Mid 90's Blues deluxe

[Mentaltossflycoon]

I figure y'all like to hear about this stuff so here's my happy place this week.

I've been saying for years that I was going to re-tube and replace the plastic input jacks on it, one of which was smashed but both worked. Mid 90s fender with original valves... it was over due and in recent months started dropping volume here and there. It's mostly a pedal testing rig and rehearsal amp for my jam space since I prefer the bass times. This meant very low priority to fix it but I think there will be more music for me soon when my son finally gets his jabs so it deserved attention. Also, the tele I've talked about on here was begging for a big boy amp.

Since I'm now all up in these pedal projects (I blame bugg and fig directly) and have a trinity triptop kit I've been sitting on for 6 months, it needed to just get done. It got kicked down the queue too many times to wait through my procrastination. Now I'm thankful that I took it to a pro because it needed the tube set (jj) and 6 new caps. It's a different instrument now. Props to the kind folks Amphead in SE Portland. The vintage vibe Charlie Christian neck pickup on the tele sounds fantastic through the clean channel.

Also, according to my tech, this is one of the early ones so it slightly differs from the BDRI that are available now. More caps in the circuit giving it a more defined low end. I should probably get the schematics... I've always far preferred it to my rhodes player's hot rod deluxe.

Looking forward to hearing actual guitarists/ my rhodes buddy though it soon.

 

[ICTRock]

A friend brought me their red knob twin to figure out why the reverb wasn't working and why it was losing volume. Original tubes. I told him he picked a hell of a time to need that much glass but antique electronic had them in stock and hadn't raised prices yet on JJs.

 

[Mentaltossflycoon]

Hopefully he lifted it onto the bench for you. I'm definitely kicking myself for not doing this a few years ago. Was not cheap. 100% worth it though.

 

[Passinwind]

Cool! I worked in the Fender factory in OR briefly when those amps were just coming out. One of these days I may have to cop one or an HRD to try out some mods I always thought would be cool. A local tech here stripped an HRD for a guy I used to gig with and installed turret board circuitry, just because. Sounded good to me but I've never plugged a guitar into it myself.

 

[Mentaltossflycoon]

Interesting, seems like a lot of effort to gussy up an hrd like that. To each their own of course but what if those self roasting hara kiri pcbs are where the tone comes from?

 

[Passinwind]

Interesting, seems like a lot of effort to gussy up an hrd like that. To each their own if course but what if those self roasting hara kiri pcbs are where the tone comes from?

Agreed, I wouldn't go to the trouble and even more so the expense, especially considering the other amps he owns. But the tech had always wanted to try doing one that way and gave my friend a pretty good Bro Deal. Personally, I've always thought that turning the boost circuit into "less gain" just might be more useful than the stock config, but as you say, each to his own.

 

[HamishR]

Psionic Audio has a series of videos on Youtube about how to look after these amps. There are some common issues, which if addressed can help the amp to last a lot longer.

FWIW you don't always have to replace all the tubes at once. You can go through the preamp swapping out tubes one by one and you might be surprised at how much better you can get it sounding by just by swapping one or two tubes around. Biasing the amp properly can improve it dramatically too, and you don't need to go overboard with it either.

Interesting - it sounds like the early Blues amps may have had beefier filtering than later amps. The thing I don't like about the Hotrods is the loud but indistinct low end. Some tightening up there couldn't hurt for sure. Fender tend to use fairly cheap filter caps so using some decent F+Ts and maybe even uprating them a bit couldn't hurt. The biggest thing is the speaker - Try a Celestion G12H Anniversary or similar and it will sound like a new amp. And if you're replacing the input jacks you can use Switchcraft J12s wired to the board and they'll last forever.

I had a Blues Deluxe ages ago and was surprised at how good it sounded if I just turned up the clean channel. That was with a Celestion installed though. The amp turned up loud sounded a lot better than the dirt channel!