Last year when I started messing with the Bandmaster, I bought How to Hot Rod Your Fender Amp by Jeffrey Falla. I’ve read the first 6 chapters a few times now, and after practicing my soldering skills on my DS-1, I think I’m ready to jump in.
Falla suggests performing this mod on all silverface amps that haven’t already received it. He also suggests that it is rare to find a silverface amp that has not already had this modification done. Mine certainly falls in this category.
When I first tried to figure out when the amp was built, I had issues placing it and reasoned that it was from 1969 by looking at the information I had available. I may need to try and date the amplifier again (and do a better job of recording what I was looking at to do so), because the electronics (at least for the bias circuit) match the “1968 Silverface Bias Circuit” diagrams in the book.
I had to look at the diagrams and read the procedure a few times with the amp open to understand what I need to do, but now that I get it I think this will be pretty simple to pull off.
I’ve ordered my parts (2, 220K resistors and a 47uF 100V electrolytic capacitor). Once again, I’m nervous/unsure about what brand of components to buy and how much to care about all the specs that the author doesn’t go into. For example, what power/voltage rating should the resistors have? Does it matter? For the record, I bought Xicon resistors with a 3W power rating and a 350V voltage rating… Hopefully that is sufficient.
The parts cost me $6.54 (76.3% of which is shipping) and should get here in a couple weeks. 🙂