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Post subject: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 7:06 am
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howcome? they were cool!


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Post subject: Re: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 12:18 pm
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Seems to me they only ever sold once they hit about $250 on clearance. Anyways, there will be something new. The blacktop guitar line seems to be done, machete came and went, etc.


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Post subject: Re: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 1:03 pm
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DarkPenguin wrote:
Seems to me they only ever sold once they hit about $250 on clearance. Anyways, there will be something new. The blacktop guitar line seems to be done, machete came and went, etc.


I may not have market savvy so this may not make sense. If Fender were to take their classic BF and SF amps, made the old school way and priced within reach, amps would fly off the shelves. It would serve the majority while the investor class would find themselves simply owners of great amps. Without all of the modern "trash" hitting the dumps, maybe they could even use 'real' solder again. Amps for life do not go to the dump.

I do have two new FMIC modern amps. An SCX2 and the Bronco 40. Had them both about three years now with no troubles, electronically. Some of the software stuff is less than robust. I will take good care of them but, signs of excellence in construction are not present in either of them. Time will tell whether they are dump bound. Too often the dump is built into the plan. Shareholders like dumps. Its where their products go after extracting the money from you.

"Hey young fellow, we gots a shiny new amp for you. And its eco-friendly." (Dump ready) :lol:

Wonder what NAMM will contribute to the pile. :mrgreen:

I have a HRDlll too. I think FMIC wants that one to work out.

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Post subject: Re: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 7:46 am
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I think they all had great concepts behind them that, in most cases, didn't seem to get quite to the point of being a truly exceptional in execution.

Greta - great little amp ruined by a silly speaker and an overly large cabinet. The Champion 600 has smaller footprint and bigger speaker.

Vaporizer - Great sounding amp, ridiculous looking cabinet. I would certainly consider getting a second hand one off eBay and re boxing it. They are cheap enough to do that new but it seems wrong to strip down a brand new amp.

Ramparte - Nice!

Part of the problem with Pawn Shop is, although the products are of limited number, they don't seem to have achieved a level of collectabillity and, as such,depreciate more than would be desirable for a new purchase. If you buy a Blues Junior you know you could move it on in years to come for about the same as you paid for it. A Ramparte may be worth next to nothing - great if you want to buy one second hand. Unfortunately you probably won't be able to as, when people anticipate getting very little for a sale they often don't bother.

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Post subject: Re: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 9:34 am
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I think the Excelsior is ugly looking, nothing personal against the amp sound. In fact I like the idea of a 15” speaker. I looked at a Surf Green Vaporizer to buy, but the price was too high. For those that own an overly simplified Ramparte, great, just not my first choice. The Greta seems like a novelty. I wouldn’t want to spend $300 for that, or whatever they did cost new. Rather buy a Yamaha THR amp.

Fender’s got to regroup and come out with something new. The pawn shop amp ideas were a start. I wanted to buy one but the price points were too high. Pawn shops finds are suppose to a good value.


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Post subject: Re: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 5:58 pm
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I think, based on the specification, the weren't a bad price, just a bit top end of a fair price.

Obviously the Vaporiser was a design statement too far as, new, they are now down to £200 in the UK. Ok so they were a bit expensive originally perhaps, but I almost feel rude not to buy one at £200. Except, I would probably be hard pushed to get £100 for it in 12 months.

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Post subject: Re: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 7:40 pm
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I like the two 10” speaker idea the Vaporizer offed. Looks like they changed the surf-green color to me. In older pictures it looks darker green, newer photos more mint green. And with the main volume off, the amp’s volume could be the Reverb control only. I thought that was cool. John, - maybe they will become collectable when their all discontinued. (It is a strange looking cabinet).

Fender has it’s Squire line for guitars. Gibson has it’s Epiphone line. How about Squire making an Amp line like the Pawn Shop series. Same idea, just priced lower. Although it’s always nice to see "Fender" on an Amp product. I’m open to Fender’s Pawn Shop Amps - Series II, with some new offerings.


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Post subject: Re: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 9:33 pm
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Call me skeptical, but were these REALLY Fender amps or just amps thought out by an Asian firm and marketed by Fender? Did any of them have the Fender logo on them? It reminds me of when Dodge rebranded Mitsubishi's and sold them as "American" cars.

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Post subject: Re: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 5:26 am
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With no disrespect to our far Eastern brethren, I don't feel they have the design flair which would produce such products. Also, if you consider the enthusiasm, tongue in cheek videos, and general panache with which Fender present these products I feel they could only come from people with a passion for the product. I have every confidence that the concept was "in house", even if the execution wasn't.

Further, if you consider the price of these products against the volume produced they are probably on a very small profit margin, if at all. I assume their main reason for being is somewhat like a concept car at a car show. Fender on the whole has a very set product line, which is what people want. But, you still need something to develop a bit of sparkle and excitement. No matter how extensive your history as a company you can only come up with so many reissues.

The whole Pawn Shop concept is brilliant. Even purely as a marketing tool for Fenders core products. My only reservation as a potential buyer (as noted above) is in relation to residual value.

Old amps retain their value not just due to their sound but the mystique and legend that surrounds them. A old Fender Champ costs as much as a second hand car - it was the Layla amp after all. Other amps of the period, which may have almost identical internals, might be had for next to nothing...until such time as it is revealed Hendrix used one on all of his recordings...or something.

Unless an amp achieves some sort of star association it wont develop the legend which gives it long standing value. Pawn Shop amps are unlikely to do that. If Eric Clapton uses a Vaporiser for a live recording they will be guaranteed a long term value. This is unlikely. Some will be bought by dedicated collectors who have racks of guitars and amps still with the tags on them; but, what of us mortals. If I am going to hand over a wedge of my hard earned British Pounds I want to be sure (even if I love the sound of the amp) that, should I need to sell it in the future, it will still have some value.

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Post subject: Re: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 6:28 am
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It's all about planned obsolescence.


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Post subject: Re: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 7:56 am
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Yeah, I got an Excelsior when I saw one in the store - to me it looked just like it was supposed to: one of those old amps that were around in the '60's that we had to use while we saved up for a Pro Reverb or something. The 15" speaker was great and the accordion input was a perfect touch. And it has a good sound. The Greta and Vaporizer looked silly (though I like the idea of the Vaporizer reverb - I have an old Gibson Hawk with reverb that works like that and it is a cool effect when the volume is off). The Ramparte looked nice but was just too limited - our local store had a new one marked down to $100 and I still couldn't justify getting it. I would have liked to see their take on something like the old 2x12" Silvertone piggyback amps!


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Post subject: Re: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 9:10 am
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Redfarfisa wrote:
- our local store had a new one marked down to $100 and I still couldn't justify getting it.


You lucky colonials ;-) The cheapest I've seen was a second hand dog eared one on ebay for 135 of Her Majesty's Pounds of the Realm.

If you see another new one for $100 perhaps you could PM me to agree a purchase strategy. ;-) I do really like the look and general spec of the Ramparte, even if it will be worth nothing in 12 months.

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Post subject: Re: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 10:02 am
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That was a one time deal for sure - our awesome local music store was going out of business (killed, in part, by the internet). I was thinking about it, but my wife would have killed me - on the other hand, if it had been a Vaporizer for that price, I would have figured out how to sneak it in the house - I have a real weakness for anything with spring reverb in it...


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Post subject: Re: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2015 12:56 pm
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modwiz wrote:
DarkPenguin wrote:
Seems to me they only ever sold once they hit about $250 on clearance. Anyways, there will be something new. The blacktop guitar line seems to be done, machete came and went, etc.


I may not have market savvy so this may not make sense. If Fender were to take their classic BF and SF amps, made the old school way and priced within reach, amps would fly off the shelves. It would serve the majority while the investor class would find themselves simply owners of great amps. Without all of the modern "trash" hitting the dumps, maybe they could even use 'real' solder again. Amps for life do not go to the dump.

I do have two new FMIC modern amps. An SCX2 and the Bronco 40. Had them both about three years now with no troubles, electronically. Some of the software stuff is less than robust. I will take good care of them but, signs of excellence in construction are not present in either of them. Time will tell whether they are dump bound. Too often the dump is built into the plan. Shareholders like dumps. Its where their products go after extracting the money from you.

"Hey young fellow, we gots a shiny new amp for you. And its eco-friendly." (Dump ready) :lol:

Wonder what NAMM will contribute to the pile. :mrgreen:

I have a HRDlll too. I think FMIC wants that one to work out.


+1 Modwiz! Only if they used better components and stopped "customizing" the circuits. The old one's weren't broken to begin with. I will never own a modern production Fender amp again. Why do that always have to "modernize" them? The Tweed reissues are way overpriced. They are really simple circuits with just a handful of components. I would pay two grand for a real Blackface reissue. But then again, I could probably build one of them too. My MIM HRDlx is the blame for that. When I looked inside that and saw the boards and components in the pedals I build are higher quality, I was done with them. Right now I'm building a clone close to a Marshall 1974x 18 watter. I even made the drilled and swage fit the turrets myself. Don't get much more hand built than that. :lol:

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Post subject: Re: No more Pawnshop amps...?
Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 10:08 am
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63supro wrote:
... if they used better components and stopped "customizing" the circuits. The old one's weren't broken to begin with.


I agree entirely. The more I learn about the 5E1 the more you have to conclude that everything there after was just as a result of marketing and the desire for more.

Ok, there was a need for louder, but with modern micing that is a thing of the past. All the whistles and bells are just there so that this new amp can be seen to be better than the old version because it has more switches/knobs features etc. That said I am about to add some switches to my Champion 600 so it isn't perhaps the purest of arguments - although much of the switching is merely to retain components that I might otherwise remove so, if I had sufficient confidence the stripped down version would sound awesome, I wouldn't need the switches.

So to get back to the original argument - If Fender were to produce a simple, great sounding, amp for very little it would sell like hot cakes... But then no one would buy anything else because it would be everything they wanted. Perhaps that is why Pawn Shop amps are only made in limited numbers because, for the money, they could well be great amps.

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