1966 Fender Vibrolux restoration project

[steelwitch]

Hey folks,

I would love to get some input on this Vibrolux reverb restoration. The amp was given to me by someone I know who found it rummaging through an old basement at an estate sale. Excellent find! The cabinet is pretty moldy, I’m going to hit it with some water/bleach mixture to kill the mold and leave it out for a few days. But before I do, if anyone has any suggestions for mold killing I would love to know. Bleach mixtures has worked well for me with amps that have moldy tweed but I don’t want to discolor the black tolex.

The baffle is replaced with a 1x12 with a Celestion G12 in it that’s pretty much ripped to shreds, no grill cloth. I managed to find 2 original fender CTS 10” speakers recently reconed by Weber and jumped on them right away. Got them for a good price! I’m going to order a baffle with an aged grill cloth from mojotone I think, and get it looking nice and original.

The circuit has been modified a bunch. The trem has been taken out completely and the controls have been replaced with a PPIMV and a presence knob. The 2nd input of the normal channel was replaced with a volume knob, and a mid control has been added to the tonestack. The amp also has a pair of KT66’s in it, and filled with excellent tubes (RCA, Mullard, telefunken) I couldn’t have asked to find anything better in there. The mods are very well done and I feel badly about undoing them, the amp sounds great. If it was an amp I was going to keep I would leave it as is, but I need to fund some other builds. I’m wondering how a heavily modded circuit would affect the value of the amp. Is it worth my time to undo them and bring it back to stock for the sake of resale?

[sluckey]

Is it worth my time to undo them and bring it back to stock for the sake of resale?

Depends on how valuable your time is.

[steelwitch]

Is it worth my time to undo them and bring it back to stock for the sake of resale?

Depends on how valuable your time is.

Fair point. I may just restore the cabinet and offer to bring back to stock for some more $. I was interested in trying out your trem-o-lator circuit if the trem circuit was going to be rebuilt I’ve heard lots of good things!

[sluckey]

I put the Trem-O-Nator in a '67 BandMaster. This amp had already been extremely modified. It had a Hoffman style turret board and numerous other mods. No going back to original. But your amp looks like it would be fairly easy to return to stock. If I owned it I would work very hard to return it to stock.

[steelwitch]

I've managed to get all the components together for the restoration! I had to use a new 3meg pot for the trem, and an entire fender tremolo rebuild kit which was perfect for this vibrolux. (sorry sluckey! I do want to build the trem-o-nator soon!) I feel lucky that many of the original components were repurposed for mods, and channel 2 is basically the same except for the trem circuit.

I know this is kind of nit-picky, but does anyone know of any cloth wires that would look similar to the original wiring in this amp? specifically the off-white-yellow color. I don't know of anyone who makes them. I rebuilt a 1962 bassman that was in bad shape about a year ago and I didn't think to gather the spoils from the board except for the blue molded caps I didn't use.. I might hit him up and see if i can get some of those original wires.. not that it will make a huge difference, just a random thought!