Guitarist | 1 decade ago

Affordable retro amp demo'd
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The cobwebbed corners of the pawn shop in Fender's head have yielded a mixed bag of curios since the series began with a range of mongrel guitar designs in 2011. 2012's tremolo-packing Excelsior combo was the closest thing in the shop to an essential purchase to date, and the rate at which they were snapped up speaks volumes; you'll have to head to eBay and hope for the best if you want to corral one now.

The Vaporizer was announced at the turn of 2014, accompanied by a sci-fi promo video that reflects its Atomic Age stylings. An initial glance at the specifications made us wonder if this might just prove to be the best Pawn Shop Special amp yet; it certainly seemed more appealing than the too-dark-sounding Ramparte and more practical for everyday use than the Excelsior, thanks to a spring-reverb tank and a pair of brash 10-inch drivers. We caught a whiff of that rare excitement that only the combination of the genuinely cool and highly affordable can generate.

But wait a minute, £490 isn't that affordable, is it? It's more than the average street price for a Blues Junior, for a start, and probably more than a second-hand Hot Rod Deluxe. Happily, at press time, the Vaporizer is around £375 at most UK retailers. It's not quite as rip-their- arm-off tempting as the Excelsior's borderline crazy price tag was, but it's not half bad either.

For the money, you get an amp that's about as far away from the generic black box school of backline design as is possible without paying boutique money. The dimpled Surf Green vinyl on our Vaporizer is very well applied around the angular speaker cut-out, and the big, luggage-style handle and washing machine- style dials are evocative of the US post-war manufacturing boom.

Around the back, you're reminded that this is no well-preserved piece of vintage esoterica by the usual printed array of warnings and a safety grille, all in order to comply with modern legislation. On the inside, the Vaporizer is every bit the modern production-line valve amp, with most of the electronics sitting neatly on two large PCBs.

Here, Chris Vinnicombe gives the Vaporizer a workout in combination with a G6137TCB Panther Center-Block.

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