Thursday, 16 April 2009 00:22
Last Updated on Saturday, 21 August 2010 13:07
When you needed a portable amp back in the 70’s, you had 2 choices: the Pignose, which put out a few watts of power or you could go the EH Freedom amp route, with 55W of battery-powered goodness.
The Freedom amp came about around 1972, blasting it’s way into the musician’s consciousness with the power of 55 watts into a single 10″ heavy duty CTS speaker.
Not just for guitarists though, it was available in bass and PA models as well.� All shared the same basic cabinet construction and speaker with just a few differences to make each it’s own beast:
The Bass version: I’ve never seen the Bass version so I don’t know what the full control layout is. I do know that it was apparently the first model dropped as later ads mention the Guitar and PA versions only. It have a “Heavy Low Frequency Resonance” control, which was supposed to give it more depth and wallop than a 2-15″ setup. If you find one, I’ll buy it!
The PA version: Very rare. I’ve only seen a couple of these so far and talked to just a couple of people who own one. These amps had the usual Volume and Tone controls, but no Bite. Some versions also added reverb with a Reverb control. Sometimes they had a red covering but I’ve also seen them in black.
In addition to the 3 different models you could also get them in 3 choices of power supply: AC. AC/DC, or DC only. AC power was supplied via a detachable AC cord and a side-mounted AC socket. DC was provided by the inclusion of a battery holder or holders capable of holding….40 D cells! Yes, that’s right: 40! All these batteries were held in one of 2 ways: either in a large metal battery holder mounted on the inside of the back panel or in a series-connected string of 10 four cell battery holders mounted inside the amp on the bottom and sides. Having 40 Ds in one of these amps takes away a bit of the portability of the amp but they do seem to last a long time. An AC/DC amp simply used the power switch to switch between the power modes.
The amps were covered in a thin vinyl that was available in red or black and had a single handle on top that was either a plastic fold down handle or a more traditional strap handle, like Fender uses. I’ve not found any rhyme or reason for either handle or vinyl color.
The original ad campaign caused a bit of a stir with it’s interracial overtones. You can see pics used in the ads here.
In the next article we’ll take a look at the bigger brothers of the Freedom amp along with it’s siamese twin brother and the later reissue.