Fender FR-12 preamp mod : The Hissterectomy

If Fender says anything about this, I hope they do mention Lysander. I have to grudgingly admit they're under no obligation to say anything.

With that said, I don't think anyone should feel bad about buying an FR-12 or swapping a V1 for a V2. These things are great but can have an annoying hiss. Not everyone is comfortable with a soldering iron.
 
FWIW…
I have not been up-to-date with this thread in a bit. Sweetwater recently had the FR-12 back in stock so I ordered one a few days ago and it arrived this morning.

To my surprise… The unit I received is super quiet with my FM9.
 
GtrBob said:
FWIW…
I have not been up-to-date with this thread in a bit. Sweetwater recently had the FR-12 back in stock so I ordered one a few days ago and it arrived this morning.

To my surprise… The unit I received is super quiet with my FM9.
Click to expand...
Same here got mine from Sweetwater too - about 2 months ago
 
GtrBob said:
FWIW…
I have not been up-to-date with this thread in a bit. Sweetwater recently had the FR-12 back in stock so I ordered one a few days ago and it arrived this morning.

To my surprise… The unit I received is super quiet with my FM9.
Click to expand...
Jamme1961 said:
Same here got mine from Sweetwater too - about 2 months ago
Click to expand...
Punam Patel Comedy GIF by CBS
 
I ordered a Fender frfr 1x12 on Dec. 7 from Guitar Center (unfortunately) and they posted back that the product was on backorder and would be delayed. I called them recently and still on backorder. Maybe this will work out ok if the backorder actually means they are factory modding ones in stock and new ones. As an aside I purchased a Fender Blue's Jr. amp about 6 yrs ago and had nothing but problems with it. I took the thing apart enough to look at the circuit board and it was a piece of crap mechanically at least. That unit went back to the shop several times and I had to replace the tubes at least once. Really shoddy work. Got rid of it a couple of years ago. Fender is never going to own up to any of this. Really stupid trying to save some bucks along with the lower price tag on the FRFR but that is how the corporate world works now a days. They have good product and somehow screw it up in some way based on persons with no knowledge of the product itself.
 
Nsurround said:
I ordered a Fender frfr 1x12 on Dec. 7 from Guitar Center (unfortunately) and they posted back that the product was on backorder and would be delayed. I called them recently and still on backorder. Maybe this will work out ok if the backorder actually means they are factory modding ones in stock and new ones. As an aside I purchased a Fender Blue's Jr. amp about 6 yrs ago and had nothing but problems with it. I took the thing apart enough to look at the circuit board and it was a piece of crap mechanically at least. That unit went back to the shop several times and I had to replace the tubes at least once. Really shoddy work. Got rid of it a couple of years ago. Fender is never going to own up to any of this. Really stupid trying to save some bucks along with the lower price tag on the FRFR but that is how the corporate world works now a days. They have good product and somehow screw it up in some way based on persons with no knowledge of the product itself.
Click to expand...
Actually, sometimes they have bad engineers. Sad, but true…
 
200man said:
You know, the lack of phantom power protection on the output is like 100 times more important than hiss in my book.
@WKSmith , @Lysander
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Yeah I should see about that. It's as easy as changing two coupling caps to much larger reverse biased electro caps.. and changing two resistor values and adding 4 diodes.

The problem is that the highpass filter that the stock component values make would be tuned so low as to not limit the low freq bandwidth of the first opamp.

I am trying to walk a fine line between staying faithful to the original design or throwing elements out the window.

I agree phantom protection is damn important for the handful of folks that would use the xlr out to send to the PA.

And this is the time to fix dumb stuff. Before it gets baked into a product.
 
Fender is not commenting, but I'll bet they are delaying the backorders in order to do the changes on both 1x12 and 1x10. Updating some already built and adding the new op amps to ones in the assembly process. This is of course if our original poster on this observation is correct.
 
So if Fender is actually doing stuff behind the scenes to rectify the hiss with a new lot of cabs....and those under manufacture warranty...i'm guessing a pipe dream to think you could get a replacement unit yeah?
 
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