1966 Fender Bassman Solid State Head & 3x12" Cab

Dear lordie, would you look at that piece of sculpture? This is a Fender SP 3100 solid state Bassman head (2-channel, 100w per channel) and its original 3x12" (yes, 3x12"!), 4-ohm speaker cab. With a '66 serial number on the speaker cabinet, that places this at first year of production. Fender Solid State amps were never popular, but when they're working right they're really not so bad. The problem with this one's head is that it needs repair.

The cab, however, is a gorgeous thing to behold whether it's plugged into my Aguilar bass amp or any of the random guitar amp heads in the shop. You want fat sound? This has it. I'm almost tempted to take this whole rig in trade simply so I can pop a tiny, modern head on top of it for giggles... or kitbash a modern guitar head to fit inside the old head's box.

At any rate, a consignor dropped these off so they'll be sold separately -- but really should be kept together.

As far as the head goes -- before I fired it up, I put a new 3-prong cable on it and bypassed the "accessory" 2-prong jack on the back. It had an old 3-prong cable on it but it was risky-looking and completely chewed-up. I sprayed-out the electronics where necessary and fired it up and got two minutes before the amp tripped its overload and stopped working. Now when it's flipped-on it makes a hum, trips its "reset" button, and turns-off.

Two hours of me fussing over reflowing solder joints and more cleaning and I still don't know what's up, so I'm going to give up at this point and let someone more familiar with these amps deal with it.

The speaker cabinet is ready to go, though, provided you have an amp head that goes down to 4-ohm loads. I opened it up to look at it and while about half of the back-panel screws are replacements, the rest of it is original and it's clean in there.



























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