Not All Speaker Designs Are Good - The Styrofoam Speaker!
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Innovation. Good? Bad? Shucks, it can be either one, but mix a little "innovation" with a really stupid speaker design and what do ya get? The Styrofoam speaker! I am a vintage Fender amp guy through and through, but I gotta tell ya, the CBS nut-jobs made some downright appalling speaker decisions in the late 60’s/early 70’s. The absolute worst of the worst: The Fender Bantam Bass Amp. All I can say is that the designers of the Bantam bass amp musta been wasted outta their minds when they choose the Yamaha Styrofoam driver for the Bantam bass amp ... hey it WAS designed during the "summer of Love".
I love the wicki blurb on this amp: "The Fender Bantam Bass was a bass amplifiermade by Fender. It was introduced in 1969. This silverfacedamp used an asymmetrical trapezoidal Yamaha speaker using a white styrofoamcone, and so the speakers blew very easily. As a result, the amp was not a commercial success". Wow, like, man ... puff, puff, who woulda thought that folks wanted speakers that actually worked. Bummer, man. Oh, Leo, what they did to your company!
Okay, so what’s the only thing worse than an all-tube Fender Bantam Bass amp with a trapezoidal Styrofoam speaker? A solid-state Yamaha amp with FOUR (!) of those God-awful things! I’m gonna end with this, non-photoshoped pic of an actual Yamaha amp, the dreaded TA-120 ... like an accident on the freeway, as terrible as it may be, you just can’t help gawking at it!
Bye for now, my "outside" site recommendation this week is ggjaguar’s Bantam Bass page! Checkout http://www.ggjaguar.com/bantbass.htm- I love his description of the speaker "Yamaha trapezoidal weirdo model"!
Oh, and rest assured, WGS has no styrofoam models in the works.
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You just don't know what you are talking about !!
The Yamaha TA amps sound pretty good, and is favored by many "surf guitarists".
The cool disign and the fab clean sound make these suckers go up in price and they are rarely up for sale.
How do I know ?? , well you just pictured my TA-120, and if you need more info, I also have TA-30 and TA-60.
Best Regards
Peter
Actually, you are right Peter. I've never heard the Yamaha amps. Glad you love yours. I've got a lot of weirdo amps that I dig, too.
The blog was really about how poorly the Styrofoam speakers sounded (and how quickly they fried) in the Fender, though :-).
I have one of these trap styro 15" speaker. How much are they worth? I took it out of my bantam and replaced it with a 15" eminence kappa pro speaker. Now its the best fender amp ive ever owned. I can nail srv, duarte and doyle bramhall with its tone.
There was one on eBay for a year or two at a BIN of $100 ... don't know if it sold or the dude just gave up!
Yea, there are a lot of Bantam Bass amps out there rockin' away ... without that crazy speaker, of course!!