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Vintage 1970s Leo Fender Music Man 212-Sixty Five Amp, Serviced, All Original*

Estimated price for orientation: 799 $

Category: Guitar Amplifiers
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Description
Brand: Music Man Model: 212 Sixty-Five (Script)
Exact Year: Mid 1970s Country/Region of Manufacture: United States


Music Man 212 Sixty-Five (script), black on silver logo.This combo guitar amp is from the first line of innovative amps produced by Leo Fender and former Fender employees designed to continue the quest for better cleans, clarity and headroom and evolve from the Fender Twin Reverb.Fender sold his namesake firm to the conglomerate CBS in 1965 and, per that sale, had to wait 10 years to compete in the market place.  Many feel the Fender product began to decline after the sale.Music Man amps are well-known to have great tone and reliability and have been used by the likes of Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Johnny Winter and Albert Lee.1970s Music Man amps embodied a state of the art hybrid design which has stood the test of time, with a tube output stage and a solid state pre-amp stage (for a cleaner, more reliable signal chain), but with a similar look and controls layout to earlier (1960s Blackface) Fender Twin Reverbs.In addition to a master volume switch that allows for nice gain at low and high volumes, they also had excellent onboard reverb and tremelo effects as well as a half power switch, among other features.This is a pre-1977 model, so it has a 12AX7 pre-amp tube which allows for extra distortion in the phase inverter stage (between the solid state pre-amp and tube output stages) and a warmer tone than later Music Man solid state versions.Just professionally serviced (U.S. $250; please see pictures) - this amplifier's tone, reliability and carrying cost should be considerably better than similar vintage equipment not recently or properly serviced.My understanding is it would cost a couple thousand U.S. dollars to buy a comparable new amplifier.I purchased this from Sam Ash in New York in the 1970's and really enjoyed playing it for a few years with my local band (see background in one of the pictures); after that, there has been little free time to play but the amp has been well-preserved.I estimated U.S. $125 for shipping - if it is ultimately less, the difference will be refunded.