fenderguru.com is a source to vintage Fender guitar amps, mostly blackface and silverface models from the 1960s and 1970s. We explain how good maintenance, mods, tubes, speakers and circuitry components affect your tone and how you may shape it to fit your own musical style and preferences. We try to address both the musical and technical aspects of vintage Fender amps.

Our Buyer’s guide to vintage Fender amps will be valuable to anyone who is about to purchase a vintage Fender amp.

See our amp section

We share information gathered through decades of playing and servicing Fender tube amps. We discuss how to turn it into a tone machine for your specific needs. What do professional artists and techs do to their amps to get that killer Fender tone? We’ll teach you how to make a small amp bigger, a big amp smaller, make a dirty amp clean or to make it growl without any effect pedals. It’s all about breakup, sag, sustain, compression and harmonics in speakers, tubes, transformers and capacitors.

What do the vintage Fender amps sound like?

Listen for yourself. Here is a beautifully cranked Pro Reverb and a clean sounding Twin Reverb:

Here is a cranked and slightly modified blackface Bassman played by Amund Maarud in search for some rock and blues tones:

Who are we

A couple of easy going players, ampoholics and engineers. Amateurs – because we don’t make our livings from music, guitars or amps. Still, quite a few hours have been put into our beloved hobby, including playing, servicing, buying, selling and researching. In April 2010 we decided to write down and share our Fender amp experience with all you.

Our personal tone preferences

Blues, rock, rock’n roll, soul, blackface, tweed, Strats, Teles and the big and powerful man from Texas in particular. Maybe the greatest show ever is “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the El Mocambo. Boogie time tonight, please welcome…..” Stevie Ray Vaughan’s tone on Little Wing may be created by a strat and a Fender Super Reverb, something like this: