From: John Kally Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 22:19:17 -0700 Subject: Bassman Reissue with Hoffman Wiring
After a long time thinking about doing this, I just had the printed circuit board of my Reissue Bassman replaced with a Hoffman amplifiers point-to-point wired board.( I was able to do this because I got the amp used and fairly cheap, the Hoffman was $150 and the labor by my highly qualified amp tech was another $125). The results were pretty impressive, first the amp sounds lots richer, components (including pots, which are not on a circuit board like the standard reissue) are higher grade and there are now fewer of the "auto-connectors" that have a tendency to come loose when these amps are moved around. This wasn't the only change, I'm using the tube rectifier,the speakers were switched to Eminence ceramic tens (inexpensive, but great speakers, I got mine from Antique Electronics for about $30 each), and the tech also put in screen grid resistors (which Fender now leaves out but the old amps had, this doesn't affect tone but is good to have) and a few minor changes in resistor values. I'm also switching to a 12AY7 first stage preamp (I usually use 12AU7 here, but the AY is what the old ones used). Anyway, I'm happy with the results, it now sounds more like what I think a Bassman should (I used to have a real one). I know that there are replacement interleaved transformers I could also have put in, but I was trying to stay within a certain budget ( I paid $450 for the amp and speakers were already changed, the total of all this came to $750). My tech, who's been working on Fender amps for almost 40 years (and sometimes gets calls from Fender for amp design advice) says it's 200% improved as far as quality and stability, and also that if this came out of Fender it would be a $2000 amp. Incidentally, I've had a Vibro King out of the Custom shop and the Hoffman component appears to be much better. I know there's probably some other harp-lers like me that have been wondering about this modification, after doing it I would say, if you can afford it , and have someone competent to do the work , it's probably worth the effort.
