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Blues-rock guitar hero and guitar gear connoisseur and collector Joe Bonamassa has toured and recorded with his late-’50s Fender “high-powered” tweed Twin amps for many years. Using the Tone Master modeling process, the Fender Tone Master ’59 Twin-Amp JB Edition combines the DNA of Joe’s favorite tube amp with exceptional modern features to make the first-ever signature Tone Master amplifier, sure to appeal to Joe Bonamassa fans, tone junkies and professional guitarists alike.
In the video, Joe says the project started about two years ago, and he didn’t expect to like it. “I wanted to hate it,” he says. Then he plugged it in. “You have to admit when you’re wrong… And I was wrong about these.”
The highly collectible 2x12” tweed amp has become the stuff of legend and regularly appears on stage with some of the most high-profile players in rock, blues and country. Known for its bold clean tones and raging overdrive when cranked, the original high-power tweed Twin is generally too loud for mere mortals when playing small gigs or at home. Incredible features such as selectable output power, two lightweight Celestion® signature JB neodymium speakers, convolution reverb, effects loop and IR line out make the Tone Master ’59 Twin-Amp JB Edition ideal for stage, studio or home use.
The Circuit and the Cabinet
The Tone Master ’59 Twin-Amp JB Edition has circuitry based on the classic Fender 5F8-A circuit. It’s built in a lightweight, resonant pine cabinet, and the jewel on the control panel illuminates to indicate normal operation, warmup and mute modes.
Two Celestion JB Speakers
Inside are two 12” Celestion® JB neodymium speakers designed specifically for this amp. Joe credits Celestion with developing a new neo speaker that “really replicates the sound of the ceramic Celestions that we used in the High Power Twin.”
Reverb and Effects Loop
A top-panel control adds convolution reverb, and an effects loop gives your time-based effects a place in the signal chain.
On the Rear Panel
The rear-panel output power selector offers full power and five attenuated settings. As Joe puts it, “you just have a knob on the back and you can scale it down to living room levels or you can just turn it all the way up and you got pure Fender goodness.”
Next to it, a “Vintage-Tight” switch allows tighter low-end response. Joe says the switch wasn’t part of the original plan, and he suggested adding it. “As soon as I hit the tight switch on the Twin and we plugged it through the rig, I was like, that’s it for sure.”
A balanced XLR line output carries three impulse response (IR) cabinet simulations, and the speaker IRs are fully configurable with the Tone Master IR manager app. According to Joe, those IRs “are the chain that I use when I record at Sunset Sound.” The line out doesn’t take the speakers out of the picture, either. “The amp still moves air. It moves a lot of air into a microphone.”
The amp runs on universal 100V-240V power, and it comes with a cover and a two-button footswitch.
For working players, Joe sums it up this way: “There’ll be a lot less yelling with this as opposed to just asserting your will and bringing an 80-watt amp into a club that holds less than 80 people.”
Talk with the Chuck Levin’s Guitar Department about the Fender Tone Master ’59 Twin-Amp JB Edition, stop by and hear it in Wheaton, or pick one up at ChuckLevins.com.