Brownface Tone Question

[johnnykf]

Just curious, how would one describe the tonal and overdrive differences between Fender Tweed, early 60's Brownface, and Blackface? In case a come across and older Princeton/Princeton Reverb at a decent price.

 

[tazzboy]

Just curious, how would one describe the tonal and overdrive differences between Fender Tweed, early 60's Brownface, and Blackface? In case a come across and older Princeton/Princeton Reverb at a decent price.

Well from what I've read and heard the Brownface has good tremolo on it and the distortion sounds pretty close to Marshall (This is what I read).

Fender Tweeds have good distortion sounds as well.

Blackface has good clean channel and reverb.

 

[Jason Lollar]

In general they are what you would assume - inbetween a tweed and a blackface. More clarity and sparkle than a tweed but they have more midrange than a blackface.
More headroom than a tweed but less than a typical blackface depending on the model.
The trem on the harmonic vibrato sounds sort of like a univibe- jimmy hendrix or a phaser like mid 70's johhny winter (john Dawson 3). trem on the deluxe and vibrolux (brown) is smoother than the blackface opto.

 

[mad dog]

Brownfaces are pretty different. Depends on the amp. I've played Concerts, Supers, Pros. The brown super was tougher sounding than the tweed. Quite a bit louder, a little harder. Not mid-scooped like later Fenders. Lost a little to the tweed in terms of overdrive, but overall a really worthy stage amp. Same with the Pro. The brown seemed much louder than the tweed, less compression. I think they're SS rectified, not too sure.

By contrast, the Concert sounded a little softer to me than the later Super Reverb. I don't think it's comparable to the bassman either. Not always easy to compare tweed vs. brown vs BF. Too many model changes.

That trem is as good as advertised. I never used the later Fender trem, but with that deep, swirly bias trem, it's hard not to use it.

 

[NTC]

Brownfaces are pretty different. Depends on the amp. I've played Concerts, Supers, Pros. ... I think they're SS rectified, not too sure.

Yes, they had SS rectifiers. The Output sections of the 6L6 amps were identical to late 5F6A bassmen. The Concert used the same OT. But they still sounded different.

That trem is as good as advertised. I never used the later Fender trem, but with that deep, swirly bias trem, it's hard not to use it.

The bias trem is in the Princeton, Deluxe, the Vibrolux and the infamous Vibroverb. The Concert, Pro and Super used the complex "Harmonic Vibrato" circuit ( at least that is what I thinks they called it).

 

[Cliff]

What Jason said. Brown is sorta between the tweed and BF. I've got a homebrew 5E3, a Brown Deluxe, and a BF Deluxe. I'm not sure how much power (watts) the Brown Deluxe has, but it seems to fit the bill for many of my gigs. I'm playing blues in bars, mostly, and not looking for much headroom. I can crank the Brown to about "7" and get a great overdriven sound without too much volume. I put a ceramic speaker in it (Weber Blue Dog) this Spring, and it really helped tighten up the bass. I like all three amps, but the Brown is really doing it for me right now. Oh, forgot....the other guitar playing in my band plays a Brown Super. It's WAY louder than my Deluxe. He sets it on 3.5 to 4 when I'm on 7. The amps look and sound cool together.