‘51 Fender Tweed Pro Restoration
A friend of mine had been looking to buy a Fender TV Deluxe for a while, but one day when browsing on Reverb he came across a curious advert for a ‘1950s Fender Amp’. Not knowing what he had found, he sent me the link to see if I thought it was legit. At first glance it looked like badly re-covered Deluxe, but then I noticed that it had six baffle bolts rather than four. The speaker looked bigger than usual, too, and the penny dropped. This wasn’t a TV Deluxe at all, but rather the bigger, louder and rarer TV Pro.
With its drab grey tolex, the Pro looks pretty rough on arrival but it’s mostly original and in great shape.
Power supply resistors have a tough life and I recommend changing them for high wattage wire wound types like these Welwyns.
The cardboard outer tube has been removed from the silver capacitor to be fitted over the blue Sprague Atom.
After oven baking the cardboard tubes have been cleaned out, wiped down and are ready to be re-used.
To replace the missing tubes, new ones need to be made.
A mix up of original tubes, our freshly rolled repros and some repros after spraying with amber lacquer.
With Mallory 150s sealed inside with wax, the repros look pretty similar to the originals.
These original Astron capacitors coupling the input jacks to the valve grids all test good so they’re left in place.
The bell cover of this Jensen F15N field coil speaker has been altered to fit under the extended late 1951 top panel.
The output transformer is mounted onto the speaker basket and the wires are for power as well as audio.
With the exception of the white cathode bias resistor, the restored circuit board looks much as it did when new.
An old grocery store invoice and a full pack of matches are found under the tolex.
Residue on the cabinet shows that the Pro was original covered with low contrast tweed.
The plywood front panel is in a sorry state and the surface will need to be restored before re-tweeding.
2-pack filler is applied over most of the front panel to be sanded flat.
At last the cabinet is ready for re-tweeding and the filled areas show up as a light beige against the darker wood.
The control panel’s chrome plating and silk screening is in fine condition.
The original magnet cover fitted onto a repro Jensen P15N but those speaker wires will need to be changed.
