For a while I was thinking seriously of taking my Bantam and revising the circuit to add vibrato. But then a guy calls me and I was on my way to Boone, Iowa to look at a drip edge 1968 Dual Showman.
The Showman was all there but it was in rough shape, I bought it on the spot, head and loaded cabinet for $325, and I knew right away what I was gonna do with it.
The JBLs were both defunct so I'm gonna have to do something with it.
Some opinion sampling later and a few emails and I settled on J.D. Newell to build me a custom cabinet that would accept the Dual Showman chassis and a 15 inch speaker. They seemed to be the only people who knew exactly what I wanted and how to make it. Money was exchanged, a delivery date was quoted, and I proceeded to overhaul the chassis and spiff it up with a new blackface panel. The Fender logo I had already.
The cabinet arrived right on time and it is a stunning piece of work. A number of my friends have seen it and exclaimed "That's better than anything Fender built."
For the time being I installed a 4 ohm CTS speaker but I have a higher power Oxford that I may use.
How's it sound? Loud as hell, clean and bright, and with the channels bridged it gets even better and you can soften the vibrato by adjusting the balance between the channels. After about five minutes one of my brand new Ruby 6L6GCMSTR power tubes grenaded, so I slammed a Sylvania in the vacant slot and carried on. I've got a quad of Sylvanias I matched up, and there are plenty of RCA blackplates in the stash box. Preamp chores are being handled by Uncle Boris over at Sovtek.
It's the Pro that Fender never built, and I've named it the Evil Pro.
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