FACTOIDS & TRIVIA

Fender never really produced very good amplifiers for bass guitar. The 4x10" tweed Bassman of the 1950s and 2x12" piggyback Bassman of the 1960s were better suited for guitar. CBS engineers tried to changed that with the 1969-71 Bantam Bass amp which was essentially a 1x15 combo version of the silverface piggyback Bassman Amp. Unfortunately, the Bantam was probably more of a flop than any other Fender amp since it used a very strange trapazoidal speaker made by Yamaha. The speaker cone was a polystyrene type material that was not durable, meaning that these speakers blew often. As such, it is rare to find a Bantam Bass with its original speaker. However, the tone circuit was based on proven designs and Fender chose to use the Bantam circuit in the Bassman 10 combo amp introduced in 1972. The Bassman 10, along with the powerful PS300 and PS400, were barely good enough to compete with the likes of Ampeg, Sunn and Acoustic.

 Power Amp:  Tube; 2 x 6L6GC, 40 watts RMS @ 8 ohms

 Preamp:  Tube; 2 x 12AX7

 Rectifier:  Tube; 1 x 5U4GB

 Speakers:  1 x 15" Yamaha trapazoidal weirdo model

 Channels:  2; Normal and Bass, 2 inputs per channel

 Effects:  None

 Controls:  Normal - Bass, treble, volume; Bass- Bass, middle, treble, volume

 Dimensions:  16 H x 16 W x 5 1/2 D inches

 Weight:  n/a