Saturday, August 15, 2015

1980s Fender Eighty-Five Combo Amp

Vintage combo amp, built in the USA and made famous by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood


This amp apparently made its debut in 1988 and the serial number on the back probably means it was made in 1988 or 1989. When I first started playing, the Fender M80 amp was a favorite among my peers and this sounds alot like those boxes to me.

In a bit of a reversal for Fender amps, the cleans on this one don't really sound all that great. Very heavy metal, but the distortion channel is actually better. When I picked this up last weekend and played through it with the Aria Pro II strat, the sounds coming out were a bit like those on the Weezer Blue Album.

That makes sense, as posted in the abstract, Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead made this amp famous when he used it to record one of their most well-known songs, 1994's Creep and those albums came out the same year. This is one of my better finds, as its a great amp and I'm probably going to end up paying around the same amount to find the original footswitch. These can go for as much as $200, thanks in large part to Mr. Greenwood's influence.

Thanks for looking, more high-resolution photos here.

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