It hurts my heart to see an amp in that condition. I rescued a late '64 Bandmaster that was left in a van in the woods for years. Luckily, it wasn't rusty, but internally, it was a cobbled up mess. Mismatched power tubes with new resistors tacked over old, tacked over old again, two crumbled sockets, seized pots, etc. The saddest part was the original Jensen's had been removed from the cab, and just left on the floor of the rusted out van for the squirrels. The amp is restored now, and my most prized possession.

You could strip it down to the chassis and find a local gunsmith who can "convert" the rust off of all the parts. That, or you can set up a a home rust conversion kit where you can use electrolysis to effectively leech all the rust off of the surfaces. Once the rust is converted you can brush or wipe the rest of the rust off. At least, you'd get a better idea of what the metal looks like underneath all the rust and get it back to a fairly clean state.

Just... Wow. Never seen such a legendary amplifier model fall into such disrepair. My neighbor has a '66 AB165 Bassman head "Helen" and it's a MARVELOUS piece of work. Considering its you, Lyle, your customer will end up with a working Bassman again soon!

When you drop an amp off for repair and your bill includes a tetanus shot.

Probably the worst case of zinc blooming I have ever seen, would recommend to wear gloves when touching to prevent zinc fever. I really love your attitude and passion digging into even such unhopeful cases and good to see/hear that there is still life in this unit. Maybe the best would be to strip it down completely, have the chassis dipped / passivated to get rid of the rust and then painted/powdercoated black...this would also distinguish this amp in his (hopefully realized) later life and fit into your Psionic Brand...and don't be shy doing that, LEo did a great job in creating it, you will do a great job in reviving it, so it's ok to leave fingerprints ;)

It’s no longer a Fender Bassman. It’s now a Fender Basement!

just need a relic strat to top things off.

When Lyle says "I've never seen one this bad" I know we are in for something 'interesting'.

Wow, wow, wow! I doubt I’m the only one here who would LOVE to see a detailed restoration video of this.

It's time to get some ad revenue on part 2. "SATISFYING guitar amp restoration! You won't BELIEVE the transformation!" Good luck bud!

That one appears to be in pretty tough shape, but I respect how you quickly got to the “let’s see what works and what doesn’t” part. If it were mine, I’d go for the rebuild expecting that the chassis might still be kind of funky at the end. Looking forward to part 2.

I'm surprised to see so many comments advocating for heroic measures on the chassis. Where is the crowd of people who call you blasphemous just for changing out bad caps and resistors?

Looking forward to part 2. It’ll be interesting to find out which method you go with cleaning the chassis. Good to see the old girl getting another chance.

Leo and his crew, utilizing what were at the time very limited resources, crafted some of the best guitar amps for the price that have ever been available, and they were on sale to anyone able to meet the very reasonable asking price. That doesn't mean that the new owner had the slightest idea as to how to care for his purchase (or even the inclination to do so). Go figure... That said, I'm curious to watch you work your magic on this, Lyle...will stay posted. Frankly, I'm surprised that you haven't seen more of these in the Memphis area.

The owner of this amp should have donated it to you and walked away with his head hanging in shame. This amp is/was both an instrustrument and a piece of history that was neglected horribly. Hopefully he treats his dog better than this. It will be really wonderful to see you bring this fine amp back from the brink of the junkyard. A long time ago I owned a Bassman head that was just about the same year as this so it's especially difficult to see what happened to this one. Even as stupid 16 year old kid I was smart enough to take decent care of mine for the years that I owned it.

This is an exciting one for us viewers for sure! While I agree that it's unfortunate this amp was left to rust, I'd like to point out that no long ago these amps were not selling for much money $400-600 (less for one's in poor shape & less desirable circuits) and that was here in CA!...I still kick myself for not buying at least one! And this one looks like an AB165 which is not the most valuable of the black panel era...has a weird local negative feedback arrangement in the power amp. But these make great mod platforms.

You just demonstrated the other reason why l love Fender amps so much, aside from the sound. 25 years in the shed in Mississippi, (insane humidity down there in the summer) exposed to the elements, and it still works after replacing a cap and some diodes. Leo Fender should get the Nobel prize for amp design. There's no question as to whether it's worth restoring, it's just a matter of how merciless the guy's other bills are, and if he has the discretionary income to cover your labor. I sure hope he can take the plunge and get it done because that's way too cool of an amp to be left in such a state of dilapidation. If it's a "Go", this will be a fun transformation to watch.

Jolly good show ol' chap! You're finally getting amps in the kind of condition that I get!

Now that you have decided to jump head long into this project, I’m anxious to see the Master’s Work

Unbelievable! I have a 1967 Bassman and matching 2-12” cabinet (equipped with Alesandro speakers), that literally looks brand new and sounds great! I cringed when I saw the amp that was brought in for repair!

From Rustman to Bassman! Kyle you are a miracle worker. I have to greatly admire your optimism, skill and dedication to your craft when specimens like these arrive. I was really concerned about rust on the power and output transformers in regard to rust thru shorting of the laminations. Enough can’t be said of Leo’s great works of amplified art! Slowly but surely she spoke. Masterful work as always. I look forward to part 2.

😳 I agree! That should be grounds for criminal charges of abuse! BTW, I have had excellent results using finely crushed walnut shells with my sandblaster for metal like this as a start. If there’s anyone that can save this classic, it’s you Lyle!

When you said, "let's spray some WD-40..." I heard let's Pray, lol Considering the look of things, I was ready to join you! Best of Luck on this one Lyle!

I LOVE restoring stuff like this. De-rusting and cleaning it is so relaxing and satisfying.

Strangely, I'm looking forward to part two!

Hey Lyle, I am a new viewer and love your channel. I commend your effort on this, it looks like a very daunting task. I am a young guy but have learned a lot through watching your videos. Wishing you the best luck with that one!

I would LOVE see this customer go ALL IN on this one so we can watch Lyle do his work!

You know its pretty bad when the tube shields end up acting as sacrificial anodes. 🤣

Wow! Until just now, I thought I had the most neglected Bassman in history. Not my neglect, I brought it back to life and gave it a good home. That amp is a survivor. I hope the owner went for it.

Looks like a nice project. Mississippi + shed + time = rust. Who’d a thought. Looking forward to part 2.

Take it out back and bury it, leave a plague that says, "Rust in Pieces"..

To say it broke my heart to see it in this condition just doesn't come close to describing it but I am glad to see it in your hands to make it come alive.

I love stuff like this, these are the sort of insane projects that I live to work on. Earlier this year I finished restoring a 70s Twin that was all original but had been sitting in storage for 20+ years, and at some point had both of it's speakers kicked in, and was dropped down a flight of stairs. It's in phenomenal shape now and I actually ended up keeping it as a personal amp!

I own 3 bassman's from the 60's. Hopefully, this one can be restored, they're very special amps. Rust can really mess up the grounds. Poor amp! 60's Fender chassis are built like 50's Chevy's like a rock and heavy as hell!

Can’t wait to watch this whole thing, but when you popped the back panel off I thought this was recovered from the Titanic 😂

Lyle, Ive had a lot of luck with the "purple" scotchbrite pads and Breakfree Its alleged to polish without removing metal though it will stripe the finish ie Bluing off firearms (I retired out of Phoenix PD's armory) I had Remington 870 shotguns left in the trunk of detectives cars for years that looked worse than that chassis and was able to save them. Actually "save" means I striped them, hit them with flat black rustoleum and we kept them at the armory for the recruits to use during the academy.

This would be a good project for a hobbyist who could take the time to remove everything from the chassis, send it out for sandblasting and powder coating, and work on the boards (doghouse, bias, main) while waiting for the chassis. Since you will be replacing the tube sockets, that already involves unsoldering a lot of wires to get the main board out. My main concern would be the integrity of the grounds. From what I saw the front and rear panels themselves don't appear to be in bad shape. Looking forward to the next video in this series!

Great video and shame about the condition. I have been restoring an old radio which was also left in a shed for many years with not as much corrosion but enough to create issues. I ended up using a hand held sandblaster (cheapy from eBay) but using sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) which really cleaned it up well, then I used compressed air to remove as much of the residue as possible. Then a light mist of weak phosphoric acid to both neutralise the sodium bicarbonate and treat the metal (and prevent further rust), then used a can of Contact Cleaner to completely clean the entire thing.

remove excess, use two coats of waterbased rust converter and seal with any rattlecan clear

I had no hope for this amp when you opened it up. It's a minor miracle that it worked at all. Such a vintage amp like that never should have been left to rot away in that condition.

Holy cow! Looks like this is a relic pulled up from the wreck of the Titanic! Can't believe that it actually works.

Oh yeah, been there a few times myself Lyle. I have a 1968 Jansen Bassman (very similar amp from New Zealand) in almost identical condition ready to go on the bench. You almost exactly matched what I will be doing to that amp. A good watch. Thanks.

My guess is the amp may have been stored in a shed with some pool chemicals nearby.

Very surprised, when you removed the back panel. It looked like a flood victim. Hope owner goes for the repairs. Looking forward to what the outcome will be. But first coffee.

"From a garage in Mississippi..." You can't buy vibe like that!

Stoked for part 2 - this could be a classic!

I have just one issue with the manner in which Leo designed these amps. It's not particularly difficult to remove the power transformer and output transformer which would only involve unsoldering a total of about 14 wires (and it's easy for any tech to know instinctively where to reattach them), and another 5 or 6 wires or so to the filter caps, but the 7 tube sockets are mounted from the outside of the chassis and so you have to unsolder (preferable) or snip 36 connections to the 4 preamp tubes as well as 5 or 6 connections per each of the three octal sockets ( Unless there's sufficient slack in the wires for easy reconnection you may want to unsolder them). The pots and input jacks and switches on the front and rear can mostly be removed almost as a unit with minimal removal of individual wires (fuse holder and pilot light socket being exceptions), and the eyelet board would come out along with everything else, but those tube sockets tend to tether everything else in place. It doesn't matter quite as much in this case because all of those sockets are likely to have to be replaced anyway due to corrosion..... but I really would have preferred those sockets to have been mounted to the inside of the chassis.

Here in Aus we have stuff called 'Penetrol' which you can paint over old rust after sanding the worst off, apparently it stabilises the rust. Don't know if it's available to you, probably better than WD40

Wow, just wow. You have material here for a 12 part restoration series. 😢

It reminds me of the Cadillac in Ghostbusters when Akroyd first limps it into the garage. 😂

It looks like it's been under a pier for decades, not like it's been in a garage or shed

Oh man...this is going to be amazing!! Im here for it all!

I did a rust clean up with baking soda mixed with WD40, left it overnight, scrubbed with it a toothbrush then cleaned it off. It was really messy but it seemed to actually stop the process. The rust and pitting left stains and scars but it wasn't unsightly or gross.

This is one of my dream amps. I hope you save it.

I live on the MS Coast. I've seen 'em this bad, usually when they've been subjected to floodwaters, _salt_ water, but I see in the comments you stated it was not flooded. That's good news. The most challenging resto I've done was a Silvertone that was in a house fire, covered in soot. This is going to be fun (for us viewers lol).

Lightbulb and Variac... thats is the way I power up things for the "smoke test". I even put up a shield, put on my CRT handling equipment and power it on remotely.

It’s nice to see that this bassman is getting new life, but sad owner left this head in old wood shed outback in humid conditions for so long. I’m hoping your now feeling like servicing something like a new AC15 head with upgrades/mods.

Any heavy equipment repair shop, many mechanic's shops, most welding shops will have a glass beading media blast chamber and be cheaper than a machine shop. If you ask nicely and promise not to blast the window on their chamber, one of those shops might let you have at it yourself with their blast cabinet for $10 or $20. That is typical leaky basement flood damage.

Man, the way I gasped when you pulled the back panel! My god!

I showed this video to my dogs and when they saw the amp with back panel removed they all barked "rough! rough! rough!" 🐕

These are always worth it to bring back.

I really hope this one gets saved it would make for an interesting watch & a great transformation. I just wanna strip that chassis and clean all the rust off it i dunno why i just enjoy that kind of thing. Good luck Lyle!!!

At 7:43 you know WD-40 is not a good rust remover, but for a quick check it is ok to use. See if you could get a sheet metal shop to bend you a new chassis. Make it from steel for good EMI shielding, and have it pasivated to prevent corrosion. In high school my friend kept some of his pedals in the basement where we would play sometimes. It was never humid down there when we played but we didnt play down there often. After a year, all his pedals were corroding inside and stopped working. I soaked them in 99% Isopropyl Alcohol and used tons of cotton swabs... I got them going again.

That bassman is in brutal shape. But I know a lot of tricks about dealing with rust. Because rust is just a metal oxide, it expands greatly when adding an oxygen molecule. So a lot of rust can appear without losing too much metal. Mild acids will help clean it up, like vinegar, but be careful in that over enough time it can dissolve steel too.

There's almost a strange beauty in just how revolting it is.

De-rusting tip from the old bicycle community: wd40 and scrub with a wadded up ball of aluminum foil from the kitchen. You’ll be amazed at how well it works on surface rust and pitted chrome

Holy cow. This will definitely be a labor of love to get this back on the road. If you strip the chassis, I'd recommend a vinegar bath or maybe even some dilute pool (hydrochloric) acid. I will definitely need some sort of finish applied or that rust will return w/a vengeance

Well, you didn't see the 68ish Princeton Reverb and 68ish Deluxe Reverb both AB763 silverface I had stored in my brother's barn (metal building on his farm) when the Northern Cali fires hit in 2017. Both of them, I had just refreshed with the new cap and plate resistor treatment. I had owned both of these amps since maybe 1980/1982. Both were modded for dual-6L6 use and one had a JBL D-120 and the other an Altec 417-8H. The Princeton was an absolute gem of an amp but they were both sweet. Why were they in storage if they were so sweet? Because I had bought a $175 Peavey ValveKing and threw another Altec speaker I had in it and it was a perfectly acceptable gig/jam amp that I didn't much care if it got beat up. Anyway, there were some buckets of used oil or hydraulic fluid back in the corner of the barn and the fire lapped right up to that corner. The heat cooked and vaporized the oils and then the vapor flashed. The poor amps were barely recognizable, cabinets falling apart, knobs melted, tubes busted, speaker cones burnt away. I kind of thought whether anything would be salvageable from the amps, and possibly there was, but they would have stunk to high heaven of burnt electronics and I'd likely have to replace every part inside. In the end, I decided to let them go to the dumpster. A fire will make many decisions for you.

Yikes, I've had some really rusted amps come in for work, but that is bad. Around here it's usually old Ampegs that we're in a barn or basement for decades.

Trusty Rusty will not go quietly into that silent night! After an abrasive scour with wd40 or penetrating oil, I would slather on sone evaporust gel and let it neutralize the remaining rust - saves the trouble of removing the transformers. This will turn the oxide black - but that'll only give the amp more shed cred.

Before the shed, James Cameron pulled this thing off the ocean floor.

I've got a Selmer Treble & Bass Mk3 that was like this. Scrubbed the chassis pretty hard, as it appeared to be covered in Zinc Oxide (which I heard isn't a great thing to ingest, if you can avoid it). A great tech gave it a once over and replaced a few components but did say that the Transformers will always be an unknown, in terms of if they've really survived the corrosion, but they work right now! It's a ugly thing to be sure, but it does sound good!

Acid dip that stripped chasis - just like car restoration.

Leave all the cool "heavy relic" elements

This makes me feel better about 'The Twin' I'm working on.

Thanks for posting this video. All vintage amps don't arrive (or leave) 100% clean and tidy, but they can certainly still work and sound great, too. Testament to their design, construction and quality of components (esp. transformers). I'd be interested in knowing your thoughts about (exterior) rust on the chassis and on transformers, too; does it really does present potential problems beyond aesthetics? I know the internet has a lot to say/scream about this, but I've restored many instrument amps and tube PAs that had some rust (not this much, thankfully) that work and sound just great. Appreciate your expertise and generosity as always. (:

When the back cover came off and I saw the rust, my jaw literally dropped. Did this guy live near the salt water? Holy smokes. And I can hear the dismay (and maybe anger...) in your voice.

Astonishing how rugged those designs are.

I restored old motorcycles and cars, my suggestion is to take it all apart and use wire wheels on both a bench grinder and hand drill. That works pretty fast but is messy, wear old clothes and mask. It's nasty looking but actually just mostly surface rust, not quite rot yet. Stay away from chemicals; solvents etc. they cause cancer. You could spray paint the chassis with high heat silver paint (it's at the auto parts and or hardware stores), it'll look very close to the old plating and will fill in a lot of the pits, the paint is for steam radiators and BBQ's. Painting it would be a lower cost than re-plating. Sending it out for re-plating will take a lot of time (they're always behind) and it still won't look or be the same as the original plating. The rest you know what to do, I've watched your videos, you've got that covered. Great videos. Try my method you'll save big $$$, shops are expensive.

Given it was his primary amp for a time the bottom of the closet would be a better place for it to set. Given the fender amp has always had value to players this treatment is puzzling for me. For even old test equipment from the 60's get stored in a temp controlled place by me. My view is different than his on what I keep and own . Good luck there Lyle.

I would be scared to death to plug into this.

Evapo-rust!!! I’ve seen it do some amazing things. They even make it in a gel that can set on it for a while.

2:06 Holy Cow indeed, must have been a pretty damp environment to store an amp in for it to be that rusty inside, if it was my amp, I'd strip it down to the bare chassis and give it a good going-over with maybe some sandpaper, a wire brush and etc to remove all the rust.

Reminds me of a Fender Twin someone wired up with a two prong plug. I got a little surprise when I switched the power on.

Awsome video! Great job. Maybe go with diodes with larger PIV than the 1N4007's, if this was mine and not paying for work, I would give it a total overhaul.

Looks like we have a candidate for wall art here. I admire your positivity.

Scariest thing I've seen since Event Horizon.

Salvaged from the Titanic? Wow...

I usually like the looks of these crusted amps. This chassy however looks a tad too rusted. It would be nice to see how well it cleans.

That's not RUST, it's PATINA!!! Worth EXTRA cash to the vintage gear gang!

As a sea shore town guy I'd say that amp looks like it went fishing a lot of times with the owner....

I'm shufflin' through the Texas sand, but the rust's in Mississippi... (apologies to Billy and the boys) That is just nasty. If it can be saved then testament to the skills of the first responder. May be strip everything off the chassis and give it a nice bath in something acidic to clear all the corrosion followed by a dip in a suitable anti-oxidant. Better living through chemistry.

I would strip the chassis bare and boil it for half an hour, it will convert the red oxide to black oxide. Scotchbrite to knock down the fuzz, and lacquer or shellac to seal it.

I have NO idea what that abomination was you called “Tupperware”, but that was no Tupperware sir! LMAO All jokes aside, that amp is totally worth restoring! ❤ from 🇨🇦 \m/, ,\m/ EDIT: Also, I hope your Tetanus vacc is up to date. :)

The title is an instant classic. I love it.

That’s been completely submerged, perhaps many times. I wouldn’t dream of powering it up. Strip to a bare chassis, fixing as you go. New pots, switches, connectors across the board. I wouldn’t bother cleaning/testing any of those components. I would not be surprised by a four-digit invoice.

I didn’t even know fenders could get THAT rusted. It looks like battery corrosion for gods sake. That’s great the transformers are working. Can’t wait to see and hear it once you’ve stripped off all that corrosion etc. Whoever neglected that amp deserves to be horse whipped imo. Who in their right mind would leave a blackface fender in a muggy ass Mississippi barn for 10 plus years?

After the apocalypse all that will be left will be cockroaches and Fender blackfaces.

I stripped one similar. Used an abrasive pad polished the chassis and then clear lacquered it. Then rebuilt it. Looked awesome afterwards that was about 15 years ago.

what he failed to tell you is it sat underwater in a basement. in wherever it was..