NAD: 69 "Blonde"master

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redchapterjubilee
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NAD: 69 "Blonde"master

Post by redchapterjubilee » Sun Dec 26, 2021 6:46 am

Image

Just before thanksgiving my Xops bandmate and often absent OSG member Zastruga messaged me to say he saw an interesting Craigslist out in his part of the country that I needed to look at. It was for a 1969 Bandmaster with matching cabinet. It looked like complete hell. $300. I had actually been looking for something Fender'y with more headroom than my little Bassman 20. I already had a 59 Bassman LTD but wanted more of the classic Fender black/silverface sort of sound than the Bassman. I had been looking at Pros, Bandmasters, VR's, Supers, etc. So I told him I'd paypal him the money if he wanted to go look at it. So he did go look at it and brought it back to his place. Then we had to argue a bit, because it turned out that the Bandmaster sounded AMAZING. Eventually we settled that he'd keep the cabinet (and the recently reconed Oxfords in it which, after some experimentation, turned out was exactly what he had been after when he rehoused a dripface Super into a head to use with a 2x12) and I got the amp.

The amp had been with its original owner. The owner had played that amp all up and down the Colorado Rockies in bands for 50 years. The owner was (and still is) a hardcore smoker and her amp sure as heck smelled like it. When I got it back at the house it smelled like my grandparents' tobacco farm. But it fired right up and made several band practices with no problem. The Fender style 2x12 I have here didn't sound right with it though. It was REAL boomy. But it sounded great into my 10A125 loaded 2x10. But that beat-up cab atop the nice blonde 2x10 just didn't look right to me. So i did a bunch of things at once
1) Took the Nicotinemaster to the local shop to get a grounded plug and to have the insides given a once-over
2) Bought a 65 Bandmaster headshell that had been rewrapped pretty in blonde and wheat
3) Attempted to buy a black faceplate but got refunded immediately

I got it back from the shop a few days ago. There were some caps and resistors to replace but surprisingly not as much as i expected. We got it rehoused, replaced a non-matching knob, and there's the Blondemaster, ready to rock for another 50 years. Meanwhile, the old head cab is stinking up a tiny little corner of my garage. After assembling it, I think I'm gonna keep the faceplate as-is. I like it better silver and blonde than I thought I would.

I'm surprised I like this amp. I tend to prefer mid forward or hotrodded Fender (I own and gig tweeds and Mesas usually) but the band I've got out here now has a different sort of two guitar dynamic. In the xops we tend to blend together a little more and run interweaving lines. In my AVL band it's more "who's upfront and who's in the background". I needed to be able to have a much wider dynamic than I had before and wanted a clean platform to come up and down. I think the LTD head might have been fine for this too, but where's the fun in using something you already got? The interesting part (not news to any of you who play this era of Fender amp) is that I don't necessarily have to give it more volume and/or gain, I can just add mids and come forward. I also like that it's not as HARD as playing a Twin. On 4 this amp will have a little hair around it with my Jazzblaster and P90-loaded JM's. But it can still take getting punched a few times without compressing out. Anyhow, I'm chuffed. I get to gig it for the first time in a few weeks and very much looking forward to it.

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MayTheFuzzBeWithYou
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Re: NAD: 69 "Blonde"master

Post by MayTheFuzzBeWithYou » Sun Dec 26, 2021 8:05 am

Wow!
This looks way better than I thought it would!
Bandmasters are great! You'll have have fun with this one!

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countertext
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Re: NAD: 69 "Blonde"master

Post by countertext » Sun Dec 26, 2021 8:47 am

That looks amazing. I’ve got a ‘67 Bandmaster that’s been my #1 amp for more than 25 years, so I know yours must sound great!

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redchapterjubilee
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Re: NAD: 69 "Blonde"master

Post by redchapterjubilee » Sun Dec 26, 2021 11:19 am

One thing that was interesting to learn about in the process of buying and modding this amp is the fun little things Fender did to their amps between 1967 and 1970. I knew about drip edge amps usually being blackface Fender on the inside but some have found the vertical black line silverface Fenders to have a varying degree of blackface circuitry inside as late as 1970. This amp has the vertical black lines but is solidly a silverface amp on the inside. I didn’t have any of that altered. It sounded fine to me as-is.

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smjenkins
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Re: NAD: 69 "Blonde"master

Post by smjenkins » Mon Dec 27, 2021 9:27 pm

That's an awesome story and am awesome amp. I love how it looks with the silverface plate. Don't change a thing. Congrats on the great deal on a sweet vintage amp

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