Jhambie, Ihave never seen a 2X12 Concert of any era. Maybe my memory is failing. The first Concert was built in the 6G line of amps in the early '60's and was a 4X10. The BF Concert was a 4X10 also and was last built in '65.The Rivera Concerts were indeed built in 1X12, 2X10, 4X10 and head versions.there was a 1X12 Concert that was built in the ealy '90 as part of the Pro Tubes SEries.That amp has 12 knobs across the front panel versus 11 on the Rivera Concert. What you can't see is that the Rivera-era Concert is handwired versus the PCB of the later Pro Tube Series Concert.Mountaintwanger, I think you can switch teh lead channel in without a footswitch. Look under the Volume pot.4th from the left.and see if that isn't a channel switch 'Pull' function.
I could be wrong. Jhambie, qeustion away. I keep learning.and have been proven wrong many times.
The Teagle/Sprung book ' FEnder Amps.The First Fifty Years' mentions the 1X12 Concert from the PRo Tube Series.but not a 2X12. The other amps in this SEries back then were the 4x10 Super and the 2X12 Twin. The first two came out in '93, and the TWin was introduced in '95. TEagle/Sprung usually have the bases covered for the first 50 years. I will keep my ears and eyes open for just such an animal as a 2X12 Concert from the PRo Tube Series. I talked to a fellow on Saturday who was adamant about having a Pro REverb, 1X12, from this time period adn from the PRo Tube Series.
Teagle and Sprung don't know about that one either, and I have never seen one. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Most of the time when I find that my limited knowledge has a gap, the TEagle/Sprung book has the info to confirm that indeed I sure don't know it all. (;^)Jhundt, I have found that my assessment of these amps differs greatly from yours. IF you are basing your assessment on a Super Champ with a stock speaker, then I will agree that the stock Eminence ceramic in the SC's is/was a thin, harsh sounding speaker that did not lend itself to a good sounding amp whether running clean or distorted. I run Emi Alnico's in my SC's. The difference is night and day.
The Emi's have good firm low end, nice smooth highs with wonderful distortion in any mode, and great articulation. IF I had a never-ending supply of SC's, I could sell one a week.no problem. There is a reason why people like these little amps; but the original speakers were useless, imoh, and did the little amp an injustice.
The only other OEM speaker I have seen in an SC was a Pyle. It had good low end and smoother top end than the Eminence ceramics, but the PYle had poor articualtion than the Emi Alnico's in my 2 SC's. I would love to have one of the LTD ED SC's with oak cab and a 10' EV in it.FWIW, though, the Concert does its lead channel in a different manner than in the SC. Yep, if it has 11 knobs it's a Rivera-era amp. The channel switching is done by pulling the 2nd volume knob Actually when you use the footswitch it affects the tone of the amp and it rolls off some treble and makes it a little muddy.
I would have to agree with Wally, at least for the Concert, that the 2nd channel isn't horrible but very useful and sounds good to me. It isn't a 'boost' function like the smaller SC and PRll models but an actual 2nd channel with it's own tone section.Since they are handwired there are a lot of mods that you can do to these amps to make them breath better. TGP has a 50 page thread on doing almost every mod under the sun to both channels. I simply removed some resistors on the clean channel to add some sparkle and I think the amp sounds great! Great reverb too.
Just kidding!!You can date the amp from the date codes on the transformers and speaker. Unless there's been some major part swapping, that will probably narrow it down to a fairly short period of time.
If you use a mirror and a flashlight, you can probably see the codes pretty easily without taking stuff apart. On my PRII, all of the dates fell between late October and mid-November.If you don't know how to read the component codes, do a google search for the info; it's pretty easy to find, and the amp had to be made between 82-87, so if you read something wrong the mistake will be obvious.
Fender M80 Schematic
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