And by "you" I mean guitarists. Those of you that don't play may think a guitarist would be a good source for accurate answers about music and gear. Nope. In many areas you will find that they all simply repeat the same misinformation they have always heard themselves, but with added authority. However, the music companies manufacturing their products must know what's what, right? Wrong again. In particular, let's look at Fender in today's example: a vintage (or vintage style) amp.
This is what everyone and their mother would tell you is a Fender tweed amp. You could ask 500 people what this is and all 500 will say, "a Fender tweed". Fender will also tell you it is a tweed amp. It isn't, because that isn't tweed. I don't mean it's synthetic. I mean it literally isn't tweed. That's TWILL. This isn't knit picking. Tweed is a specific fabric and it is not on this or any Fender amp. The people who will say, "It's the same thing- who cares?" are probably the same who say they don't care if they use the word literally when they mean figuratively. I can guarantee you that they would, however, throw a fit if while they had their amp recovered the craftsperson ran out of twill halfway through and finished the rest of the amp with tweed.
This isn't a great sin on the part of Joe/Josephine Guitarist. It is easy to understand the mistake. How often does a person, specifically a young guitarist, encounter tweed or twill- especially today? Back in the '50s (Leo) Fender labelled things with words he thought he knew on more than one occasion and we are stuck with them today. Someone should have stepped up and pointed out these errors, but they probably didn't want to correct the boss and perhaps in the case of the amp fabric it was someone in sales and marketing who described these as tweed covered. If so, there are mistakes we know are Leo's fault that we'll address soon enough...
