Fender Baffle Board

[sbirkenstock]

Hi,

just saw that my vintage BF Fender combos do have floating baffle boards and that they are made of particle board and not plywood.
Do all BF Fender combos use particle board?
A friend thinks that the early ones had ply wood like the tweed amps.
Is that correct and when did they change to particle board?
What about the brownface?

Diging in on this topic I also found out that somewhere supposingly in the early 70s they changed from floating baffle board to a glued in one.
This comes with an extra frame for the grill cloth, that is mounted from the front via valcro.
Does anybody know exactly when that happend?

Also, any word on exchanging the baffle board from particle board to plywood? I mean soundwise.
Also it seams that plywood could hold the screws for the speaker better and you could go thinner (without knowing if this would be an advantage).
I read that tweed baffles have been thinner (5/16") than the BF ones (1/2").
I´m not sure if this is true for all of them.

many thanks,

Stephan

[Stevem]

Also take note that many of the blackface amps baffles are not cut out round from the factory!
A buddy of mine in FL just went the the trouble of getting a pair of orignal Orange frame JBL. 12 inches for his BF TR popped them in and promptly began driving the cones up against the non cut out area of the baffle and damaged one of the freshly reconed drivers, so be sure to check that out also!

The particle board baffle is more ridged than the earlier pine, but with age the screws that hold it into the amp can have problems due to dry rot of the particle board and with only 6 screws to hold it in there can be a issue!
The fix is some Carpenters glue run down in each hole with the fat end of a broken off tooth pick set in each hole and then load in a screw the baffle back up with the amp laying flat on its face and in 8 hours all will be well again.
This same fast and simple tooth pick and glue deal will fix the back panel issues amps have also!

[Ron Worley]

IIRC, Fender used pine baffles up until CBS came along with cost cutting measures. Some SF models had glued in fiber board baffles I believe as well.

[Stevem]

From what I have seen in my over 3 decades of working on these amps is that once Fender changed over the the velcroed in grile, that's when they started to glue in the baffle, the result of this is that the cab is far more ridgid and in terms of a 2-12 or 4-10 combo amp they project the low end better and need less bass output from the amp to do so, the result of this is a cleaner and louder amp!
I myself like the sound of a particle board baffle, but the speaker mounting studs coming loose can get to be a pain at times!