FENDER
PAWN SHOP SERIES
EXCELSIOR AND GRETA
BY CHARLES SAUFLEY
The annals of rock guitar history are filled with tales of resourceful players
getting killer sounds with crusty, busted,
decrepit, funky off-brand equipment from
the dustiest corners of the junk shop.
Some such legends have become so, well,
legendary, that these castoff gear artifacts
have become Excaliburs and Holy Grails
in their own right—and a cottage industry
of electronic alchemists keen to capture
the mojo of everything from Jimmy Page’s
Supro Thunderbolt to Dan Auerbach’s
Companion Fuzz has arisen in the wake of
these tales.
Despite their status as an industry vanguard and giant, Fender has built their share
of gear that fit this bill. And though their
offerings have been, on the whole, a bit out
of reach for truly destitute players for a while
now, the company’s early overachievers—like
the Champion series and White amplifiers—were among the first to rise from trash
to treasure status. Fender’s new Pawn Shop
series amplifiers, the Excelsior and Greta,
are a nod to the style and sonic potential of
those amplifiers and their contemporaries—
many built by makers long since relegated to
history’s dustbin. And though the Excalibur
and Greta differ significantly in terms of
look and function, each is a ticket to funky
realms that can prompt inspiration and fresh
thinking about tone, recording, and performance possibilities.
to hear audio clips of the amps at
premierguitar.com/jul2012
CLICKHere…
Excelsior
In not displaying the Fender name anywhere prominently, Fender has playfully
created a cool brand that never was. Indeed,
the 13-watt Excelsior looks and sounds like
it could have been conceived as some electronics division of Montgomery Ward or a
radio manufacturer with grand designs on
diversification in the ’50s. To that end, the
Excelsior gets a lot of the details from that
period in amplifier amplification right.
The back of the amp is wide open, with
the transformer and tube section of the
chassis mounted on the bottom section of
the amp, and the control section placed in
an enclosed section at the top—a common
approach to amp layout in the ’50s. The two
6V6 power tubes are enclosed in a metal
cage that keeps them cool and out of harm’s
way. You’ll also notice the considerable bulk
of the 15" speaker, a cool tip of the hat to
old 15-equipped accordion amps from the
’50s—and one that pays big sonic dividends.
