Fender Vibrasonic

The Fender Vibrasonic was an amplifier made by Fender. It was introduced in 1959 and was discontinued in 1964. At the time of its introduction, the Vibrasonic-Amp was the first amplifier design to displace the Fender Twin as the company's new top of the line or "flagship" model. This elevated status was shortlived however, as the 6G8, hi-powered blonde Twin-Amp reappeared in mid 1960.The Vibrasonic was debuted as one of the six Professional Series of Fender Amplifiers. These are the first six models to make the transition to the new tolex-covered, forward facing control plate design that would gradually replace the tweed-covered cabinet design so prevalent during the 1950's. Outside of a few small variations like the transformers, speaker array and negative feedback resistor, these 6 amplifiers shared nearly identical circuits. The Vibrasonic, like the 4x10 Concert-Amp, featured a larger interleaved output transformer designed to minimize distortion in the output stage. Unlike the Concert-Amp however, the Vibrasonic-Amp was the first production Fender amplifier to use a speaker made by the James B. Lansing company. JBL speakers would become considered as superior to the Jensen speakers in terms of their power handling capacity. Only the earliest examples of this amp were manufactured with metal control nobs, as pictured in the 1960 Fender Musical Instruments catalog. In recent scholarship, the Vibrasonic has been closely assocaited with the mythological brown tolex, small-box Twin-Amp.

[ Teagle, J. and Sprung, J.: Fender Amps: The First Fifty Years ] [ Wheeler, T.: The Soul of Tone ]

ee also

Fender Vibrasonic Reverb

References