The latest in Fender’s Pawn Shop Special series is called the Vaporizer. It evokes the 1950s/‘60s in the U.S., the space race and the atom-age world enthralled with spaceflight and spacecraft. In those days, bright, colorful and flashy industry design was everywhere, from TV and radio cabinets to cars and home appliances. Available in Surf Green, Slate Blue and (what else) Rocket Red, the Vaporizer amp looks like it came out of a time capsule from those nascent times with its retro/modern colors and whimsical cabinet designs.
The Fender Vaporizer amps have 12 watts of all-tube output power (2 x 12AX7 preamp tubes, 2 x 6BQ5/EL84 power tubes) and two, 10-inch, 16-ohm Special Design Vaporizer speakers.
Additional features include a spring reverb circuit independent of amp volume control, which creates a full, wet reverb that can approximate the sound of playing in a tunnel of love. But step on the wedge footswitch and launch into “vaporizer mode” which bypasses the volume and tone controls for full turbo overload.
They sell for $549 MSRP.
http://fender.com/buyfendervaporizer
By Barry Rudolph
MiniBio: Barry Rudolph is a recording engineer/mixer with over 30 gold and platinum RIAA awards to his credit. He has recorded and/or mixed: Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hall & Oates, Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, the Corrs and Robbie Nevil. Barry has his own futuristic music mixing facility and also teaches recording engineering at Musician’s Institute, Hollywood, CA. http://www.barryrudolph.
