CBS improves Fender amps - a fifty-year retrospective

[CoolBlueGlow]

Saw this on FB Marketplace today. Brought back a memory.

Lest anyone forget what great things CBS wrought at Fender by the end of the 1960's...

behold the Capricorn!

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I actually remember when these were new in the Fender dealers! I plugged into one expecting a sonic miracle (I was 10, o.k?) Somehow, it sounded "funny" to me...as I told my dad who was also a musician.

You see, my reference point for "not funny sounding" was my old-fashioned amp at home, which was a mint 1957 Tremolux. Kids learn this lesson. Because I was ten I thought I was wrong about the way the Capricorn sounded. I wasn't...but I was ten and didn't have the experience to articulate what my ears told me was true.


Anyway, younger folk check this out. This isn't made up. The Capricorn was CBS Fender's top amp offering in 1969...

FWIW, it still sounds "funny". But it was - as the CBS/Fender ads proclaimed - "designed for the sensitve and ambitious musician" and the way you knew this was true, according to Fender was the "...the cool looking silver and orange grille cloth"

sigh

(Note to Fender Zodiac series purists, I believe the Capricorn amp was originally a combo, and the one on FBM has perhaps been combo'd by a DIY guy? I could be wrong. Doesn't much matter)​

 

[brookdalebill]

I remember, too!
I think Jan Akkerman of Focus used one.

 

[mixmkr 2023]

and....

 

[schmee]

"Solid State, the sound of the future!"

 

[USian Pie]

Man, astrology was such a thing in the 60s and 70s.

As a kid, I never understood the whole age of aquariums things. Like, couldn't you get a fish tank anytime you wanted?

 

[telemaster03]

Ugh, I had the combo version of that amp back in the late 70's, it probably wouldn't have been all that heavy but the three 12" speakers and the sheer size of it made it hard to handle. It was an amp though, and it fit in the back seat of my 1974 Ford LTD just fine. It sounded horrible and I think it died a sad death onstage which involved a small bit of smoke coming out of the amp section.

 

[loopfinding]

from what i can tell it's just a bunch of BJTs. FETs weren't really commonplace in that use yet.

if you think about it with the times it makes sense, they were trying to make the loudest cleanest things they could, and those were certainly higher performing than tubes. for some reason they were on this chase to make guitars sound like DI, cause they had this notion of "faithful reproduction" being the ultimate goal for the longest time. if you take it with that mindset, well, they are "better."

i think even among the clean guys they didn't realize for a while (and still many don't?) that what they think is squeaky clean is often totally not that at at all. turns out as humans we don't really like accuracy, it took us until the 80s to figure that one out. except for those perverts who like going DI, or those modern jazz guys after 1970 something who use solid state amps to sound plastic-y on purpose.

tubes and guitar speakers are good exactly because they suck at reproducing something faithfully, not because they're just better tech or more robust or whatever. the history of guitar amps since the 70s or 80s is basically a dance with controlling/exploiting or replicating their suckiness.

 

[ETMusic777]

"This is the Zodiac Speaking...."

 

[Mowgli]

Go back and listen to Robben Ford on the very first Yellowjackets album. I have read that Robben used a Yamaha G100 212II (with 2 x 12" EVM-12Ls) IIFC. -- totally solid state and totally awesome. It was Paul Rivera's era with Yamaha. I recall absolutely NO ONE complaining about Robben's tone on that album.

Let's address something which few discuss; I'm unsure if those transistors in Robben's amp were BJT (Bipolar Junction Transistors) or if they were using a different design other than the usual "Darlington Pair" which was common in early SS designs. They may have been JFETs or MOSFETs... I don't know... but that amp is reported to have been a "solid state" Yamaha.

In other words, a lot of the early BJT Solid State stuff mostly sounded sterile; I agree totally. But technology advances over time and there are a lot of solid state amps that sound great, IMO.

My Yamaha and Peavey SS amps sound great to my ears. Both the Peavey and my cheap Quilter sound good distorted with the right speakers and they take pedals incredibly well! Personally, I prefer tube and hybrid amps if push comes to shove and have gigged with both.

Allan Holdsworth played Yamaha SS amps live and in the studio; he sounded awesome.

One day I hope we can stop lumping all the solid state amps into one "SS sounds sterile" category. Some do sound awful, especially the early ones. But a lot sound great, too.

 

[CoolBlueGlow]

re: Robben Ford, Allan Holdsworth, et al

Yeah, I have no beef with transistors. I have a lab full of them. Most of my test gear is transistorized too.

Now don't get mad...I'm just funnin' with ya. There is room for everything at the inn. I even have some tube test stuff, like my 575 curve tracer, though actually that's hybrid 'cause it has tubes AND transistors...all two of them!

All kidding aside, sure there is plenty of great sounding transistor stuff. The Roland Jazz Chorus 120 comes to mind. I had one of those too. Lots of great new modeling stuff is making good tone as ubiquitous as those identical tasty burgers you can get at every Applebee's for a thousand miles down I-40. Shoot, I even have an awesome modeling setup I use just for effects, working in hybrid with my 66 Princeton and my 1961 Baldwin Model 54 tri-channel. It is fabulous (or was...until I got COVid and had to quit gigging forever

I'm just pointing out that the CBS mandated Capricorns sounded lousy in 1969, and here in 2023 they still sound...lousy. Of course an early 80's all tube Super Twin also sounded pretty terrible. I was forced to play through one more than once.

 

[CoolBlueGlow]

Ugh, I had the combo version of that amp back in the late 70's, it probably wouldn't have been all that heavy but the three 12" speakers and the sheer size of it made it hard to handle. It was an amp though, and it fit in the back seat of my 1974 Ford LTD just fine. It sounded horrible and I think it died a sad death onstage which involved a small bit of smoke coming out of the amp section.

Yeah, great story. Actually, I think Crapricorns really only originally came as combos, like yours. The one I posted from FBM looks like a DIY conversion to head/cab.

 

[telemnemonics]

My first guitar amp was a home stereo amp I plugged the guitar into the phono input of one channel.
If you know how much gain the phono input has you can guess it was a real screamer.
No toobs, later that year I bought a BF Bandmaster head and 2x12 for $150.
Luckily it came with a brand new DOD250 because cranked the Bandmaster really sounded anemic.
That little SS box made toobs sound gooood.

 

[Dacious]

"Solid State, the sound of the future!"
View attachment 1071319

On 'Get Back' the three part Beatles series on Disney Plus there's this exact amp in the studio. I'm not sure what they were playing through it but I saw John or George fiddling with it.

 

[Dacious]

If you looked at how the world was turning it's no surprise engineers thought this. Fender was on its death bed by the 70s and it's traditional amp lines were gone by early 80s. Marshall had hybrid and solid state Lead stuff not long after. Beatles were using Thomas Organ Vox stuff with MRD and weird effects in the sixties with those massive Royal Guardsman and Super Beatle amps in concert.

Yamaha had it's Y series trapezoid 'Natural Sound' speaker amps in the sixties followed by G-series amps in the 70s which were very successful. The JC120 was killing them. Fogarty was using Kustoms, Zeppelin used Rickenbacker SS Transonics in the 'Song Remains The Same' 70s shows, Acoustic had those massive heads and combos for bass and guitars.

Given the wholesale encroachment of solid state into home entertainment, tv and audio especially sound reinforcement it was a natural leap to assume it would take off in the guitar world. Keyboards it was like a tsunami in the 60s. Everything went plastic encased solid-state overnight almost. Remember the Vox Continental and Farfisa organs Lowrey, Hammond polyphonic, not to mention Moog and Korg Synths.

I guess we're lucky guitar amps were picked as providing natural sounding distortion already recognised in rock, country and blues genres.

 

[David Barnett]

"Solid State, the sound of the future!"
View attachment 1071319

The Zodiac series amps were just a re-packaged version of the same circuit in these original Fender Solid State amps.

 

[Short on cash]

Those things give me a headache just looking at it !

 

[loopfinding]

My Yamaha and Peavey SS amps sound great to my ears. Both the Peavey and my cheap Quilter sound good distorted with the right speakers and they take pedals incredibly well! Personally, I prefer tube and hybrid amps if push comes to shove and have gigged with both.

sondemeyer implemented some cool things at peavey. but they're peavey, and all those years of bad SS reflected poorly on SS, so not many will give them a fair shake.

i have a feeling that when 90% of everything is modelers, people will reconsider analog modeling attempts of yesteryear. just like they changed their attitude on stuff like the sunn beta lead.

 

[39martind18]

Saw this on FB Marketplace today. Brought back a memory.

Lest anyone forget what great things CBS wrought at Fender by the end of the 1960's...

behold the Capricorn!
View attachment 1071314

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I actually remember when these were new in the Fender dealers! I plugged into one expecting a sonic miracle (I was 10, o.k?) Somehow, it sounded "funny" to me...as I told my dad who was also a musician.

You see, my reference point for "not funny sounding" was my old-fashioned amp at home, which was a mint 1957 Tremolux. Kids learn this lesson. Because I was ten I thought I was wrong about the way the Capricorn sounded. I wasn't...but I was ten and didn't have the experience to articulate what my ears told me was true.


Anyway, younger folk check this out. This isn't made up. The Capricorn was CBS Fender's top amp offering in 1969...

FWIW, it still sounds "funny". But it was - as the CBS/Fender ads proclaimed - "designed for the sensitve and ambitious musician" and the way you knew this was true, according to Fender was the "...the cool looking silver and orange grille cloth"

sigh

(Note to Fender Zodiac series purists, I believe the Capricorn amp was originally a combo, and the one on FBM has perhaps been combo'd by a DIY guy? I could be wrong. Doesn't much matter)​

For a short while, I had the Scorpio variant, traded it even up for a Blackface Pro Reverb. Best trade I ever made!

 

[Paul G.]

Solid state can sound great. Orange, Peavey, Kustom, Rickenbacker, Yamaha, Lab Series, Roland and others have made good-sounding guitar amps with transistors. The problem with these Fenders wasn't the technology, it was non-musicians designing musical products.

 

[Patton]

For some reason my dad bought a Super Showman brand new back then. He was playing out then so I guess he thought it would be the ultimate stage amp. I don't think he really took it out too much (awkwardly big and heavy), so he still had it when he passed a few years ago. Last I knew it was still sitting in his basement (stepmom and one sister are working on the house). Here's a bad pic from a long time ago:

8-10's in the cabinet! When my brother and I were pulling stuff out of the music room last time we were there I noticed in the bottom of the speaker cabinet that the original covers for both pieces are still wrapped in plastic! I found the owner's manual and put it in there with the covers. I don't really know what to do with it. I remember it being a pretty sterile amp. Maybe best as a PA or something. I don't have the room for it and don't want it. Same with my brother.

I should call Fender and see if they want it back!