I have one of the original Fender supersonic 60 watt combos. It is a decent amp, but I have always had a love hate relationship with it. I bought it used for a good price, intending to just use the 'blackface' type clean sound with pedals. That channel sounded decent enough (LOUD and CLEAN), but the other channels and reverb sounded kind of meh. So I set out to try to fix that bit of it.
Got a new set of winged C power tubes, biased it a little warmer than the cold fender setting, added a couple of re-issue tung sol tubes to the preamp channel 1 and 2 (the clean blackface and the tweed channel), then added a 12AT7 to the drive channel tube 1 to take away some gain and a 5751 to the second gain stage. I also replaced the phase inverter with a Jan Phillips NOS 12at7. Things sounded much better and I have enjoyed it like this for a couple of years.
Last week the reverb started to make a clicking sound and adding static to the top of the reverb bloom (to use a TGP like term). Tapping the tube for the reverb driver made it worse, so I ordered up some new tubes. A jan phillips NOS 12AT7 for the send and a tung sol re-issue 12ax7 for the return (fenders factory spec tube types for this amp). I take the old tubes out, and realize the previous owner had put a high gain spec'd 12ax7 in the reverb send (JJ make with marker writing labeling 'hardness 10/high gain') and a standard fender 12ax7 in the return. Strange choices. Put the new tubes in and fired up the amp, and WOW, the reverb sounds incredible now. Super lush/thick fender type reverb that really adds to the clean channel sounds. I checked the other positions (the amp has 10 tubes???) and placed another tung sol 12ax7 in another position that had another of these JJ 12ax7 high gain tubes. I'm really happy with the 40 dollars worth of tubes, and the amp sounds really nice now. Still has a couple of fender/groove tubes 12ax7's in there for the loop send/return, but I never use the loop, so I think I'll just leave them.
Got a new set of winged C power tubes, biased it a little warmer than the cold fender setting, added a couple of re-issue tung sol tubes to the preamp channel 1 and 2 (the clean blackface and the tweed channel), then added a 12AT7 to the drive channel tube 1 to take away some gain and a 5751 to the second gain stage. I also replaced the phase inverter with a Jan Phillips NOS 12at7. Things sounded much better and I have enjoyed it like this for a couple of years.
Last week the reverb started to make a clicking sound and adding static to the top of the reverb bloom (to use a TGP like term). Tapping the tube for the reverb driver made it worse, so I ordered up some new tubes. A jan phillips NOS 12AT7 for the send and a tung sol re-issue 12ax7 for the return (fenders factory spec tube types for this amp). I take the old tubes out, and realize the previous owner had put a high gain spec'd 12ax7 in the reverb send (JJ make with marker writing labeling 'hardness 10/high gain') and a standard fender 12ax7 in the return. Strange choices. Put the new tubes in and fired up the amp, and WOW, the reverb sounds incredible now. Super lush/thick fender type reverb that really adds to the clean channel sounds. I checked the other positions (the amp has 10 tubes???) and placed another tung sol 12ax7 in another position that had another of these JJ 12ax7 high gain tubes. I'm really happy with the 40 dollars worth of tubes, and the amp sounds really nice now. Still has a couple of fender/groove tubes 12ax7's in there for the loop send/return, but I never use the loop, so I think I'll just leave them.
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