Fender Deluxe Reverb Amp??

[Bob Bartoli]

any one using one of the "65" Deluxe Reverb issues,)2 6V6 tubes) if so , what is your opion on it?? I have tried one of the new Fender Super Champ XD's (15 watts) sounds like 30 watts , through a JBL 15 D 130 and it sounds great, just wondering if a deluxe reverb would cut the mustard!!! Thanks Bob

[Derrell Stephens]

22 strong watts ... always sound great to me!

[Chris LeDrew]

I have an '07 DRRI, and it's holding up pretty well for a newer Fender. It has a nice breakup at around 4-5, and sounds great for 6-string guitar. It breaks up too early with pedal steel, for my tastes, although it would be fine for low volume gigs. It's only 22 watts, so it's unrealistic to expect it to provide a big lot of clean headroom.

In my opinion, the Deluxe Reverb is the perfect club amp for standard guitar, bar none. You can max the amp's volume and ride it on your guitar's volume knob, adjusting gain as you go. You can also walk to the gig with your guitar case in one hand, amp in the other...well, a block or two anyway.

[Joe A. Camacho]

I play through my '68 Deluxe Reverb all of the time, they sound great!

[Eric Philippsen]

Speaking for myself, for guitar I find Deluxe Reverbs to be too underpowered for live work. For steel there's no way. No headroom.......for me. I know that many like and use them. Using them in the studio or for something at home they're fine.

[Chris LeDrew]

Using the lower gain input with an EQ might help matters, but on its own I too find the Deluxe a strange bird for steel. Having said that, I am aware that a lot of 60s Lloyd stuff was done with a Deluxe Reverb. Go figure. That stuff sounds great.

[Dave Mudgett]

I used an old one, not a reissue, for quite a while in a folk-rock/Americana band when I first started playing. I used good NOS 6V6 tubes with a high distortion threshold biased kinda' cold and an EV SRO speaker. I thought it sounded good, but I also mic'd the amp, the drummer was very restrained, the audience wasn't loud, and I wanted a slightly less clean sound back then. I still have musical colleagues who honestly prefer that sound, but at this point, I'm only happy with that in a studio or drummerless situation. I guess it depends on what sound you want - I've moved to wanting more clarity at a higher volume than that little Deluxe could give. But there are still situations where it's perfect, to me.

This is being hashed in a different thread, but for the price of a DR reissue, I'd go hunt down a good deal on a 70s silverface DR. There was one on here a while back for something like $700, and I still see them in the $700-800 range periodically. If I needed one, I woulda' grabbed it at that price. The reissues are OK, but not the same to me. The biggest issue is serviceability, to me, but the ones I've played also tended to sound a bit thin. YMMV, but that's my experience.

Of course, a DR or Vibrolux Reverb are, to my tastes, the ultimate club gig amp for 6-string. Unless, of course, you're lucky enough to have a brown Vibroverb.

[Keith DeLong]

It's true about the DRRI's being a bit trebly, one solution is to set the volume at 3, the treble at 5 and the bass at 6. This can vary a little according to the room. I use mine for steel, but if you play more than 3 notes at a time it sounds a bit cluttered. I also play lead and I'd rather have the Fender sound for that than the Peavey Nashville I also own, so I mic the Deluxe and it is usually pretty good as long as the stage volume is reasonably low. Some people, one of them a steel player,liked the sound of it, it's got a little more sparkle for want of a better word than the Peavey, although the Nashville 400 has a nice midrange, and is also great for fiddle.

[Nick Reed]

Here's my old 1964 original. My dad got me this amp back in 1971. I did finally get it re-capped about 2 years ago. Some of the old worn parts the tech replaced have 1963 dates on them. Boy it's been a goodun! It's the amp I usually take to Florida every winter on vacation because of it's size.

Not really the ideal amp for Steel Guitar. I generally gig with either my Webb 614, Peavey N-1000, or my Twin Reverb '65 reissue. I use a Boss RV-3 with a little delay only, and run the amp reverb pretty dry.

Nick

[Jim Sliff]

What Dave said - although it is getting harder to find a serviced SF 70's model for the same price as a reissue.

But to me they are completely different amps - the "reissue" isn't a reissue of the original - it's a similar amp using printed circuit boards, different cabinet construction, different transformers...and different circuitry. It's more of a "tribute" than a "reissue.

[Chris LeDrew]

The more I use my Reissue, the more the tone bugs me. There is a messy top end which sounds harsh to my ear.

I have a '93 Deville 212 at the house now, which has upgraded caps and tubes, and to my ear it sounds lot warmer than the Deluxe.

I'm thinking about getting rid of the DRRI and getting an SF Deluxe instead.

[Chris Gilchrist]

".....and different circuitry. It's more of a "tribute" than a "reissue"."

Just curious, as I haven't directly compared the schematics, but is there something in particular different in the circuitry? I realize it's done with printed circuit boards and modern/inferior components, but I think this is as close to a 'reissue' as a mass-produced Fender comes these days, unlike, say, the Vibrolux.

I've clipped the bright cap and swapped in better tubes, and for the $$$ I think it makes a great lap steel amp.

[Mike Taylor]

Nick...

If you ever need to thin your herd..call me..

Great looking amp!!!

Mike

[Tony Prior]

Bob, for Steel ? Serious head room issues.

For the Telecasters they are pretty nice in a small to moderate room.

I gigged with a tele guy a week or so back who used one and I thought it had a great sound overall , but like I said above , if your question is Steel related, at home you will be fine but on the gig you will be NOT BE PLEASED.

Nice amps but seriously over priced.

I just picked up a Peavey Classic 30, one of the original issues, when I gig only on Guitar this is my amp of choice , hands down the best little Guitar amp out there , my view. My 2x12 HR Deville is sad

Think of it this way , remember the old days, you walked from the car into the gig, Guitar case in one hand, amp in the other ?

Those days are back !

[Jim Pitman]

When it comes to tube amps for steel, in general, I've found that the second no.2 "attenuated" input works much better. A steel guitar pickup puts out about twice as much voltage as a conventional guitar and it overdrives the first stage if plugged into no.1 input. I think that's why Fender has always provided the no. 2 input It's been the same design for about 50 years, by the way.

[Chris LeDrew]

I recently found a great new local amp tech who just did some work on my DRRI. He clipped the bright cap on the vibrato channel, changed out some preamp tubes and the reverb tube for better quality tubes, put in a solid state rectifier, installed a mid control on the back (in the ext. speaker jack). What a difference. I can just dial out the mids for more clarity, and the solid state rectifier really tightens up the bottom end. It actually sounds good with pedal steel now, with no honk and a lush reverb. And when I boost the mids for 6-string, it goes into a Vox-like overdrive. I was about to get rid of this amp; now it's definitely a keeper. The tubes were obviously a big issue. Too bad Fender can't put in some quality tubes in the first place.

[James Mayer]

I have a blond 65' DRRI. It says "40th Anniversery" on the back and has "upgraded speaker and cabinet construction", whatever that means. I tried a boatload of amps and thought this sounded significantly better than the standard DRRI. It was $200 more than the standard, by the way.

[Jim Sliff]

Chris - to start with any duplicate, even using the same parts values, is going to sound different when a PCB layout is used; lead dress makes a huge difference in amp tone (as CBS found out when they screwed up the hand-wired versions of many models in '68/'69). Capacitor types are all different - same values, but as any tube amp tech will tell you one of the techniques used to "massage" the tone of an amp is changing caps - not values, but types and brands.

The you get to the really basic items; first the cabinet, which doesn't have the same resonance as the original being built from different materials. Then there's one that is changeable - the stock speaker is a high-watage Jensen....which is not a Jensen except in name and has a heavier-duty voice coil than ANY of the original speakers. Jensen speakers nowadays are not the same speaker as the original using the same model umber - they are Recoto-designed speakers with Jensen logos and part numbers, as Recoton bought the rights to all things Jensen.

Finally you get to the heart of the difference - transformers. These are the "heart" of the amp and again are not "reissues" of originals, but modern transformers that happen to work - they're close in spec.

The reissues have been discussed to death on the Tele and Fender forums - the consensus being that they are not "bad" amps - just not reissues. But tonally the overall impression is they are much harsher sounding than originals and MANY mods have been developed to get them closer to the Deluxe Reverb sound.

[Clyde Mattocks]

Thanks Jim for a good post. It gets to the nuts and bolts of what my ear tells me on the reissues and
why, no matter how hard I try, I can't dial in the sweetness of an old Fender. There may be only one tiny spot in the whole spectrum that you can live with it, whereas an old one sounded good no matter how it was set. It's not what you can't dial in, it's what you can't dial OUT.

[Jim Pitman]

Chris,

Interesting note about tightneing up the bass response by using a solid state rectifier.
I play a S12. With that low B, lack of solid bass has always been my major concern using tube amps for steel.
Can anyone elese Corroborate this?
I thought it mainly had to do with the frequency response of the output transformer. I've read they drop off at lower frequencies unless considerably oversized.

[Jim Peters]

I used a solid state rectifier in my SF Deluxe. It brought the output to 22 watts, vs around 18 for the tube rectifier. I then put in a higher wattage Jensen, trying for more headroom and low end response, but only using it for 6 string. Rebias is essential when you change rectifier type, also when switching between different rectifier tubes. After 2 or 3 gigs,I changed everything back to stock. Some mods really can make things worse, relative to what you want. "Cleaning up" my SFDR ruined the sweetness for which the amp was designed. It's such a cool amp for guitar! I would never mod my Deluxe for steel, there are just too many better choices you can start with. Others have done it succesfully, I wouldn't. JP

[Chris LeDrew]

Jim, I didn't really mod it for steel, but just wanted a tighter bottom end and a general tonal improvement. It was sounding pretty bad. No bloom or sparkle, just a strange transparency in tone. The mid control is nice because it's more like a Twin control-wise. It's just a fun mod that can be easily reversed, and it does help for dialing in steel tones as well as more British-type overdrive.

I can understand why you wouldn't want or need to mod your SF Deluxe because it is a quality machine. I think the DRRI, however, needs improvements to bring it up to spec. It seems that most standard off-the-floor new Fender tube amps cannot be trusted for reliability on the job. Most if not all owners of newer Fender tube amps that I know have had thier amp give out on them during a gig, usually due to cheap parts. I would love nothing more than to leave my Deluxe stock, if the stock parts were any good. The mods done on my amp will allow me to keep it and make use of it, as opposed to deferring to my SF Twin for everything when it's not really necessary - especially on a small gig that only needs a small amp. The DRRI is now more versatile and better-sounding.

[Raybob Bowman]

If someone (me) were to order enough parts to make a quantity of old style Deluxe Reverbs using plywood cabinets, JJ tubes, Mojo transormers and WeberVST speakers, do you believe there's a market for them at around $1600+ a piece? I know people ask 3K on eBay for real old BF Deluxe Reverbs.

I've rebuilt my 68 Deluxe Reverb replacing most everything on it including the speaker board and I can't think of any amp I ever played through that sounds as good. I currently have the time and money to begin such a project making new Deluxes IF it can turn into a business that can help to pay mortgage payments. I'm ready to try it and use eBay as my marketing device. Is there anyone else around that makes new (old) Fender amps in production?

[Marc Jenkins]

Is there anyone else around that makes new (old) Fender amps in production?

Many, many people. More than that, actually.

[Paul Arntson]

I think it would probably need miking at a good sized venue. Not near as loud as my Nash 1000. DRRI is a wonderful amp for lower volumes, like practice or small venues without a drummer. Light and easy to carry.

Here's how I use mine:
I don't use it like it is a guitar amp. The second (low sensitivity) input is exactly suited to the Fender 400 and the 53 Dual Pro I use. I keep the amp volume on 10 and control the sound with a volume pedal. The amp will juuuust barely distort with everything wide open.

With a Weber Cali speaker installed I keep the amp treble on about 3 - 5 for steel. (Do a search on Kayton Roberts.)

DRRI also does the California twangy tele thing very well when a telecaster is plugged into the HiZ (left of the pair of jacks) input.

If you are comparing to another amp, do the comparison side by side in real time. Otherwise you don't get objective comparison data.

Hope this helps your decision. - Paul