After Leo Fender introduced his revolutionary new Precision electric \nbass in 1951 he had to come up with an amplifier that could handle the \nnew instrument’s low end power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first Fender Bassman was released in 1952, it featured a 15″ \nspeaker and 26 watts of all tube power. It basically was a guitar amp \nwith a little more low end response, but it set the stage for all bass \namps to come that would literally change music forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
By today’s standards that seems vastly underpowered but you have to \nremember that the electric bass was replacing the acoustic upright<\/a> bass \nso the first Fender Precisions sounded huge through the Bassman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Initially the Fender Bassman suffered from a problem that would \nplague many early bass amps of the day….blown speakers. The powerful \nnew bass guitar was simply too much for the guitar speakers that were \nbeing used in the first bass amps. A new speaker had to be developed \nthat could handle the high output and low frequencies of Leo’s Precision\n Bass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After several redesigns Fender came out with 40 watt 4×10 tweed open \nback cabinet with Jensen P10R speakers and the famous chicken head \ncontrol knobs. These amps were much better at handling the power of a \nbass and produced better tone and gain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ironically the tweed Fender Bassman will probably be best remembered \nas a great guitar amp. Guitar players, especially blues musicians \nabsolutely loved the tweed Bassman. The Fender Bassman gave them a warm \nfat tone and smooth overdrive no other guitar amp of the era could \nmatch. In fact when Fender reissued the 59′ tweed Bassman they \nadvertised it as a guitar amp rather than a bass amp<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the early 1960’s Fender had phased out the tweed Bassman line and \nintroduced new bass amps. The Brownface, Blackface, and Silverface bass \nheads now had tolex covering instead of tweed and no longer came \nattached to a speaker cabinet like the old combos. These heads could be \nmatched up to various Fender cabinets depending on what speaker size and\n arrangement the bassist desired<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fender still offered combo bass amps but most were sold as lower end \nbudget models. The newer bass heads featured increased power with more \nheadroom and had a huge influence on bass amp design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the late 1960’s other companies like Ampeg and Acoustic had become\n serious competitors to Fender, releasing their own powerful stage bass \namps. In 1969 Fender introduced their Super Bassman head which featured \n100 watts and was usually paired with 2×15 cabinet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fender Bassman amps had their own special sound, which made them \nstand apart from other brands. Most of this was to due to their unique \ntube circuit designs and cabinet construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bassman series continued to evolve throughout the 1970’s with \nincreasingly more powerful and bigger amplifiers. Soon solid state amps \nstarted to emerge in the bassman line, offering more power, less weight \nand lower cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately these new transistor amps left a lot to be desired in \nthe tone department. Few bass players cared for the new solid state \ntechnology as they tended to sound dry and sterile. It wasn’t really \nuntil the 1980’s when solid state bass amps started to gain popularity, \nthanks in part to better technology and a trend towards a cleaner, more \ntransparent bass sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today Fender still produces the Bassman amp line and offers many \ndifferent products. Massively powerful solid state heads, small combo \namps, high powered combo amps, hybrid tube amps and even all tube bass \nheads that can handle the biggest venues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still some bassists, myself included will always be drawn to the \nolder classic Bassman designs. Not as powerful or clean sounding as \ntoday’s amps but they have much more character and vibe to their tone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After Leo Fender introduced his revolutionary new Precision electric bass in 1951 he had to come up with an amplifier that could handle the new instrument’s low end power. The first Fender Bassman was released in 1952, it featured a 15″ speaker and 26 watts of all tube power. It basically was a guitar amp … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bassguitarshack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bassguitarshack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bassguitarshack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bassguitarshack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bassguitarshack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bassguitarshack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":947,"href":"https:\/\/bassguitarshack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bassguitarshack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bassguitarshack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bassguitarshack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bassguitarshack.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Changes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n