I apologize for getting sidetracked in my writing recently. I was preparing for a gig that I was hired to do. I haven’t played a gig using an un-mic’d amp in a larger space for some time, and looking around my music room, I realized that, while I have two amps that should be able to handle it, one had not been played in at least 5 years & needs maintenance, and the other, a Marshall DSL40C I bought in 2015, had never been gig-worthy: it would cut out randomly, for 2-3 seconds at a time, intermittently after warmup.
I brought it in for repair for, if memory serves, the eighth time. I realize bringing it to the same tech so many times is probably not a great idea, but I also realized that it’s an intermittent issue, it’s hard to replicate, etc. But this time, the issue had gotten really obnoxious, so I was positive he’d be able to quickly replicate and diagnose the issue. No such luck. The report back was “this happens sometimes with these amps”, and basically it was not fixable.
What got me sidetracked was twofold: First, I went down a rabbit hole researching this issue, where I found that basically the failure is in a proprietary IC Marshall used for the switching mechanism in this amp, and if it fails in any way, the whole amp goes into “standby” mode (so, no sound at all). Second, completely infuriated, I thought “you know, there are amps from the 50’s still running today specifically because the parts are all standard, off-the-shelf parts”. This led me to doing some research, which went really well: I wrote a prompt in an AI chat asking to find me an amp that is basically the DSL40C’s “green” channel and has no proprietary switching or IC components.
The bot came back with a couple of categories of amps, one of which was something like “Vintage, all-standard, no channel switching at all”. In that category was a vintage 60’s Fender Pro Reverb.
The Vintage Path
Long story short, I heavily researched this amp in all its various forms: the tweed “Pro”, blackface Pro Reverb, and 2-3 different variations of silver face Pro Reverbs. I feel lucky to have almost immediately found what I’m pretty sure is an absolute gem: an early 1968 silver face Pro Reverb, which was made after they changed the front control panel to be a silver face, but before they made any changes to the circuit. Because the amp still needed a bit of work, and probably also because most folks don’t look past the silver face to notice that it’s a blackface circuit, I picked it up for way less than half the cost of some blackface models I’ve seen.
There is no way I could be happier with this recommendation from AI, and I wouldn’t have figured this out (er, quickly) on my own: the Fender Pro Reverb really is very similar in overall behavior of the DSL40Cs “green” channel, but the sound from the Pro Reverb is markedly better, at least to my ear and for my needs. That’s more about the amp design than the fact that it’s vintage per se, but it’s a big win.
To me, the big honking “pro” with vintage amps like this is the ability to fix or modify them myself. There are no printed circuit boards, no microscopic surface-mounted oceans of tiny components, zero ICs or any other silicon parts at all. Just resistors, capacitors, pots, transformers, tubes, switches, a fuse, and some wire. You can easily get a schematic for basically any of these vintage amps as well, making it easier to more authoritatively diagnose issues, and see opportunities to improve the amp in terms of its sound, durability, flexibility, etc.
Just today, in fact, I made an RCA shorting plug to stick into the vibrato footswitch input on the back of my amp. Because it has a tube-driven optocoupler controlling the effect, it is always off unless you use the foot switch to turn it on. My amp did not come with a foot switch, but if you clip an RCA cable, strip one end, tin it, and solder it to the outside of the connector sleeve, it’ll fool the circuit into thinking that the switch is connected, and “on”.
There are an endless number of modifications that are very simple to do. In fact, I’m holding off on doing anything more complicated only because I want to play more with the amp to see if there’s anything I miss or want enough to actually mod the amp. Another nice thing: I’ve seen videos of lots of mods, and most of them are 100% reversible. There are folks who put a 'Middle’ tone knob by drilling the front panel, which is obviously irreversible, but short of that kind of thing, you can undo the mods, often in seconds.
So… What Are the ‘cons’ With Vintage?
The cons with vintage are that it seems to be pretty hard to buy a vintage amp that is ready to be gigged right away. I bought my Fender Pro Reverb and had to drive 90 minutes back home. A 90-minute drive with a ~60 year old amp is… a special experience. The parts in a 60-year-old amplifier don’t magically not age: tube sockets loosen, leads become brittle, solder joints crack, pots get dirty, wires fray, etc. I tried out my amp in the store and it was flawless. I got it home and it had a couple of issues that, while super minor (and already fixed, for free, by myself), made me realize that I might want to look at a simple mod or two and a thorough inspection specifically with an eye toward durability.
Even if your vintage amp is perfect when you get it home, its age seems likely to become an issue in some form, depending on how it has been maintained. I’m not at all worried about the power transformer or filter caps, for example, as those were replaced. However, the output transformer is original. I’m not at all worried about the power tube sockets, but one of my preamp tube sockets feels too loose. I’m very confident in my RCA short plug, but if you could see the wires coming from the reverb tank you might recoil in fear.
Yikes! Why Would You Go This Route?
Because you can prepare for the failures and not be left high & dry at a gig, like some people have been with the DSL40C. You can find YouTube videos of the DSL40C cutting out mid-gig on people, and there isn’t anything they can really do in almost all cases. Hope they brought a whole separate backup amplifier, because that’d be the only real remedy there.
If one of my preamp tube sockets just gives up, or there winds up being arcing across the tube pins in that socket and it dies, well, preamp tubes are a per-channel thing, so I can just use the other channel. “But what if that other preamp tube turns out to be microphonic or something?” Well, I almost never use the vibrato effect, and it happens to be driven by the same exact tube type as the preamp, so I can pull it and swap out my preamp tube with it. So at that point I need like 3 failures. If I just bring an extra tube, I would need 4 things to physically fail, in terms of preamp tubes.
If vibrato or reverb fail, it’s not the end of the world. I have reverb on my pedalboard anyway (I have one pedalboard I use with various amps that may or may not have reverb built in).
It’s not that the amp can’t fail, it’s that the really common failures are pretty easy to work around. Can I be left hanging at a gig? Of course. Should I have a backup amp regardless? Sure. But I’m quite confident that I should never need to bring this amp to any decent tech 8 times and still find it to be un-giggable.
The Modern Path
I own amps from several different decades now, and have owned amps over the years from almost all decades going back to the 60’s. I have used these amps to play everything from heavy metal and hard rock, to country and blues. Different amps have different strengths and weaknesses, are better for different playing situations, genres, etc. For example, while I could use my Crate GX60D to play a country gig in a dance hall, it’s probably going to be more at home playing some 90s era metal in a garage. While I could probably use my Princeton reissue to play metal, it’s going to be more at home playing jazz or dirty blues. You can hammer in a nail with a screwdriver, but a hammer is going to be a more natural fit for that task, know what I mean?
I think that there is more variability in what kind of sound they might want, what types of playing situations they might need to optimize for, etc. And I think the ability to easily manipulate a signal using 30 different circuit variations in one single chassis that are selectable with a knob on the front is an amazing benefit of modern technology — not to mention the fact that that chassis would probably weigh half of an equivalent tube-driven vintage amp.
Even if you’re not someone who needs 30 circuit variations, and has no interest in pushing the limits of what modern technology is capable of, there are still benefits in modern amps. Take the Fender reissues. The fact is, the Fender reissues are not faithful reproductions, and that’s on purpose, and I think it likely suits lots of players! For example, the reissue ‘68 Vibro Champ includes reverb that the original never had. It’s DSP reverb, not a tank and tube, but it sounds great, and without it, you’d need to carry a pedal around. It also has a 10” speaker instead of the original 8”, which is a nice update that would’ve required a bit of surgery to mod on the original. I believe my Princeton ‘68 reissue has a few mods as well that change the tone stack & I think it breaks up sooner than the original as well, but don’t quote me! The point is, sometimes the modern amps are just repackaged older models that are produced with the benefit of hindsight and a deeper knowledge of how those amps were typically used, and what mods made the most sense.
So… What Are the ‘cons’ With Modern Amps?
Well, first I want to make a distinction between “modern” and “boutique” amps. Boutique amps are from the modern era, but made using processes and tooling that more closely resemble the vintage era in a lot of cases. So, I’m not talking about boutique amps here.
The cons with modern amps primarily revolve around three things:
circuits are far more proprietary, complicated, and exotic, and at the same time
schematics are not as readily available, if they’re available at all, and
quality control and support are lost arts
So, the very companies making complicated, proprietary circuits, and skating by with lax quality control, are also not providing schematics, and not providing parts to the general public. So when an amp does break, it’s not that it definitely will not be fixable, it’s that it’s more likely to be a bigger pain in the butt.
Yikes! Why Would You Go This Route?
I can think of lots of reasons, but the three that immediately spring to mind are:
Price: an awful lot of modern amps can be made to do the same job more cheaply than a vintage one.
Features: it’s hard to find a vintage amp that has all the bells and whistles that many modern amps have, and the pitfalls of those features are never demo’d in-store ;-)
The buying experience: the great majority of people go to a place like Guitar Center to buy an amp, and they’re likely to buy what’s there. What’s there are almost entirely modern amps. It is pretty hard to walk into… anywhere, ask to play an original 1968 Fender Pro Reverb, and be greeted with anything other than funny looks or blank stares.
So, basically, it’s very easy to acquire a working modern amp off the shelf, and most people who are not amp geeks will feel more confident buying something new off the shelf. Just like cars: most people would rather buy something brand new, and only gearheads are likely to venture into buying a vintage Chevelle or Roadrunner to mod.
Why Not Both?
I have owned both modern and vintage amps, but for a very long time I stopped doing any electronics work and gave away a lot of tools, etc, and I bought modern amps exclusively. That lasted until the DSL40C crisis, which finally pushed me back into vintage, and it has awakened that passion for tinkering, modding, fixing my own stuff, and an “open source” mindset toward my music gear. I’ll always have modern amps, but I think at this point I’ll always prefer vintage ones.