A 1967 Fender Twin Reverb, said to have once belonged to the late blues guitar great Stevie Ray Vaughan, has gone up for sale on Reverb for almost $630,000.
The listing bills the Twin as one of SRV’s “main recording and live amplifiers”, and notes it was used from the early 1980s onwards in some of the late electric guitar icon’s most notable studio and stage performances.
“This amplifier was one of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s most favorite and important amplifiers,” Björn Groenen, the Twin's current owner, tells Guitar World. “He owned many amplifiers but only one Twin Reverb with Electro Voice coffee can speakers.
“In the five years that I have owned it, I have played the amplifier just once. It deeply shocked me how an amplifier could sound like that. I immediately recognized the sound of Stevie Ray Vaughan's most famous songs.”
Vaughan was known for using a combination of amplifiers, but the amp’s present owner says he considers the Twin to be perhaps “the most important amplifier in blues musical history”.
SRV reportedly first bought the amp – notably fitted with a set of distinctive Electro Voice SRO ‘coffee cans’ speakers – at Ray Hennig’s Heart of Texas music store in Austin around October 1982. It had previously belonged to Scott MacDonald, guitarist for Bill Carter & The Blame, who traded it into the store shortly before.
When it was purchased by Vaughan, it was quickly put to work, and according to the generous array of verification documents that Groenen has supplied, it became one of the blues icon’s most used and recognisable amps.
“I contacted hundreds of people via email, letters and phone calls,” Groenen, a professional guitarist and bassist who has owned the amp for five years, tells Guitar World. “I had contact with almost everybody who was close or worked with Stevie Ray Vaughan.
“It took me a couple years to approach the people who worked with Stevie. Some important people didn't want to say anything more about it because they said it was Stevie Ray Vaughan's main amplifier, which was the secret tone.
“Many people have been able to tell me their full stories about the amplifier. The amount of confirmed information about the amplifier’s verification is immense.”
Indeed, Groenen has amassed what looks to be a comprehensive trail of authenticity certificates, hand-signed notes, quotes and dated photographs in his quest to confirm the provenance of the Twin Reverb.
Some of the most compelling pieces of evidence have come from Evan Rush, an in-house engineer and production assistant at Kiva Recordings in Memphis at the time In Step (1989) was tracked; Robert Eaton, a staff engineer at Power Station Studios, where Couldn’t Stand the Weather (1984) was recorded; and, perhaps most convincing of all, Rick Spencer, who was once SRV’s guitar tech, stage manager and truck driver.
According to Spencer, “the Fender Twin Reverb with Electro Voice SRO speakers was used by Stevie Ray Vaughan during the Texas Flood sessions in Jackson Browne’s studio in Los Angeles”.
As well as using the amp during the Texas Flood sessions, Eaton says he saw SRV play through the Twin Reverb “on all the songs on the recording sessions for the album Couldn’t Stand the Weather”, while Rush confirms he “specifically” remembers seeing this amp – memorable for its unusual speakers – during the recording of In Step.
The supplied evidence builds a picture that the Twin Reverb had a hand in shaping a number of SRV's most well-known works, with those three records alone featuring tracks such as Pride and Joy, Love Me Darlin, Scuttle Buttin' and more.
Furthermore, Spencer also confirmed the amp’s live uses, writing in a signed authenticity letter, “This [amp was] extensively used by Stevie Ray Vaughan with a Marshall combo with double 12” speakers when I worked for him in the early ’80s.
“The 1967 Fender Twin Reverb was used at larger concerts and at most club gig’s [sic]. We wired his signal into both amps. I loaded and unloaded this many times from the band’s truck.”
In another letter, he wrote, “I did a lot of hard work for the band in the early ’80s. We toured through the four corner States... all the way up and down the California coast, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
“This Fender Twin Reverb with Electro Voice SRO speakers was used here for many club gigs.”
Aside from his Double Trouble action, it’s also been noted that Vaughan used this particular Twin Reverb during his famed Las Colinas rehearsals with David Bowie.
“Yes, this is absolutely authentic. I had the privilege of working with Stevie Ray Vaughan during David Bowie’s rehearsal period,” Frank Pavlich, SRV’s guitar tech during the rehearsals, is quoted as saying in the listing.
“I worked on that crazy Fender Twin Reverb amplifier with Electro Voice SRO speakers (coffee cans) and never understood how it made such fabulous noise.”
It is worth caveating that Vaughan used a large array of amps throughout his career, and often combined multiple units in the studio when tracking his albums, from Fender Super Reverbs and Vibroverbs, to Marshalls and beyond. John Mayer, for example, owns the Dumble that featured on Texas Flood.
Vaughan explained as much in an old Guitar World interview, revealing, “When we did Soul to Soul, we had every amp that I owned at the time hooked up. For amps, I had two Dumbles, a couple of Marshalls, a bunch of Fenders…”
Rush also references SRV’s habit of, er, combo-ing combos in his own letter of authenticity, noting how the Twin Reverb was one of “several” that were set aside for the sessions, stating: “The Fender Twin Reverb… would have been mixed in to get that tone.”
It seems likely then that the ’67 Twin was indeed one of several amps that formed SRV's wider arsenal during his Texas Flood era and beyond.
Groenen has promised that the amp comes with even more verifying documentation, including quotes from Bowie guitarist Carlos Alomar; Ray Hennig’s son, Steve Hennig; SRV’s road manager in the mid 1980s, Jim Capfer; SRV’s guitar tech from 1987, Zack Berry and more.
As Groenen puts it in his listing: “For collectors and fans of Stevie Ray Vaughan this is truly a holy grail item and a once in a lifetime chance to own a piece of musical history.”
Visit Reverb to read the full listing.
It’s the latest rare amp find we've seen this year. Back in July, it was revealed in a Guitar World exclusive that John Lennon's first-ever Vox amp had been found, painted black, on an auction site.
