Fender Twin Reverb II - Any good mods?

Tokai Forum

Help Support Tokai Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Eigil

Active member
Joined
Jan 22, 2003
Messages
38
Reaction score
0
Location
Norway
Hi there, I own a 80's Rivera designed "Fender Twin Reverb II". This amp sounds really good on the clean channel, but very thin on the second (gain channel). I want it to sound like a modern mesa boogie or marshall on the second channel, and more like the good ol Super Reverb on the clean. Torres Engineering has made one mod for this amp, however I haven't heard about any one using it yet. Can anyone tell me what to change on this amp, to make it sound better? Is this Torres mod the only real option I've got? Can I get better results with a professional amp builder? What should I do? I have heard of people modifying it, making it sound supperb. There is great potential in this amp. I just want to know how to make it sound it's best.

[/b]
 
I owned a SuperChamp and Princeton Reverb II in the past but wanted a more vintage Fender tone, so I bought a Victoria. I did do a number of things to my amp before selling it however, like changing tubes and speakers. Putting a good Celestion Vintage 30 and putting some 5751 tubes in place of the 12AX7's seemed to help. I even tried a Tone Tubby Hemp cone, which sounded good but a raspy or brittle sounding to me. RCA 6V6GTA's helped a bit too. I had a friend who did some of the wiring mods for headroom with little to no effect, and I hear the Torres mods a worthless? Could be hear say but a lot of people are not really happy with Torres, especially when they send their gear to him? Good luck with your tone quest, the II line is definately a line looking into and cost are going up due to the interest of Rivera's work. I would definately change the speaker first, then work on the various tubes before you dig into the wiring.
 
Thank you for the advice! I'm buing a Marshall JCM800 50W combo very cheap of a friend who has'nt been using it much. I'll see if it gives me more of what I want. Needs a speaker replacement though... those EV's sound too shrill.
 
I know, huge difference. Is the JCM800 any good? Is it worth more than $280? Being a combo, it's probably less worth. I'm hoping it will give me a good "base sound" for my great Carl Martin effects.
 
I've got a JCM800 combo and I absoloutly adore it. Clean channel isn't very clean, always slighlty broken up, but the overdrive channel is out of this world.

I replaced the speaker (celestion V30), speaker lead and valves and it sounds just how I want it.

I got it s/h for ?275, which seems about average for them (~?300)
 
I think I'm doing the right thing here! Are there any chance of getting a less great model? Are there many types of JCM800s? I that case, which is the best?
 
They come in 50w/100w, 1 channel or 2, 1*12, 2*12 etc. I think there were solid-state JCM800's too.

The full range are on Marshall's site, www.marshallamps.com

Apparently there were some internal design changes in 1984 but they kept the outside appreance, model numbers etc. the same - there are tonal differences between pre-84 and post-84 models but opinion is divided as to which is best. I use an '87 and it sounds great to me. If you can find one of each, I for one would be interested in a report on the differences!
 

Latest posts

Back
Top