Fender Jerry mods- waldo and brad's info

[claytushaywood]

Thanks so much for all the help guys! I finally have my pro reverb there!!!

I did the mods initially and wasnt too happy with em... I have a pro reverb and at the time it had jensen c12n reissues and a tube rectifier. that amp was SUPER SUPER BRIGHT at first- like not even fun cutting bright, just ridiculous. Brad told me to give the tanatulums some break in time, and get rid of the jensens- I got a single weber california at 4ohms for my pro- paper dome- and it was MUCH warmer and fatter than the jensens- once I gave it a good 20 hours of play time and the tanatulums a good 60 hours... the amp is actually really warm now, bright but not harsh. Tonight I rebiased my tubes and put in a solid state rectifier plug in module from the tube depot. Perfect jerry!!! I actually installed a 5751 in the v2 and phase inverter position trying to lower preamp gain- I think i might wanna change back to stock 12ax7's now... though I do dig the lower gain in preamp, higher gain in power amp sound.

my point is, if you've done the jerry mods and installed the tanatulums- give em some time... they end up sounding a LOT better! and if you have a fender with a tube rectifier- definitely get a SS rectifier. that may be the biggest differnce between the twin and other fender bf style amps!

[RiverRat]

I recall someone quoting Ron Wickersham or Dan Healy on the yahoo Grateful Gearheads group as saying that the caps may need as much as a 100+ hours before they've really broken in properly.

[SarnoMusicSolutions]

Yes. Never underestimate a cathode bypass capacitor's ability to impart tonal character into the sound. It's a huge contributor. And while all cap's break in over time, the tantalums are extremely crisp and hard sounding at first and there's also something kind of weird in the mid-bass. I think this has scared some folks away from them. But after a few dozen hours of run time, and even better, actual playing time, that crisp hardness turns into a sweeter more juicy treble and the mid-bass smooths out and in the end you have a very high performance and guitar-friendly capacitor. They'll always have a pronounced brightness to them as it's just the nature of tantalum cap's, but that brightness becomes much more pleasing and warm over time.

And keep in mind we're only talking about using the high end mil-spec types that Dan Healy taught us all about. The plastic dipped types don't seem to have as good a sound and they also seem to maintain a thin, unpleasant crispy edge in the sound.


B

[Smolder]

Oooooh - I see the future... taking a $1.30 cap and preforming with 50 hours of dc current and selling them for $20 each to boomer bedroom players coming out of the corporate world!

< sarcasm alert >