Hi, does anyone know about the 3x10 Tweed Bandmaster and whether that circuit would be good for harp? I imagine it's got to be pretty good, not as loud as a Bassman though but that's probably a good thing for me.
So I bought a 3x10 tweed bandmaster clone. It's made by Headstrong Amps and was originally made for Junior Watson... it was going to be the prototype for a Junior Watson Signature amp, but for some reason that fell through and eventually Junior sold the amp. I got the info from the builder, Wayne at Headstrong Amps, who was a really nice guy and he told me a lot of great stories about when he used to play guitar for James Harman. I have to give him credit, he spent a lot of time explaining about the amp he built and his backstory, especially considering that this was somebody else selling the amp and he was not going to make a dime off of it. I'm looking forward to playing The amp next week.
Seeing Junior Watson's name reminds me of some 20 years ago when I'd hang out at Junior's condo in Fountain Valley deep in the heart of Orange County smoking cigars with Junior and my buddy Joel. Junior would always have 20-30 vintage amps, mostly tweed Fenders stacked up around the place and maybe 30-40 guitars. I bought a '58 Bandmaster from him and it was a sweet amp. Selling it was something I really regret because I used the money for a Gretsch bass that I still have and still can't play for shit. Junior was always buying and selling stuff and was making some good coin along the way. His prices were really fair and he knew his shit. Helluva nice guy and THE best guitar player I've ever known.
I have one tweed bandmaster ( Victoria), i swapped the speakers for webers sig , and i run the amp at 4 ohms instead of the supposed 2.6 ohms for a bandmaster, anyway the tranfo is a 4 ohms, and use a 12dw7 as phase inverter that way the tone is way better and the amp is less stiff for harmonica .
PropMan, that's awesome that you got to hang out with Junior. He is really very creative within the West Coast genre. I'm pretty psyched that the amp I bought was briefly owned by JW and played by him, at least a little bit.
I've seen an old eBay listing for a 3x10 tweed Bandmaster that said Magic Dick used one for recording most of the "Bluestime" albums. I love the sound he gets on both of the albums, so I had been keeping the idea of a Bandmaster in the back of my mind. Not that I have his acoustic tone, but I'm finally at the point where I know my self-produced acoustic tone is solid.
Mojohand, I don't know enough about amps to understand what you wrote. How do you run an amp at a different ohm? Are the speakers a different ohm value? And which tube is the phase inverter?
The amps sticker says:
5U4 for the rectifier 2x 6L6WGC for the power tubes 3x 12AX7 for the preamp tubes
I don't know what all of it means. I figured I could tube it down with 12AY7's if I need to?
Last Edited by cliffy on Jan 19, 2017 7:12 AM
Cliffy, the bandmaster has a 4 ohnms tranfo, but fender hooked it with three 8 ohms speaker giving a 2.6 load to acheive as certain tone, mine was like that and sounded extremely well with guitar but so so with harp, i swapped the 3 three speaker for two 4 ohms and one 8 ohms in serie =parallele to obtain total 4 ohms ( like the tranfo), speakers are now two 8 inches and one 10 inches Weber , now it sound better to my ears for harps. Tubes are 5U4 5881-5881-12AY7-12AX7-12DW7
