Another Fender Frontman 25r mod

Another modification that you can do is a bit trickier and its meant for someone who has a bit more experience in soldering and who has more requirements in terms of sound.

That mod will clean up the sound of this amp and makes it less noisy.
It makes the clean channel really crisp and sparkly.
The drive channel will be much more clear and less muddy.

In theory its simple: Change the 5 pre-amp chips on the circuit board to a low-noise, hi-fidelity OPA2134 chips.

In reality its a bit trickier.

So if you're brave enough lets start.

I assume you've already acquired 5 of the aforementioned chips.

Now its time to separate the chassis from the rest of the amp.
Undo the speaker connection and remove 4 black screws on the top of the amp that are holding the chassis.
Gently take the chassis out from the cabinet.
Now you've got the chassis out and can see all the guts inside.
You need to get underneath the circuit board. But theres some wires from the circuit board to the power socket, switch and transformer.
You've got two options really:
1) Undo all the connections to get the circuit board out.
2) Commence the modification with all the connections intact.

I went with the option nr.2 because first of all the wires can't be easily unplugged and second, you need to put them back as they were and theres quite a lot of them.
When the wires are intact you can still access the necessary parts. It just requires a bit of acrobatic soldering :)

Lets carry on, shall we ?

Pull out all the control knobs on the front panel, remove the nuts and washers holding them in place. Remove that little screw holding the aux input in place.       
Underneath the chassis remove the two screws that are holding the heat sink in in place.
Now you can start working on the circuit board. Undo the 2 wires coming from reverb tank (remember which way they were)
Remove the screws holding the circuit board in place and very gently pull the circuit board so all the pot shafts are coming out from their mounting holes.
You might have to fiddle around with it for a while, but be patient and extremely careful.
Eventually you should be able to lift the circuit board up and see the other side of it.

If you've managed to come this far, then congratulations ! Hardest part is actually over.

Now you can de-solder the old chips and solder in the new ones.
Make sure you solder them in right way around. Theres a little mark on the chips and a little marking on the circuit board. If you pay attention you cant go wrong.

After you've done your soldering, assemble it all back together.

Plug it in and prepare to be amazed !
 
 Thanks to David Moore from www.wholenote.com

Fender Frontman 25r amp modding

This amp is the bullocks !
And perfect if you wanna play psychobilly.

It's pretty basic. You'll get 2 footswitchable channels, 3 band eq, headphone jack, aux in and spring reverb.

It has a very nice crisp clean sound.
Drive channel might be a bit on a heavy side for some but not bad if you like a classic hard-rock distortion.
If you'll plug in your favorite overdrive or distortion pedal into the clean channel, it'll be guaranteed not to offend your ears.
This amp doesn't mind pedals.

I really like the reverb in this little baby.
Under the hood there's a real spring reverb tank and it's quite sensitive which means you can get that really spooky 50's horror movie graveyard sound.

Description says that its for home practicing but
with minor modding you'll get a small but vicious amp that doesn't let you down at the band practice and/or when gigging.

So lets get down to it.

Essential thing that you want to do, is change the speaker.
I chose Eminence Ragin' Cajun' (10" 75w)

First of all it'll really brings out that nice Fender clean sound
And second, it'll let you crank up the amp without any speaker distortion or farting.

To remove the old speaker, first undo the speaker connectors at the back of the amp. Then undo two black screws on the sides of the amp. These are holding the grill so be careful not to let the grill fall out when you do that.
When removing the old speaker from the grill, first caution you must take is to remove as much of the green sticky stuff around the bolts.
That's there to prevent the nuts from unscrewing themselves due to vibration. If you don't do that you'll risk to destroy the counter thread which holds the bolt in place
and the result is loosely turning bolt with stuck nut on it i.e. very bad and nearly hopeless. (If that happens, you'll need a junior hack saw)

After you've removed the old speaker, its time to drop in the new one. Note the speaker connector position, anywhere between 9 and 12 o'clock is fine.
Attach the grill back to amp and connect the cables (black is - and white is +)

And you're ready to rock !