Hot Wired Bassman?

NY Chief · Post by **NY Chief** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 4:24 pm

When I was young and dumb (no comments!!!) the word on the street to "get that sound" was to get a blackface Bassman and get it "hot wired" by Jeff Bloch (a tech in Brooklyn who supposedly did work for Hendrix).This was back in high school and while I had basic electronics knowledge I didn't know much about amp circuitry. Matter of fact IIRC I think I once paid a service tech to diagnose why my amp was squealing and making noises, my introduction to a microphonic tube!

When I picked the amp up I asked if it was "hot". Jeff's answer, "Hot as a pistol". And, it was certainly was. Great crunch. He didn't charge me much ($50?) so I'm sure he didn't change tranny's or add a pre. Now that I some about under the hood I'd like to understand what he might have done. The amp is long gone.

Any of you amp pro's familiar with the typical blackface mods being done back in the late 70's, early 80's??

kt77 · Post by **kt77** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 6:27 pm

I didn't do mods to blackface bassmen back then, but the simplest '$50' gain mod is to hack out the gain sucking caps across any plate resistors, and turn that gain sucking single triode summing node into a simple gain stage.....it would sound dimed at about 7........

I mooded my bf bassman one time, so that it literally put out square wave at 2 on the vol.....some metalhead morons from the bay area wanted to know what kind of amp it was (it said Fender Bassman LOL)...I told them it was an UUNS (sunn logo turned upside down on the speaker cab) and you could get them anywhere in SF......

musicians are such morons