Tweed

[tot_Ou_tard]

When someone talks about Tweed sound which amp are they primarily talking about? What set of tonal qualities is tweed shorthand for?

Here is a list of Fender Tweeds that I found:

[FONT=arial, helvetica]
Tweed very early Champ
Tweed early Princeton
Tweed Harvard model 5F10
Tweed early 12AX7 Champs, Princeton models 5D2, 5E2, 5F2, and Harvard 6G10
Tweed Deluxe (early and 5C3 models)
Tweed Deluxe (5D3 and 5E3 models)
Tweed Vibrolux (5E11 and 5F11 models)
Tweed Tremolux (5E9-A and 5G9 models)
Tweed Bandmaster 5E7 and Super 5F4
Tweed Pro-Amp 5C5 and Super 5C4
Tweed Pro-Amp models 5D5, 5E5, 5E5A and Super models 5D4 and 5E4A
Tweed early Super and early Bassman
Tweed Bassman second version
Tweed Bassman models 5E6 and 5E6A
Tweed Bassman 5F6
Tweed Bassman 5F6A
Tweed Twin 5C8
Tweed Twin 5D8
Tweed Twin 5E8, 5E8A
Tweed Twin 5F8, 5F8A[/FONT]

 

[tunghaichuan]

When someone talks about Tweed sound which amp are they primarily talking about? What set of tonal qualities is tweed shorthand for?

I've tried two real tweed amps: a 50s tweed Champ and an early 50s Tweed Deluxe, which I used two own. It was the 5C3 circuit with octal 6SC7 tubes inthe preamp. I've also built a 5E3 Deluxe and tried several 5E3 clones.

All of them had low headroom, early breakup and pronounced midrange. I have come to think of this as the "tweed" sound. It seems to me that even the higher powered models, Bassman and Twin share these characteristics despite having higher headroom and using relatively clean sounding 6L6 tubes. Remember, the early Marshalls were based on the tweed Bassman, and Marshalls are the premier distortion amps.

Later fender amps, especially the black face models of the mid 60s, have a cleaner sound, break up later and have lots of headroom.

tung

 

[tot_Ou_tard]

tung, so you're saying that any tweed is a tweed?

Thanks for the description of blackface tone, that was my next question.

 

[tunghaichuan]

tung, so you're saying that any tweed is a tweed?

In my extremely limited experience, yes. There will be differences based on output topology: SE vs. PP, fixed bias vs. cathode bias, 6V6 tubes vs. 6L6 tubes. But they all sound more alike than different.

Thanks for the description of blackface tone, that was my next question.

I believe that Leo was going for maximum clean power for the black face models. So you get loud, clean with minimal breakup. CBS took this a bit farther by introducing a few ultralinear models (which were Silver Face). 70 watts clean out of a pair of 6L6s is pretty impressive, but those UL amps don't break up except at extremely loud volumes.

tung

 

[markb]

I'd agree with Tung. Fenders got cleaner and brighter from one generation to the next. The UL Twins and Pros can be pretty painful up close.

Remember that Pro Juniors and Blues Deluxes are not tweed amps whatever kind of jacket they're wearing