Vintage Tube Amp

Up for sale, a 1951 Fender Pro, fully serviced and retaining the original tweed and transformers, complete with a vintage tube set. This was the very first iteration of this classic lacquered tweed “TV front” model, and this era Pro is perhaps best known as being the amp Buddy Holly recorded all of his hits on at the Norman Petty studio in New Mexico. The baffle and face of the cabinet have been altered (presumably to resemble the later “narrow panel” Tweed amps) with a more squared-off appearance and modified baffle mounting brackets. A very powerful and high fidelity amp in its day, the Pro pushed close to 40 sweet and dynamic tube watts through one 15 Jensen P15N alnico speaker. The early octal preamp tubes give these TV front amps a different tonal color than any later Fenders, as the octals have a more girthy midrange and a kind of warmth that can’t be achieved with the later dual triode (12AX7, etc) tubes Fender used from the mid-1950′s through the present day. Just like you’d expect with Buddy Holly’s cutting and robust rhythm sound, the Pro can give you primitive Fender cleans that chime and growl, with surprising headroom and a tone that overall really fills out the frequency spectrum when paired with Fender’s single coil pickups of the day. The circuit has been maintained faithful to original factory spec, with a full recap of the power supply with high quality Sprague Atom filter caps. The preamp has replaced caps as well, with replica white Astron sleeves on what appear to be genuine vintage blue Ajax capacitors (as Fender would use in their later Brown and Black Panel amps). The original trio of Stackpole pots have visible date codes from the 18th week of’51. The original Triad power transformer is intact, along with the stock output transformer mounted to the speaker frame. The amp has also been fitted with a modern three-prong power cable. The power tubes are a pair of properly-biased vintage USA-made RCA 6L6GCs, with a GE-branded 5U4 rectifier and trio of RCA 6SC7 preamp tubes. The chassis is in great overall condition, with only a light speckling of patina and the majority of the original white silkscreen text intact. All three original chicken head knobs are present too, along with a modern leather handle and original metal Fender logo on the face. The Jensen P15N speaker is stock, sporting a clean dark green frame and original Jensen foil label on the bell cover. The original tube chart is present as well and very clean with crisp corners and hand-inked serial number. The original low contrast diagonal tweed is intact, and the tweed is deeply ambered. The tweed covering is no longer present on the bottom of the cabinet, and the baffle has been regrilled with vintage-style oxblood/gold stripe cloth. As the cabinet’s face was altered from the TV front design to a more squared off appearance, the baffle is mounted to the cabinet by a number of L-shaped brackets.