I have a Blackface Vibrasonic that I bought at Guitar Center in Hollywood in their vintage room about 7 years ago. Now this particular amp supposedly, from all my research, doesn’t exist. It was made in August of 1963, when they were phasing these out. It has the JBL and it is all original. Nothing has been altered or pained over. I believe they put out a few of the BF versions of the 6G13-A circuit models before entirely scrapping this line. I’m assuming that they thought this line would continue into the BF version and they built just a few of them. Haven’t seen another anywhere on the internet. It has the round tuxedo style white knobs, and is set up like the 1963-64 Princeton amp. The code numbers on the back are MH=August, 1963. Same look. Just thought I’d share this. 🙂

I forgot to mention that the grill cloth is a blackface grill cloth. Not from the ones you see on the brownface amps. And the the staples appear to be period correct from the early 60’s. Nothng looks altered.

Generally, that is correct, about the blackface era starting in 1964. However, I have seen several advertised 1963 Tremolux amps that have blonde Tolex, but blackface panels and wiring.

Yeah but mine also has the blackface face plate and the serial number that puts the make in october 1963. Right when they were finishing up the vibrasonics. Im fairly certain that a few of the blackface vibrasonics left the factory before they decided to scrap them. Just so few that they never bothered to take note of it. Now of course theres always a chance that someone did both the face plate and the tolex. Just unlikely.

The Brownface era ran from 1959 to 1963, with the brown tolex used from 1961 to 1963. Mine is a 1963 model, mostly original, with a re-tolexing in the original Fender brown specific to this amp. The grille cloth was replaced with a period-correct oxblood with gold stripe to enhance its appearance. The famous tremolo system remains intact and sounds fantastic. It has the original 1963 JBL D-130F 15″ speaker, which functioned superbly well until recently, when a vintage speaker expert performed a by-hand re-coil using vintage-spec wiring (NOS, with the exact same length of wire reapplied) to preserve authenticity. He also reinforced the original cone for a longer life. Everything else, aside from minor work on a few failed capacitors, is original. All the original tubes are still in place. As for value, I’ve seen two similar amps in very good to excellent condition listed on Reverb.com for $2,800 and $2,995, respectively. I would place mine at a higher value due to its original parts being intact. Thanks for reading.