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Post subject: Re: 1995 Bruce Zinky Fender 1x15 VibrAsonic ~CUSTOM SHOP or
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2013 7:22 pm
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Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 10:45 pm
Posts: 6
Toppscore wrote:
VibrAsonic Comments:

"I own a Fender Custom Vibrasonic Amp and find it to be one of the most articulate amps I have ever played thru. It has been totally reliable and perfect in every way. After reading the above comment and several others on the web, I decided to contact Bruce Zinky, himself, the designer of this great amp and get his take on it, so there won't be anymore mis-guided information and opinions on this fine amp. Here is the major body of the email I received from Bruce Zinky on September 12, 2011, concerning the 1995-1996 Fender Custom Vibrasonic Amp in his own words:

“It's a modified twin with a 15" Speaker.
The STEEL channel is a stock Twin.
The GUITAR channel is like a Vibro-King or Tone Master channel.

Fender needed a good sounding, loud amp with a 15" that would
be targeted towards guitarists or vintage style pedal steel players.
It has what I called at the time, the "Nashville" mods, which make
the power amp louder and clearer, compared to a Twin.

It's heavy, but cool. Fender made a lot of the VibrAsonics in a very short time.
The factory figured out that the amp didn't cost much more than a Twin to make
(but sold for a whole lot more money), then built thousands of the VibrAsonics
to make their "Profit Center" look good. The "Head of Fender" freaked out
and discontinued the amp ~ which, of course made them highly sought after
as soon as they were no longer available. ENJOY. BZ



Hello,.I'm the one that wrote to Bruce Zinky last year about the Custom Vibrasonic amplifier. I wrote to him just to get HIS take on this amp and to hopefully cease all of the misinformation floating around the web about this amp. I believe he made it very clear what it is and what his intentions were and his thoughts on the final product.
I used to be a repair tech, but the past 15 years have found me not doing that for a living any longer, but doing my own repairs and tune-ups on my own equipment only. So, naturally, I took the amp apart when I first bought it and had a look around.
Yes, this amp is PCB based, but not everything is attached to the PCB. The tube sockets aren't. The pots are. The PCB is of very high quality. Not flimsy at all. Great solder joints and very nicely laid out. Other than a tube change and re-bias, I've never had to touch this amp for any repairs whatsoever. It's been extremely reliable and is truly my best sounding, favorite amplifier. I don't understand why PCB scares so many people away. These are modern amplifiers with not-so-modern anymore technology. PCB has been around a long time now, and any good tech worth his or her salt should be able to troubleshoot and properly repair PCB based amplifiers.....so, that should not be an issue or reason for staying away from these. To sum it all up, the Fender Custom Vibrasonic is a very well-built amplifier. Great tone, great clean headroom and reliability that one would come to expect from a well-built Fender amplifier. Hope this helps to dispel the misinformation and wrong ideas about this amplifier. It sounds as good as any of them and in my opinion, better than most.


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Post subject: Re: 1995 Bruce Zinky Fender 1x15 VibrAsonic ~CUSTOM SHOP or
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2013 7:40 pm
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Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2010 12:48 am
Posts: 26417
Location: Tombstone Territory
There's nothing wrong with PCB construction so long as the phenolic board material is of sufficient quality, the traces aren't too fragile, and real solder is used to attach the components to it.

My '91 TRRI and '94 DRRI have never seen a soldering iron save for when I replaced all the IC-branded electrolytics with Sprague Atom's shortly after I acquired each amp.

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY


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Post subject: Re: 1995 Bruce Zinky Fender 1x15 VibrAsonic ~CUSTOM SHOP or
Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2013 10:31 pm
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Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2010 2:37 pm
Posts: 8708
Location: Natural Bridge, Virginia
telecastoff wrote:
Toppscore wrote:
VibrAsonic Comments:

"I own a Fender Custom Vibrasonic Amp and find it to be one of the most articulate amps I have ever played thru. It has been totally reliable and perfect in every way. After reading the above comment and several others on the web, I decided to contact Bruce Zinky, himself, the designer of this great amp and get his take on it, so there won't be anymore mis-guided information and opinions on this fine amp. Here is the major body of the email I received from Bruce Zinky on September 12, 2011, concerning the 1995-1996 Fender Custom Vibrasonic Amp in his own words:

“It's a modified twin with a 15" Speaker.
The STEEL channel is a stock Twin.
The GUITAR channel is like a Vibro-King or Tone Master channel.

Fender needed a good sounding, loud amp with a 15" that would
be targeted towards guitarists or vintage style pedal steel players.
It has what I called at the time, the "Nashville" mods, which make
the power amp louder and clearer, compared to a Twin.

It's heavy, but cool. Fender made a lot of the VibrAsonics in a very short time.
The factory figured out that the amp didn't cost much more than a Twin to make
(but sold for a whole lot more money), then built thousands of the VibrAsonics
to make their "Profit Center" look good. The "Head of Fender" freaked out
and discontinued the amp ~ which, of course made them highly sought after
as soon as they were no longer available. ENJOY. BZ



Hello,.I'm the one that wrote to Bruce Zinky last year about the Custom Vibrasonic amplifier. I wrote to him just to get HIS take on this amp and to hopefully cease all of the misinformation floating around the web about this amp. I believe he made it very clear what it is and what his intentions were and his thoughts on the final product.
I used to be a repair tech, but the past 15 years have found me not doing that for a living any longer, but doing my own repairs and tune-ups on my own equipment only. So, naturally, I took the amp apart when I first bought it and had a look around.
Yes, this amp is PCB based, but not everything is attached to the PCB. The tube sockets aren't. The pots are. The PCB is of very high quality. Not flimsy at all. Great solder joints and very nicely laid out. Other than a tube change and re-bias, I've never had to touch this amp for any repairs whatsoever. It's been extremely reliable and is truly my best sounding, favorite amplifier. I don't understand why PCB scares so many people away. These are modern amplifiers with not-so-modern anymore technology. PCB has been around a long time now, and any good tech worth his or her salt should be able to troubleshoot and properly repair PCB based amplifiers.....so, that should not be an issue or reason for staying away from these. To sum it all up, the Fender Custom Vibrasonic is a very well-built amplifier. Great tone, great clean headroom and reliability that one would come to expect from a well-built Fender amplifier. Hope this helps to dispel the misinformation and wrong ideas about this amplifier. It sounds as good as any of them and in my opinion, better than most.


Toppscore has been banned from this forum. Even if he hadn't been, he would not understand a word you posted and would argue with you even if you agreed with him.

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Post subject: Re: 1995 Bruce Zinky Fender 1x15 VibrAsonic ~CUSTOM SHOP or
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2013 4:08 pm
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Joined: Thu Oct 14, 2010 8:54 am
Posts: 1179
Location: Florida
That's what always got me. That guy would argue with himself.

I take it the Custom Vibrasonic was also Made in The USA. The 65 reissues seem to have a much better build quality than the Mexican amps. And who knows where the PCBs are assembled?

Art


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Post subject: Re: 1995 Bruce Zinky Fender 1x15 VibrAsonic ~CUSTOM SHOP or
Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2013 4:17 pm
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Joined: Mon Apr 05, 2010 2:37 pm
Posts: 8708
Location: Natural Bridge, Virginia
Art1 wrote:
That's what always got me. That guy would argue with himself.


And LOSE! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

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