ShortScale.org

Hi all!
First big post in a long while, as I've been changing jobs, getting married and having offspring!
A while ago I was gushing about my incredible luck at being able to buy a salty 1962 Fender BandMaster for cheapz. Here's the threadsurrection :
http://www.shortscale.org/forum/viewtop ... highlight=

Here's a piccy to jog yer grey matter of how she looked when I bought her for £40 in December 2011....
 
I took the decision to return the amp back to standard by getting the amp tech I use (John@HarmonicElectronic Coventry) to remove the reverb tank & transformer, and return to standard.

My brief was to replace any valves and capacitors, resistors etc where needed, and tweak bias, replace power cable and clean everything. In the meantime I would sort the cabinet by cleaning the black tolex back to blonde, replace the front panel grill cloth, and replace the hardware with original stuff where needed.


After tons of Nitromors stripper, elbow grease and light wire brushing, I was no further forward than backwards!

Very soon it was becoming apparent I wasn't going to get the finish I was after, so I decided to cut my losses and purchase original blonde tolex from Solsound and recover using the original tolex pieces as templates.


Power jack hole filled, and whole head filled and sanded.

Made a new back panel out of spare ply, and routed inner holes with bevels like original ones.




End Results!!!




All in she owes me around £250, so cheap as chips and a sound investment. Oh yeh, it sounds SUPER AWESOME!!! especially the vibrato!!
Cheers
Johnny.

Nice. I'm actually really impressed the tolex held up to nitromors at all.

Quality thread.

"when I bought her for £40"
Holy shit.


I am so glad you got rid of the black/silver and went to the original tan/oxblood. A+++

I got to work on one 62 Bandmaster and I regret not actually taking time to play around with it.

Goddamn that's good stuff

Bacchus wrote:Nice. I'm actually really impressed the tolex held up to nitromors at all.

The nitromors you get nowadays is a pile of wank! I stripped lacquer off alloy wheels with the old recipe and you could see it bubbling in next to no time! Burnt yer skin like fook too! I used 2 cans of the new stuff and totally wasted about £15 on it
The new tolex from Solsound only cost me £20, and I still have loads left to do another head or small cab.
The old tolex was very very tough, and seems a different weave to the newer Fender stuff I used.

Firstly congratz on all the life stuff!

Secondly wow - what a lovely amp for that price. You must be chuffed mate.

Sloan wrote:Quality thread.

"when I bought her for £40"
Holy shit.

I was a spawny git, that's all I can say! Right place/time with the promise I had to sort it out properly.

I am so glad you got rid of the black/silver and went to the original tan/oxblood. A+++

Yeh me too, I've done it justice now, and tried to emulate the way Fender did it all in the first place.

I got to work on one 62 Bandmaster and I regret not actually taking time to play around with it.

Damn shame! They are clean as hell...

My tech went to the trouble of recovering the new caps with the old cap casings, to give it a vintage look! Honestly he was as bad as me ha ha! And the best part.. He only charged me for parts and did the work out of admiration for the quality of the amp!! He's a proper gent!
It's taken me a ridiculous number of years to do it on n off, but perseverance paid off

Rhysyrhys wrote:Firstly congratz on all the life stuff!

Secondly wow - what a lovely amp for that price. You must be chuffed mate.

Thanks Rhys! I've had an awesome year so far. To be happy in your day to day life is great, but to finally get a job I enjoy and am respected in is just the TITS!!
Marrying my fab lady, and having a gorgeous month old daughter is the cream on top for me!

Yeh super stoked thanks. Hard finger bruising work, the waiting game and so so happy I've resurrected it!

That's an amazing job, it looks stunning

lorez wrote:That's an amazing job, it looks stunning

Thankyouplease I still can't quite believe I have it!
I've now also wired my 2x12 so I have a heavy duty impedance switch to switch from 16ohms series to 4ohm parallel so I can use all my heads on it.
So far the Bandy has only got to 2 on the vol. It's damn loud I tell the!

That looks fantastic. Great work. And a bargain to boot!

Congrats on the IRL stuff too

BearBoy wrote:That looks fantastic. Great work. And a bargain to boot!

Congrats on the IRL stuff too

Fanks Mr Bear, am on a roll at the mo

£40 crack converters round my way try to sell Gorilla amps for that price.

That looks beautiful. As someone who's still searching for an affordable Fender amp, I'm incredibly jealous of the price you got it for.

Everything about this story is awesome!! Great jerb!!

Hawt. 110V or 240V transfomer on that?

Excellent resurrection! Great job with the new tolex.

So frickin siiiiick!

Excellent work! I probably wouldn't have even thought of taking on the responsibility of restoring it with the condition it was in before, but it came out amazing.

Fakir Mustache wrote:Hawt. 110V or 240V transfomer on that?.

Well its a Triad 68249, which I believe is an export model between 117-240v. It may even be adjustable but am unsure.

HNB wrote:Excellent resurrection! Great job with the new tolex

Cheers my man, it was actually a lot easier than I thought as it's a 4 piece assembly. Just took my time.. Had a few hiccups as can be expected, but overall am well chuffed with it!

Thanks for all the encouragement dudes!! Has been worth the grief ha ha!
Johnny.