Donovan Banks

2 Years ago I had a 70's Fender Bassman in fair condition but it was looking tatty. I undertook to re-cover it in white vinyl. It was a wonderful sounding amp but it was too big for me to haul around so I sold it.

This is how it looked before. That speaker was from another old valve amp that died.




It was quite old looking and had a fair amount of damage to the tolex



I set about removing the old tolex from the head

and cleaned off the remaining glue


I used the pieces I took off to cut the new vinyl and used contact glue to stick it on.


I covered the front face with the only black fabric I could find at the time using staples

After cleaning up the metal trimming I assembled it again when the glue was good and dry



The Cabinet had water damage (have no idea from where) and it was made out of chipboard. When I tried to remove the tolex it just disintegrated. I bought some pine and made a new cabinet using the same face and back board but I put castors on it this time to make transport easier....

I also covered the cabinet in the same vinyl and black face cloth


It turned out much better and even made my guitar look cooler....


I had a good time with this project and I intend to do it again some time, although not with a new amp, I'll find another old one.

I was playing bass on a Fender Bassman 100 recently. It had a constant annoying hum, but when the lead was unplugged or muted it went away. I asked the owner if he knew what the problem was and he said it had been like that since he got it.

It was being used in a church. On the stage each instrument is connected straight into a DI box, the signal is then split. One to the desk, and one to the amp for monitoring.

what happens with some DI boxes is that the desk supplies phantom power. It sends 48V up the cable to the DI box. In this case the phantom power was passing through the DI box and being fed into the amp, thereby creating the hum.
when I flicked the ground switch, the power was no longer passing through the DI but was being used up instead so the humming went.


I had a Fender Bassman 50 previously and it too had an annoying hum. although I never used a DI box the ground switch on that amp too was in the wrong position. If you have a hum, check that first before you start replacing costly parts. It could save you some good time and money in the long run.