Vaporizer & Fender Pawn Shop Excelsior.

I agree. The Excelsior was super cool, and just different. Lots of complaining about the stock 15", but once broken in, was warm and full. Sold mine because that tin box along the bottom wasn't a reverb pan. Gotta have on board verb.

 

They were fun amps, and that whole series was refreshing. I had my eye on an Excelsior, but I already have a 15" Standel.

 

Rightly or wrongly, I lump the Gretsch G5222 in with these pawn shop amps. Love mine.

 

I had a Vaporizer for a while, with upgraded caps, tubes, and a standby switch installed. Nice sounding amp, but i replaced it with a pro junior which was louder and much easier to carry on gigs. I especially liked the treble input.

 

I have the Greta with replacement 4 ohm Sharp alnico speaker, and National 12AX7 and 12AT7 tubes. It's on my kitchen benchtop and a great little late night unit. Sounds tweedy, crangy and on high volumes mini Marshall all at once.

I had the Excelsior and sold it only because I got a very good offer. Replacement 15" 1958(!) Jensen out of a Motorola juke console - sounded awesome. I fitted tone control, footswitch and depth control for trem.

 

The fender greta is a monster sleeper when you play it through an extension 10" or 12".

Crazy fun bedroom/studio amp.

It'll teach you to "play" and use your guitar's volume and tone knobs.

 

I own an Excelsior and have gigged with it. I really like it, but mine is currently out of my lineup partly because I was transporting it without removing the power cord from the jack on the back of the amp, and that jack broke. I’m not a techie myself, and haven’t taken the initiative to get that fixed.

 

that is soooo cool

 

Had an excelsior and loved it.
Wish I still had it.

Bought a vaporizer used, but the reverb didn’t work so I returned it.

I’d love a Ramparte.

 

I liked that whole series...good-to-great sounding amps, funky styling and tones that weren’t the same-old same-old regurgitations of things we already own.

I wish it had been more successful.

 

I think most of us do.

 

I had a pawn shop series mustang special with hte wide range humbuckers...DANG THAT was a NICE guitar.
Didn't know what I had until I sold it. It was so bluesy it was scary...

 

Love them so much, I have 2 of each, swapped the speakers in the Vaporizers, much better! And have a 40 yr old 15'' speaker for the brown Excelsior I'm going to install to see how she sounds!
I haven't found any of these for cheap lately, people are snatching them up!
I'll keep my 2 sea foam green amps, and sell the Red Vaporizer and Brown Excelsior if anybody is hunting for either!

 

Yes, I liked many/most of the guitars and basses (especially the Bass VI)...cool axes!

 

That's the ones I got.

There is plenty of info on the forum, what are you looking for?

 

I had an Excelsior that I kept for about 2 or 3 days. I played a gig on an internet show called "Balcony TV" with it and it sounded great. Only reason I took it back was, it didn't have a tone knob, just that weird switch. Little did I know, someone would come along and offer a kit on ebay that would be an easy drop-in tone knob that replaced the switch.

One other kicker: one of the guys who was a producer on the show asked me what kind of amp it was after I played, and I told him. He said, it was too bad they didn't get it in the shot, because some band had played previously with one of the Pawn Shop series guitars and Fender decided to put it up on their website, since they video was really good quality. Doh!!!