Leo Fender Amps & The Pre-CBS Fender Amplifier Story

Leo Fender started building amps back in the '50's, hand wiring and soldering the individual components together himself, initially. His fame for building great sounding and most of all reliable amps grew and soon became legendary. Musicians everywhere wanted That Fender Sound. By the early '60's the Fender Musical Instrument Company of Fullerton California was cranking out amps by the hundreds and then thousands from their factory. The Mid-'60's saw Leo Fender cut a deal with the huge corporate conglomerate, CBS and by 1965 the deal was consummated and Fender Musical became a part of CBS.

We Fender lovers know well of this transition and many laud it as a sad day in Fender history because many of the manufacturing techniques became more automated and "modernized". As Leo himself has said, much of this would have come eventually anyway and that he would have been making amps utilizing these techniques himself had they been available to him. Nevertheless, the True Fender Collector & Lover looks carefully for the "Pre-CBS" amplifier because of this 1965 transition.

The truth is that initially very little changed. The first change was the CBS moniker that got attached to every Fender amp that went out of the factory, and before too long, CBS decided that the old Fender "black-face" control panel did not look snazzy or modern enough and so changed the black panel to a silver with blue lettering panel. This major (cosmetic) change also took a while to implement and it was not really until 1968 that almost all amps finally had the silver control panel instead of the black.

The really most important changes were to the circuitry of the amps which took even longer to implement. As a result, a 1966 Post-CBS amp and a 1964 Pre-CBS amp typically have identical circuitry and therefore more or less identical sound (speakers, cabinet wood, transformers, capacitors, tubes, etc. notwhithstanding). Some amps got the circuitry "upgrades" (changes) faster and sooner than others, but as far as we know, there were little or NO changes to circuitry much before 1970 or so. This makes all of the '60's Fender amps similar in circuitry. Pre and Post CBS.

The smaller amps, like this Vibro Champ, saw almost NO changes in circuitry due to their sheer simplicity in design and again, even Leo Fender himself commented that many of the circiutry changes would have been implemented even if he had maintained control of the company because they created "more stability" in the overall circuit design. This of course changes the sound some and so we have the Pre-CBS Purists and those who may actually prefer the "smoother" and somewhat different sounding newer circuits.

In any event, the 1968 Fender Champ and it's slightly upgraded brother, the Vibro Champ are nearly identical (in sound and circuitry) to the Pre-CBS Fender amps of only 2 to 3 years previous because it took time to re-design and fully implement any of the CBS modernization changes once they took over in 1965. As with any company acquisition, it was a slow process and amp design was not the first priority I am sure. The 1968 amps in particular can be spotted easily by the silver trim runnng around the edge of the speaker grill. A dead giveaway for a 1968 (and some 1969's).

One of the main reason why we love these Fender Amps (from a technical standpoint) is for Leo Fender's sheer simplicity and brilliance of design, in many cases taking tube audio amplification designs and standards directly from the current tube manufacturers product handbook spec guidebook (RCA, GE, Sylvania, etc.) of the day. Audio amplification was a relatively new design entity and much of tube amplification design was geared as much towards producing radio waves as it was for audio back then! As techicians AND as players, we just LOVE these old Fender Amps. One of the MOST revered & copied deisgns for guitar amps.