After a longer hiatus from looking for amps I got curious about old Traynor YBA-1 , YBA-4 as I stumbled upon a rehoused YBA-4 head. It turned out to be butchered internally, so I had to pass on this particular one.
But, I did a quick search for blonde/brownface heads and a '62 6G7-A Bandmaster head was FS in south of Germany.
We don't see blonde Bandmaster very often here in Europe, and if we see them they are in most cases either molestered or totally overpriced with questionable history like this one:
https://reverb.com/item/2118652-fender- ... 1962-white
This time, the offered Bandmaster was in good condition (original signal caps in working order, original transformers etc.) with some minor modifications that are completely reversible with a little effort.
I have read many times on the interwebs that the Bandmaster OT is a weak point of the amp and should be replaced with one of the Bassman variety.
As I have a blonde (6G6B) Bassman I was curious to compare them myself, especially the low end response and the headroom of the Bandmaster compared to Bassman when using normal channel at the moderate volume (5-6 on the volume pot).
Volume wise they are in the same ball park, Bassman has a little bit better bass response, the headroom difference is nothing to write home about. The Bandmaster sounds a little bit smoother and sweeter with a tad more mids.
This is for clean and semi-clean sounds, which I need mostly.
If you turn the Bandmaster/Bassman up the differences between the amps become apparent: The Bassman is punchy angry beast, the Bandmaster
suffers a little bit from weak low end response.
The vibrato channel of the Bandmaster is fantastic, the harmonic vibrato is really cool.
I don't see any need atm to follow the widely spread advice to swap the OT for Bassman output transformer, as I need only semi-clean sound out of the amp.
The Bandmaster rules as is.
Here it is:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/fkbYFnw.jpg)