blackface is not clean unless it's turned way down, in my opinion, but as you get used to it and your chops adjust to it, you get glimpses into the tones of the past.

For years and years, I always thought my Super was a junker with blown speakers. I have never compared it to a new one, but I highly doubt they sound the same. Old Supers like mine are so raunchy, I suspect that if they were reissued, they wouldn’t sell because nobody would buy them. Nobody would believe the amp in the store was working right, such is the distortion of these amps. A modern player would probably believe there was something wrong with it. There's no "drive" or "distortion" knob on it. It is what it is, and you have to use it the way it is. It's not that it has only one sound, it doesn't. You just can't fiddle with one knob to get a myriad of tones like you can with a newer amp.
 
My Super won’t keep up with a Twin. At 100 watts, Twins are way louder than a Super's 44 watts. My feeling is you don't need much more than 30-35 watts for a bar band anyway. Anything more is just overkill.
 
Mods I Had Installed

My amp has a dual-gang pot, master volume. I had the knob put in the back. A dual-gang pot is two potentiometers in one, stacked on top of each other. It turns both the 6L6’s down at the same time so I can play it cranked in the house. I’ve had this mod for over 20 years and it’s never harmed anything. For all I know it helps the power tubes to last longer, as it lowers the power flowing through them and helps them to run cooler.

I bias the power tubes myself by putting in a new pair of 6L6’s, and adjusting the bias pot (there’s a hole in the chassis you stick a screw driver into that enables you to adjust the bias pot). One 6L6 amplifies the positive voltage, and the other the negative. By turning down the master volume, I can hear when the two tubes are balanced because the distortion will even out and sound “right.” You can also do this with the amp wide open if you have no master volume, if you can stand the noise. That’s all there is to it, and I don’t need to spend money on a tech to put new tubes in it. Think long and hard before putting in a master volume because, at least in the case of the one I had put in, some highs are lost. The normal channel is decommissioned because according to the directions I had at the time, you take a resistor or two out of the normal channel to use in the mod. Either because of the lost highs, or the fact that it’s a pretty distorted sounding amp, my Super can tend to get lost in the noise of the band. I never really could do clean country playing with it unless I had it turned way down. A cleaner amp will cut through much better. I should have put in a cut-out switch to disconnect the master volume, as was recommended to me, but didn’t.

Back in the late 70’s I had the amp in for service at the biggest Boston music store at the time that serviced all the major acts, and the tech put in some diodes. Diodes hadn’t been invented back in 1966 when the amp was made, and supposedly they boost the wattage to 50 watts. I have no idea where he put them, and he didn’t ask, he just went ahead and did that, but I didn’t mind at the time, and still don’t. Too bad this mod didn't change the amp's tendency for the bass to sound "tubby" sometimes. 

Supers are popular with blues players, of course.  Don’t overlook any of the other old amps, especially the brown Vibrolux I talked about earlier. Good luck finding one of them. If you already have one, you'd better keep it, because you ain't gettin' another one. Up until I got the brown Vibrolux, the amp I really wanted was a blackface Vibrolux, but I wound up with the Super because I thought I needed the volume at the time. If I was made out of money, believe me I’d have one of each. That brown amp is really the one I miss the most.

Get a blackface and keep it. It'll pay you back over and over. Any one of them will be one of the last amps you'll ever need. Don't overlook Princetons because they're small, either. I had one, and I'd try it in a bar band setup if I still had it; it cranked. A Princeton’s twelve watts can be surprisingly ear splitting. It’s true what they say about the quality of the sound of the reverb. They way I remember it, it’s a better reverb than even the Super’s bigger tank, for some strange reason.

A Brief Essay on Speakers

My Super is so dirty sounding that for years I thought my speakers were blown. Fifteen years ago during an overhaul I had the two original speakers reconed and bought new Fender OEM’s to replace the two mongrels that were in it. The tech who I brought the speakers to for reconing assured me they were fine. I didn’t believe him, and  I insisted he recone them anyway. He was right. Nothing changed. I'll bet it's a common mistake to believe your speakers are blown with these old amps. It seems to be hard to find one of these old Fenders with original speakers. Even my brown Vibrolux had a Radio Shack speaker in it, and we're going back over 30 years. Back in the day, one time I A-B compared a silverface Twin to my blackface Super, and convinced myself that my amp had blown speakers. This may be why, if memory serves me, there was a boom in raw speaker sales in the 70's when the silverface amps came out. Not that silverfaces are all that clean, either.

I wouldn’t refuse to own a silverface just because it wasn’t a blackface. They are another perfectly fine amp.




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