Alternate source for a more accurate 6G16 chassis?

[seveneves]

Hi there, question: other than Solandfa (who I checked with, he doesn't make one) or Mojotone/Marsh/Weber (or whoever they get their chasses from), is there any other vendor that supplies a more accurate 6G16 brown Vibroverb chassis?

The Mojotone/Marsh/Weber 6G16 chasses seem to be the same where they shift the doghouse closer to the power section and move the reverb transformer (mounted diagonally, a la blackface) in between the third and fourth preamp tubes.

See the typical repro chassis here (from this thread):



Compared with an original:



Solandfa makes the most faithful/accurate repro chasses (IMO) but only for BF amps, unfortunately (I checked with him) .

[Johnny2planes]

whats the best method to drill the correct holes in the cabinet to line up the with the chassis?

[solderhead]

Soldanfa?

[martin manning]

Soldanfa?

SE Asian source of accurate repro chassis: http://www.solandfa.com/products-Chassis.asp

[solderhead]

Thanks. My searches failed because I googled for "soldanfa" instead of "solandfa".

[solderhead]

I just tried to buy a Bassman chassis kit. The Paypal account for that merchant seems to be blocked.

[martin manning]

Interesting. They were certainly operating in a gray area wrt trademark.

[B Ingram]

I just tried to buy a Bassman chassis kit. The Paypal account for that merchant seems to be blocked.

I suggest contacting them via the email on their website.

It could simply be the format of the store/payment link is no longer valid, creating the result you encountered. A member on another forum builds 3-5 amps a year using SOLandFA chassis for every one. If PayPal were actually blocking them, it would have cropped up over on that other forum by now.

[lonote]

The Paypal account for that merchant seems to be blocked.

I tried to buy a Deluxe Reverb kit probably a year+ ago, same issue, then decided I didn't really need it anyway.

Likely never resolved since then..?

[solderhead]

Interesting. They were certainly operating in a gray area wrt trademark.

To be fair, I don't think there's anything particularly gray about what they were doing. They were blatantly selling counterfeit goods with pirated trademarks under the hopes that the goods wouldn't get impounded by US Customs.

---

On a more general note, the faceplate problem is frustrating. The problem is that Fender seems indifferent to the demand for repro faceplates, and by refusing to provide a product/service that the market demands, that creates an opportunity for someone to independently try to fill that need. That bootleg market would not even exist if Fender were willing to supply the market with an officially licensed product at a reasonable price.

IMO Fender could cooperate in filling this sort of need, at minimal cost to Fender, by licensing someone to make repro faceplates. Fender gets royalties from companies like Warmoth for guitar parts. Why not do the same with amp parts?

In my case, I don't even want the bootlegged faceplate -- I already have a real one that's butt-ugly and all I want is to buy a chassis that will fit it for an ugly non-bassman amp project. I would gladly settle for an undrilled/unpunched chassis that's the right size and is made out of heavy gauge steel. Unfortunately that's pretty hard to find, and getting harder -- the American Fender-type chassis guys seem to have moved to lighter gauges of steel because it's "too expensive." the one that I spoke to took offense to my use of the word "flimsy" when I referenced his thinner gauge steel being a poor choice for big amps with big iron.

[solderhead]

I just tried to buy a Bassman chassis kit. The Paypal account for that merchant seems to be blocked.

I suggest contacting them via the email on their website.

It could simply be the format of the store/payment link is no longer valid, creating the result you encountered. A member on another forum builds 3-5 amps a year using SOLandFA chassis for every one. If PayPal were actually blocking them, it would have cropped up over on that other forum by now.

Thanks for the info. I recently ran into a similar problem when I tried to buy an SLO clone type chassis: dead links/no links on the website but easy answers via email. Perhaps SOLandFA is operating the same way. I don't think that's a good business model.

Someone who is participating in e-commerce by selling their goods on a website needs to make it easy for customers to place orders. Having dead links and/or no links for purchasing product just isn't acceptable. It's the merchant's job to assure that the format of the store/payment link is valid and properly functioning. If it's not maintained (for whatever reason) I start to see red flags.

I don't have reservations about dealing directly with hobbyists and small businesses who participate on special interest forums like this one. But I'm not fond of the idea of having to resort to emails to solicit someone with a shady web presence in a foreign country to accept my money. There's just too much opportunity for the transaction to go sideways in that sort of situation -- especially when dealing with a seller in a foreign country who's native language isn't the same as mine, and being forced to rely on PayPal fraud prevention. There are just too many ways for things to go wrong.

With that in mind, I'd appreciate it if you could point me to those people who you know who are frequent customers of SOLandFA and consider them to be reliable. That might help to improve my outlook, but based on a nonspecific recommendation about some other unnamed builder on some other unnamed forum, I can't put much faith into it.

The Paypal account for that merchant seems to be blocked.

I tried to buy a Deluxe Reverb kit probably a year+ ago, same issue, then decided I didn't really need it anyway.

Likely never resolved since then..?

Right. When it becomes difficult to give people my money and I'm required to jump through hoops to help them keep their cover, I'm inclined to stop trying.

[martin manning]

The seller has to be doing enough business for Fender to take notice. Mojo went the licensing route for their repro cabinets a couple of years ago. That drives the cost up, of course, but there is no reason they couldn't do the same with DIY chassis and make them more authentic.

[solderhead]

Martin, I have to tell you that "licensing" in this industry isn't something that I completely understand yet -- it's not that I don't understand the legal requirements for licensing -- what I don't understand is the way that the some of the music parts businesses behave WRT licensing agreements. Obviously, this has to be because I'm not privvy to how some of the licensing agreements actually came to be negotiated.

From a practical perspective, I'd like to think that a "licensed" design is going to be faithful to the original, and accurately designed so that the parts will interchange. I like to use Warmoth partscaster bodies as an example. To me it makes no sense for a company to license the right to reproduce a Fender design if they're not going to actually reproduce the Fender design. By that I mean a "faithful reproduction" so that there will be parts compatibility and interchangeability. Sure, licensing and royalty are going to be necessary conditions to allow a company to make accurate reproductions, and they won't be allowed to place a Fender logo on their product, but having a license to make accurate reproductions doesn't seem to be sufficient condition to assure that the company will actually make an accurate reproduction.

I recently had a long conversation with one of the "directors" at Mojotone about their Fender reproduction amp chassis, and how compatible/incompatible they are with the original Fender amps that they emulate. Specifically, I wanted to verify that their 6G6-type amp chassis/faceplate would interchange with my original 6G6-A head, which has two faceplates -- a fugly original with poorly-drilled extra holes that I keep in a drawer and a pristine bootlegged reproduction that's installed on the amp. Much to my surprise, Mojo intentionally designed their Blonde Bassman chassis so that their no-logo 6G6 faceplate will NOT interchange with an original Fender chassis/faceplate. In other words, the hole locations/dimensions on the Mojo products do not match the original Fender products.

It doesn't make sense to me that Mojo would license the rights to reproduce the Fender designs, yet produce a product that is not true to the original Fender design so that things like faceplates could be swapped.

We had a long discussion that eventually led to questions that they didn't want to answer. The best that Mojo was willing to offer was a cu$tom designed, no-logo plastic faceplate that would fit my original amp. That's the exact opposite of what I need, as I am long on faceplates and I'm looking for an original-compatible chassis, not a repro faceplate.

So here I am, left trying to figure out why Mojo would license the Fender products, yet intentionally design a Fender chassis/Faceplate system that's intended NOT to work with the original fender amps. When I tried to get this information out of Mojo they refused to answer.

[martin manning]

Could be as simple as they don't have an agreement for chassis and/or faceplates. As for Fender logo appearing on Mojo products, the screen grab below shows what they are doing on the cabs.

[solderhead]

Mojo went the licensing route for their repro cabinets a couple of years ago. That drives the cost up, of course, but there is no reason they couldn't do the same with DIY chassis and make them more authentic.

I have to admit that I am surprised at how much more expensive the Mojo cabs are now, compared to what they used to be. Evidently Mojo thinks that the licensing agreement will help to improve sales, at a higher cost. Does "licensing" also explain the high prices on their Marshall-type head cabs? I hate getting bogged down in woodworking projects and doing a total DIY but after seeing the cost increase on those I'm more inclined to DIY my own, just out of principle.

Could be as simple as they don't have an agreement for chassis and/or faceplates.

The other side of the coin is that it could be as simple as they have an agreement NOT to produce compatible chassis and/or faceplates because of some previous manufacturing they had done -- but that's just speculation on my part.

I seem to remember a time when you could buy a BF Bassman kit from Mojo, but that was soooooo long that I can't find traces of it even on archive.org. Maybe my recollection is wrong. Back in the day it was easy to buy a BF bassman chassis/faceplate set, with logos, and interchangeability, from any number of suppliers. IIRC Fender put an end to the unauthorized faceplate business and the compatible chassis seemed to disappear at about that time.

Now there are suppliers (not mentioning anyone in particular) that just won't go near building a compatible chassis or a compatible non-logo faceplate -- it's as if there's a settlement agreement that precludes them from doing so. It's hard to imagine why everyone is intentionally making their "Bassman" chassis incompatible with the originals. So I find myself in the odd predicament where I have an original 62 Bassman faceplate and I can't find a chassis for it. The Mojo Blonde Bassman kit is totally incompatible with the original, by design. I realize we're straying from the topic of the BF Bassman repro chassis/faceplate, but I'm looking for one of those too, and I'm having just as much trouble.