Fender '59 Bassman
Did you know the can opener wasn’t invented until 48 years after the invention of the can?
Similarly there was a short period of time where the electric bass guitar existed but the bass guitar amp still hadn’t been invented.
In 1950 Leo Fender was developing the world’s first commercially successful solid-body electric bass guitar, the Precision Bass. But in 1950 there were no suitably powerful and reliable amps made specifically for bass so Fender and his staff set about designing an amp specifically for pairing with their new bass guitars.
The original Fender TV-front Bassman of 1952 was a bare-bones amp with two knobs (volume and tone) and two instrument inputs on a top-mounted control panel and what Fender billed as a “specially designed” 15” Jensen P15N speaker. It was the first Fender amp with a closed back, it had two large round ports and was specifically designed to enhance bass response.
Between 1952 and 1958 the Bassman went through various changes, not only to the amp but also to its reputation as more and more guitar and harmonica players became aware of how great this amp sounded with their respective instruments. Gone was the TV-front, gone was the wide-panel and in came the narrow-panel, gone was the single 15” speaker in favour of four 10 inchers. In came more controls - bass, mid, treble and presence knobs, plus standby and ground switches. It also grew to four inputs - high gain/low gain “normal” and high gain/low gain “bright” which could be bridged to mix the normal and bright channels.
There were also multiple changes to the circuit culminating in the 40 watt model 5F6-A (the last of the tweed Bassmans) and in what many consider to be one of the greatest guitar amps of all time.
It was the circuitry of the 5F6-A that was copied in London in 1962 by Jim Marshall and Ken Bran as the basis for the first Marshall guitar amplifiers and thus the modern era of guitar amplification was born.
Our Bassman is a reissue of the 5F6-A which fender made in the 90s and has eminence speakers.
These days tweed Bassmans are rarely used with bass guitars, despite their original intentions, and is usually considered to be a guitar or harmonica amp.
It’s a powerful and very loud amp. It responds beautifully across the frequency spectrum. It exhibits a sparkling, harmonically rich tone at low and moderate volumes and at louder volumes it thickens with a tasty distortion. It is a great match with Stratocasters.
