Late 50s Magnatone Amp w/Stringmaster?

[Jerome Reinan]

Anyone regularly use a late 50’s Magnatone vibrato amp (260 or 280) with a Stringmaster? I currently have a Gibson EH150 and it taxes that poor fella at times. Mags look pretty cool but not sure in practice how they sound with steel.

[Allan Revich]

I guess there’s not a lot of clean headroom on that amp, but if your venue has a good PA I bet it’d sound great mic’d.

[Tim Whitlock]

I briefly owned a late 50's Magnatone amp. I forget the model number - 250 or 450 I think. It had a 12" Oxford speaker and a 6" oval shaped high frequency speaker. Although they are touted as hi-fi sounding, I would never use that description. I swapped a 12" Jensen speaker which helped a bit, but it just wasn't a sound I cared for with my Stringmaster or Fender 1000. It was all midrange, with none of the nice bottom, sparkle and clarity you get from a Fender amp. After gigging it once with my 1000 I sold it. I did like the pitch shifting vibrato, but I have a pedal that does that sound nicely.

My experience with 50's Fender steel guitars (Stringmaster, Custom T8, Dual Pro, 1000) is that a Fender tweed era amp is hard to beat. After all, the Fender amps and steels were developed and voiced to complement each other. I also have a '61 brownface Pro that works well. Blackface era amps are ok but not nearly as good as tweeds. Original Fender tweeds are priced beyond my reach, but I have tweed Vibrolux and Tremolux replicas that sound amazing with my Fender steels. Of course it's all subjective and YMMV, as always.

[Michael Kiese]

Aloha,

Keep in mind that the USA slowly transitioned from 110v to 120v during the 1960's.

So any guitar amp or radio made from the mid 60's and earlier were likely engineered to run on 110v.

If you really want to hear an early guitar amplifier perform as intended, you need to step down the voltage from the wall outlet (120v) down to 110v using a variac, or something like a BrownBox.

Brown Boxes are currently $379 on Sweetwater: https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... attenuator

Enjoy!

[Glenn Wilde]

I have a '58-9 Custom 280 and it's a monster, it's a big, heavy amp with good headroom and it's stereo vibrato is awesome. The magic happens when you use it with another cabinet, it's a true stereo amp so it just sounds like there's two of them filling the room with swirling goodness.
I don't have a Stringmaster but my '50 Deluxe sounds killer through it, also the B6.