Nineteen sixty-seven. On August 25, color television started in Germany, on November 9 the first Saturn 5 rocket is launched from Cape Canaveral and Procal Harum sings A Whiter Shade of Pale.
And these three great devices are being built: Fender Stratocaster, Fender Pro Reverb and my Volvo Amazon station wagon.
The neck of this Strat was stamped with AUG 67 and the Transition logo is already emblazoned on the headstock. 1967 is the weakest year of the Stratocaster in the 60s. Sales figures declined and CBS concentrated on new markets. The Fender Coronado was launched and ’67 Strats are really rare. It was a certain James Marshall Hendrix who put the Strat back on course to become one of the most popular guitars in the world.
After 1964, black bobbin pickups were used here again for a short time for the first time. The Strat is in its original condition and shows signs of age. The varnish is still made of nitrocellulose, it weighs a slim 3.4 kg and plays and sounds sensational.
The Fender Pro Reverb has been around since 1965. It is the little brother of the Twin Reberb, also equipped with two 12″ loudspeakers but with only two instead of four power amplifier tubes. The almost 40W are certainly loud enough and many people prefer it to the twin because of its noticeably lower weight.
The preamps are identical to the Twin except for the missing MIDDLE controls and of course the Pro also has a spring reverb and the optocoupler tremolo of the Blackface era. Both can be switched via the famous VIBREV foot switch. The speakers here are from Utah and date to the 13th week of 1967, whereas the tube chart with the date code QA shows the date of construction as January 1967. But we know that from Fender, the components can be a few weeks or even months apart!
The amplifier is in good and in original condition except for the output transformer from Mercury Magnetics and the electrolytic capacitors. Even the blue molded coupling capacitors, so important for the blackface sound, are still all there. The amp is also an export model, so you don’t need the stepdown transformer that you always need for US amps.
The silver block in the foreground is a rare Fender Fuzz Wah pedal that a customer from Austria recently brought to the Lounge. You could easily have built twenty TS808 enclosures from the mass of aluminum!
It is a little younger and dates from the early 70s. In addition to the revolutionary fuzz sound and the wah-wah, this multi-effects pedal also has a volume pedal on board. And who made Fuzz and Wah famous? The lanky guitar god from Seattle again!
But what I find most awesome is the sticker on the store in Linz: Musikhaus für Anspruchssvolle!!!
The device can only be operated with a battery, plug-in power supplies or even power bricks did not exist at that time. So don’t forget to disconnect the plugs after use, otherwise the battery will be flat tomorrow!
In the background is my ’67 Volvo Amazon station wagon, which I’ve been driving since 2001 and which is exactly 6 days younger than me.
1967 was a great year!
The Strat and the Pro Reverb can be purchased in the lounge. The pedal and the Volvo stay here.
https://captain-guitar-lounge.com/produkt/1967-fender-stratocaster-transition-decal-id-3499/
https://captain-guitar-lounge.com/produkt/1967-fender-pro-reverb-blackface-id-3258/