Fender Vaporizer

[Tonray's Ghost]

I don't remember this !

[toomanycats]

A friend of mine has that amp and let me borrow it for a while. I called it "That Jetsons Amp." The things that sticks in my mind most about it is that it's heavy and it's seriously loud. He was dumping a bunch of gear and wanted to give me a great price on it. I passed on the Vaporizer and bought his VOX AC4 instead.

[Tonray's Ghost]

A friend of mine has that amp and let me borrow it for a while. I called it "That Jetsons Amp." The things that sticks in my mind most about it is that it's heavy and it's seriously loud. He was dumping a bunch of gear and wanted to give me a great price on it. I passed on the Vaporizer and bought his VOX AC4 instead.

There's someone selling a Fender Excelsior in Bangkok. I remember playing one in a Sam Ash store in NJ. Cool looking amp but it sounded like a growling poodle. It was weird in that it had an input for an accordion in addition to guitar. Fender went thru a period of some innovation..I wish they would do more of that

[tonebender]

Part of the Pawn Shop Series right around the turn of the Century. I remember I bought the Excelsior model with a 15" speaker for $299 at Dixie Music up near Palatka Florida. Stock the amp was not good but I did three things to it that made it absolutely awesome. It had no tone knob but did have a slide switch labeled dark and bright (I think), replaced the switch with a tone pot, a Fender Strat knob and it had a nice tone sweep. I changed out the speaker for a Weber Blue Dog Alnico and upgraded the tube compliment out including two NOS RCA black shadows in the power section. It quickly became on of my favorite amps. If it had tank reverb I would still own it. It was one of the last amps I sold during my last major sell off. From time to time I regret selling it. The guy that bought it showed up in a van and the front license plate said "Blues Man". He was one happy camper when he left here. I should have taken those tubes out but, oh well. Oh yeah, it came with a plastic Excelsior badge and a friend had given my a key chain that was a metal Fender badge with a key loop on it. I buffed off the little loop where the key ring attached, drilled two holes and mounted to the amp instead of the cheap plastic badge. It did not change the sound LOL but it looked better.

[BatUtilityBelt]

I bought the cheapest of the Fender Pawn Shop series amps - the Greta. I picked it up because it was on closeout for $99, I thought it looked cool, and at the time I had a dog named Greta. I think @tonebender is onto something in that, in my opinion, these amps might have been designed to be easily modded. Even after a tube upgrade and put through a good cabinet, the Greta is still screaming to be modded to sound better. But as I understand it the bigger amps sound much better than the Greta. I was hoping for a Champ vibe when I grabbed mine... nope.

[Tonray's Ghost]

I bought the cheapest of the Fender Pawn Shop series amps - the Greta. I picked it up because it was on closeout for $99, I thought it looked cool, and at the time I had a dog named Greta. I think @tonebender is onto something in that, in my opinion, these amps might have been designed to be easily modded. Even after a tube upgrade and put through a good cabinet, the Greta is still screaming to be modded to sound better. But as I understand it the bigger amps sound much better than the Greta. I was hoping for a Champ vibe when I grabbed mine... nope.

Yup...they had the little Greta at Sam Ash when I played with the Excelsior....seemed so tiny ! I couldn't imagine that little speaker sounding good with a tube amp

[Tonray's Ghost]

Part of the Pawn Shop Series right around the turn of the Century. I remember I bought the Excelsior model with a 15" speaker for $299 at Dixie Music up near Palatka Florida. Stock the amp was not good but I did three things to it that made it absolutely awesome. It had no tone knob but did have a slide switch labeled dark and bright (I think), replaced the switch with a tone pot, a Fender Strat knob and it had a nice tone sweep. I changed out the speaker for a Weber Blue Dog Alnico and upgraded the tube compliment out including two NOS RCA black shadows in the power section. It quickly became on of my favorite amps. If it had tank reverb I would still own it. It was one of the last amps I sold during my last major sell off. From time to time I regret selling it. The guy that bought it showed up in a van and the front license plate said "Blues Man". He was one happy camper when he left here. I should have taken those tubes out but, oh well. Oh yeah, it came with a plastic Excelsior badge and a friend had given my a key chain that was a metal Fender badge with a key loop on it. I buffed off the little loop where the key ring attached, drilled two holes and mounted to the amp instead of the cheap plastic badge. It did not change the sound LOL but it looked better.

If I had any soldering or electronic skills I would think about this one...but alas I'm hopeless...he wants about $475..a bit much IMHO. I'd take a poke at it for $300

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[BatUtilityBelt]

Yup...they had the little Greta at Sam Ash when I played with the Excelsior....seemed so tiny ! I couldn't imagine that little speaker sounding good with a tube amp

Yeah. but it has a speaker out also, which was why I hoped a good cabinet made all the difference.

[Tonray's Ghost]

Here is another of that same Pawn Shop series

[mozz]

I modded a Fender Excelsior for a good friend of mine. He wanted the 15" speaker swapped and did a few small electrical mods. I guess the factory speaker is the first thing a lot of people change.

[tonebender]

I had the same 15" Weber in my Peavey Delta Blues as well. It was two nice options, the EL84n based DB and the 6V6 based Fender Excelsior. I had to put a reverb pedal on the board when I used the Excelsior but @Floridian FX fixed right up in that department with The Spelunker. Both had a retro look and were my work horses for quite a while.

[BatUtilityBelt]

This thread reminded me I was going to eventually find a better speaker for the Fender Greta, and had seen people talking up a specific one to go with on another forum (the Visaton R10S). Remember this is still a cheap 4" speaker, but I never use the Greta's built in speaker because it just doesn't sound great at any volume. So I ordered one for a whopping $13 and it arrived the next day. But I've been busy cleaning up storm damaged trees so I didn't get around to it. There's rain in tomorrow's forecast, so I decided to tackle the speaker swap tonight.

I first played for 10 minutes or so through the old speaker to A/B them. Just like I remembered, that original Greta speaker sounds just not good. I tore into the amp, and you have to take it most of the way apart just to access the speaker screws, but it was still an easy swap - desolder the old, solder in the new, and reassemble the head. Within half an hour, I was playing the new speaker and it was a huge difference. I hear all the pick dynamics. There's more clean headroom, and apparently a wider, flatter frequency response. I actually wanted to play a lot more. I was only stopped by 1 of 2 bandaids on my fretting hand from working with a chainsaw all week. I can't wait to hear how it sounds after the speaker is broken in. I already like it as a desktop practice amp suddenly with the swap. It is a mod now, not just the tubes.