# Rivera-Era Fender Concert II



## closetmonster. (Nov 26, 2009)

Hey guys, I have a '85(?) Fender Concert II that a bought a few months ago, but the thing is just so dang heavy so I'm throwing it up on craigslist local for trades or cash. Thing is, I've been trouble finding a good baseline for what it is worth in today's market. It's in great condition compared to some I have seen, grill cloth is in excellent condition, as well as tolex, footswitch is still in perfect working order.

Would you be able to help me out with an estimate?
Thanks in advance.


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## closetmonster. (Nov 26, 2009)

Just looking for a quick answer to inform myself. Will delete once I know.


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## Ti-Ron (Mar 21, 2007)

Do you have any pics of it? Gonna help us alot!


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

500-900 tops


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## closetmonster. (Nov 26, 2009)

Wish I did, I'm living in Victoria now and the amp is in Nanaimo with my band. Thanks for the help guys, don't mean to be a bug.


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## Scottone (Feb 10, 2006)

600-700 IMO. One of the best deals out there in a vintage Fender, but they are just too damn heavy. Same reason that I sold mine.


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## closetmonster. (Nov 26, 2009)

Well boys, with all the information I have recieved here, on the interwebs and just from general feedback from my craigslist ad I am not gonna sell this baby. The price just isn't good enough to let it go. Instead I figure I'll hold onto it for as long as possible, baby it, maybe throw some new tubes and a fancy speaker in it and let 'er rip. See if the price changes in 10 years. 

Thanks a bunch for your input, once I have it here with me I'll take some rig pics and put them up. Show you why I won't let it go.


-CM


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## closetmonster. (Nov 26, 2009)

Got a few more questions about the amp.

1) Playing gigs in bars, I've noticed the bass in the amp gets very 'woofy' which is fine in larger venues, but in smaller once it makes a ton of bad faces in the crowd. I realize that changing the tubes, as they're probably very old will probably enhance the tone quite a bit, but I was wondering if an attenuator would help this problem at all? By reducing the volume, can I get the bass I want out of the amp without shaking the house?

2) Will bridging the 2 channels of this amp thicken the tone, as I have read about in other amps, most notably Marshalls? How do the dynamics work for this? How do people get favorable results?

-cm.


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## Baconator (Feb 25, 2006)

closetmonster. said:


> Got a few more questions about the amp.
> 
> 1) Playing gigs in bars, I've noticed the bass in the amp gets very 'woofy' which is fine in larger venues, but in smaller once it makes a ton of bad faces in the crowd. I realize that changing the tubes, as they're probably very old will probably enhance the tone quite a bit, but I was wondering if an attenuator would help this problem at all? By reducing the volume, can I get the bass I want out of the amp without shaking the house?
> 
> ...


I don't have an answer for question #2, but as far as the 'woofy' bass, that can sometimes indicate worn out power tubes. Bass settings in Fender-style amps generally need to be lower than you would assume to avoid being boomy and putting out too much mud in the lower frequencies. You might know about the 'magic six' scheme for Fender amps already, but for those who don't here's an article by the Mad Professor, Bjorn Juhl, that explains it. It took me a few years of experimenting when I was in my 20's to figure this out. I wish I had know this when I started gigging! Since I haven't played your amp I don't know if the setting would work exactly, but it's something to try anyways.


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## closetmonster. (Nov 26, 2009)

It's definitely somewhere to start, I want this baby to sound like the day she was... err.. born.

I have a hefty tax refund coming in, so after I buy my new gigging guitar, I'll have to buy some new power tubes.

-cm.


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## vds5000 (Apr 14, 2008)

Little late chiming in, but the resale on that amp (with the footswitch) is anywhere between $600-750. I got $800 for mine (when the economy was still strong), but it looked new and had the original footswitch. Plus, it sat for a month before it sold.

The cleans are great, the gain channel is not pleasant. A speaker change will do wonders for the gain channel, but then take away from the cleans. A speaker change may also lighten the amp, depending on what's currently in there.


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## gtone (Nov 1, 2009)

vds5000 said:


> A speaker change will do wonders for the gain channel, but then take away from the cleans. A speaker change may also lighten the amp, depending on what's currently in there.


Don't mean to threadjack here, but just wondering what speaker you went with for that application.


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## vds5000 (Apr 14, 2008)

Eminence RWB (Red White & Blues) is a very good replacement. There is one enormous thread specific to this amp on TGP and that is the speaker people rave about for that amp. That amp is infamous for it's harsh/ice-picky gain tones and the RWB tames those tones considerably.

The only drawback I found was that the tone of the clean channel was altered considerably with that speaker.


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## closetmonster. (Nov 26, 2009)

I was thinking about saving and getting a tone tubby for it, anyone had favorable results with vintage fenders and tone tubbys?

I don't mind the gain channel, I hardly use it for it's intended purpose. I play a modded out 5120 Gretsch, so the bass I get sometimes is unbelievable. The gain channel on my amp does a better job at thinning out the sound of my guitar then any of my pedals, so that's it's main use. I can almost make it sound like a single-coil Gretsch. 

-cm.


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## vds5000 (Apr 14, 2008)

closetmonster. said:


> I was thinking about saving and getting a tone tubby for it, anyone had favorable results with vintage fenders and tone tubbys?
> 
> I don't mind the gain channel, I hardly use it for it's intended purpose. I play a modded out 5120 Gretsch, so the bass I get sometimes is unbelievable. The gain channel on my amp does a better job at thinning out the sound of my guitar then any of my pedals, so that's it's main use. I can almost make it sound like a single-coil Gretsch.
> 
> -cm.


Hey there CM,

I strongly suggest you look up and read that thread on TGP. It had anything you could ever want to know about that amp in it, including speaker choices. There are other mods being discussed in that thread aside from the speaker change.

My experience with that amp was that the cleans were as good as any Fender I've owned or heard. So was the reverb. The gain channel was good as long as the controls were set at 9 o'clock or less. The speaker change made the gain channel much more pleasant but I found it took away from the beautiful cleans, so I got pissed off and sold the amp.


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## closetmonster. (Nov 26, 2009)

vds5000 said:


> Hey there CM,
> 
> I strongly suggest you look up and read that thread on TGP. It had anything you could ever want to know about that amp in it, including speaker choices. There are other mods being discussed in that thread aside from the speaker change.


Thanks vds, been picking through that thread for their recommendations on speaker choice. Unfortunately I am not handy enough with an iron to do any of the tone mods, or I would be all over those.

Thinking about ordering a mod kit off of Torres' site and dropping it off with my local store that does amp mods.

Just realized that I can't use the old Marshall 'linking inputs' trick, as mine only has two. 

Oh well, excited to get my amp here and experiment with the stuff that I have learned about it. I knew before that it was designed by Rivera, but I had no idea he was such a successful boutique guy.


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## closetmonster. (Nov 26, 2009)

vds5000 said:


> Hey there CM,
> 
> I strongly suggest you look up and read that thread on TGP. It had anything you could ever want to know about that amp in it, including speaker choices. There are other mods being discussed in that thread aside from the speaker change.


Thanks vds, been picking through that thread for their recommendations on speaker choice. Unfortunately I am not handy enough with an iron to do any of the tone mods, or I would be all over those.

Thinking about ordering a mod kit off of Torres' site and dropping it off with my local store that does amp mods.

Just realized that I can't use the old Marshall 'linking inputs' trick, as mine only has two. 

Oh well, excited to get my amp here and experiment with the stuff that I have learned about it. I knew before that it was designed by Rivera, but I had no idea he was such a successful boutique guy.


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## vds5000 (Apr 14, 2008)

closetmonster. said:


> ...
> Thinking about ordering a mod kit off of Torres' site and dropping it off with my local store that does amp mods.
> ...


Figure out exactly what you want before dropping money on a kit and the labour it will cost to do the mod...you'd be surprised how quickly you could spend a couple of hundred.



closetmonster. said:


> ...
> I knew before that it was designed by Rivera, but I had no idea he was such a successful boutique guy.


I don't know if I'd consider Paul Rivera a 'boutique' guy. Rivera amps are good, but not really considered 'boutique' amps. They're more like decent production amps.


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## closetmonster. (Nov 26, 2009)

Thanks for the advice, vds. I honestly have not spent enough time 'bonding' with my amp to really know what I want from it.

It may turn out that I will leave it as is, the previous and only owner did not do any mods to it. Having a completely original Concert II (minus a celestion instead of jensen speaker) may be every bit as satisfying as modding the heck out of it.

As for Rivera not being boutique, the prices are definitely boutique, haha.

Anyways, I will get back to you guys once I have played with the tone a little bit and decided what I want from this amp.

-cm.


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