The only originality glitch in our feature amp appears to be a mismatched pair of 6L6GCs, but eh, that’ll happen – a tube fails, and you pop in what you can find (we’re guessing the small-bottle Realistic was a stop-gap… Bought any tubes at Radio Shack lately?). Indeed, some of the filter caps and that selenium rectifier – all well past their expected lifespan at this point – might need to be replaced if this is intended as a “player,” but it’s great to see them still in there, and in this condition. There’s no evidence of excessive heat wear on the chassis, board, or power resistors, and those beautiful yellow Astron coupling caps and orange-brown Astron filter caps, salmon-pink “domino” cap, and turquoise selenium rectifier all look like they just left the factory. If it’s been played, it doesn’t seem to have been played hard, or long. The tweed and grille are bold, untarnished, and untorn the badge and control panel clean and unpitted and inside the chassis… whoa, does it ever look sweet in there, as well as totally original. You might not call it “showroom” or “mint”condition, but it’s all the more appealing for that – just a tiny ding here and there, the very slightest fraying at some of the lower corners of the cabinet, a mere haze of dust on the speaker frames, some wear on the handle to show it was actually played, and that’s it. And as considerable as it is for the 5E7, the context makes this exceedingly clean 1956 example all the more precious. Not that vintage values can be disregarded. Any effort at practicality aside, it’s indescribably, esoterically, somehow ephemerally cool, regardless of its astronomical vintage value. It’s got more beef than a single 12 or two 10s, while retaining the faster, more-detailed 10″-speaker attack that the 1×15″ Pro might lack, and remaining more compact and portable than a 4×10″ Bassman or 2×12″ Twin. Yet, as pointless as the Bandmaster might seem when considered amid the Fender line of the day, there is something strangely glorious about this configuration. It’s utterly whack, right? Especially when you consider that the amp that carries them is the same under the hood as its siblings with a single 15″ speaker or two 10s (other than that the output transformer was wound to match the odd 2.7-ohm speaker load). Wedging another between it all, a combo with three speakers no less, would seem utter madness yet that’s precisely what Leo Fender felt he needed – and precisely the amp, in the form of the 5E7 Bandmaster combo, that sends collectors gaga today. And that, you’d think, would have nicely rounded out an amp maker’s midsize/larger offerings. Hitting the mark between the two, plenty of blues players in particular have declared the toothsome utility of the 1×15″ Pro or the 2×12″ Twin, while Tele-twangers and others have lauded the 2×10″ Super. Two decades ago, when renewed appreciation of Fender’s narrow-panel tweed amps of the late ’50s really started to boom, the Bassman was generally considered king of the heap, with the 5E3 Deluxe winning fans among players who wanted to “crush it” in smaller rooms. Amp and photos courtesy of Nadav GalimidiĬontrols: Volume, Volume, Treble, Bass, Presence
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