![]() Luckily I located a NOS pair of Brimars just around the corner from me for £10! They turned out to be excellently matched too. A quick check on the valve tester showed the filament was open circuit. I quickly ascertained that one of the differently branded output tubes (an RCA and a Brimar) was not glowing, even after the sockets and pins were cleaned. Oh well, bidder beware! Not all sellers are totally forthright in their description of what they are selling.Īnyway, all was not lost. I strummed a few chords and turned up full volume and although it had a good distorted Fendery sound it was very weak and trebly, nowhere near the stated 12 Watts. However, we plugged it in and there was a lot of crackling to which the seller said, "Oh, that never happened before." A quick wiggle of the pre-amp valve and it settled down. When I went to pick up the amp, I was fully expecting to see a pair of 6v6GT output valves, so was rather surprised to find the smaller bottle 6AQ5 tubes instead. Although there was no picture of the rear of the amp in the listing, there were lots of pictures of the original user manual and circuit diagram that came with it. What attracted me to this was the unusual use of a transformer for the phase inverter and a pair of 6v6s. While tweed Champs and blackface Princetons are commanding prices of over a grand on Ebay, you can grab the little Musicmaster Bass for around $250, and those with the energy and desire to take on a search could very well turn one up in a pawn shop or used music shop for less.Yet another Ebay win. It should be noted here that, as is often the case, what is good for a guitar is also good for harp, and the Musicmaster Bass amp really shines with the sounds of a little tin sandwich being pumped into it through a decent microphone. If cranked, the clean becomes a fabulous dirty crunch with plenty of room to be heard in a smaller combo situation. The amp can provide excellent clean tones at lower volumes. Many players prefer to swap out the CTS speaker for something more to their liking, but the stock piece still delivers decent sound and is desired by some. Nothing fancy here, but it delivers in the sound department. There is a simple slider on/off switch, one knob for volume, one for tone. Laid out simply, the amp produces twelve watts with either 6v6 or 6aq5 preamp tubes. The Musicmaster Bass amp is a great way to get good tone from an honest vintage Fender tube amp without needing to take out a bank loan. Gradually the news spread that the Musicmaster Bass, while doing little for bass amplification, could flat scorch with a guitar, a situation which was something of a mirror of Fender’s initial bass amp offering, the Bassman. Somewhere along the line, however, a guitarist was hard up for something to power his six string, and a guitar got plugged into one of these things. Created as a practice amplifier for bedroom work, the amp really doesn’t do much at all for bass, with many bassists feeling that above 4 on the volume knob there really just isn’t much to it. One particular piece of equipment that illustrates this point well is Fender’s Musicmaster Bass amplifier. ![]() ![]() As is often the case, those low-dollar pieces of past years that got passed over so readily have become items of value to players these days. In the 70s Fender produced a line of budget music gear under the “Musicmaster” name. ![]() Looking for real vintage tube gear but not blessed with unlimited funds? There may not be a free tweed Champ or blackface Super Reverb sitting on ever corner, but there are still deals to be had straight from Leo himself.
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