I had the honor to work on this old Vibroverb last month. At first glance I thought is was a reissue model cause it's so clean. I looked at it again and said "No way!" thinking it must be a kit. Then I realized I know the owner and he has pretty fine stuff.
I've never seen one in person. This goes on my bucket list of rare Fender amps like the 3x10" tweed Bandmaster here.
Amp was blowing fuses. The filter caps were bubbling so I replaced them but unfortunately the problem was the reverb driver transformer was shorted. BUMMER! Nobody makes quite the same part so I just used a new Heyboer with a large washer to hold one end on. No holes needed to be drilled this way and no one is ever going to see it anyway. Easy fix.
The original part goes into a plastic sandwich bag so the owner can decide what to do with it. Paperweight or get it re-wound? He doesn't care since he doesn't use reverb anyway.
Amp sounds amazing. First model to sport those 'brick drop' caps like you see in late 60's models.
Did I mention this amp sounds amazing? I'd go so far as to say aggressive. If cost were no object....
The culprit:
Brick drops!
Original speakers. At some point they were wired backwards! I've seen this many times....
Original milk chocolate footswitch. Mmmmmmm.....
