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Vintage threads from the first ten years

Re: '65 Deluxe Reverb Reissue

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11/30/2005 9:24 PM

Re: '65 Deluxe Reverb Reissue

The distortion on the amp isn't the best, but with the stock tubes (awful), stock bias (cold), and that awful speaker, it's really sounding its worst out of the box.

I have a Laney 2x12 cab loaded with some HH Audio speakers I've never encountered elsewhere. They sound suprisingly good in general, and I really like them with this particular amp. I've just been running the combo through the external cab, but I think I'll try putting one of the HH's into the Fender cabinet to see how it sounds with the open back.

Oddly enough, another speaker I've always really liked is the much maligned Celestion G12-M70. They seem to have a respnse cuve that dips in just the right place to avoid harshness (IMHO).

12/1/2005 4:02 PM

Fender puzzles me. So much of great guitar distortion has it's roots in Fender amps, yet Fender has yet to make a tube amp with great distortion. Their SS distortion circuits have been good to great since the 80's. They know what good distortion and based on the success of their non-modeling, modeling amp, they can get it.

The Pro Tube amps are the amps Fender SHOULD have been making 20 years ago. By now, they should be far more refined.

I remember when the Blues Deluxe came out. The distortion was wimpy and the reverb thin. Fender KNOWS what good reverb is. They wrote the darned book on tube amp reverb.

The Hot Rods were in response to the criticisms of the BD's. They improved the distortion, added an extension speaker jack, and a bias adjust and thickened the reverb up slightly. But the distortion still lacked character.

Their expensive Tonemaster had decent distortion, but was basically a Fender amp with a post PI phase inverter that allowed the PI to be added to the distortion generating circuitry. The strangeness of the two effects loops puzzled me.

Fender has listened to complaints about biasing amps cold and they have kicked things up some around the time that the Super Reverb RI came out.

They've still got a way to go with tube amp distortion. The Pro Tube amps don't offer much that every other tube amp company has been doing since Boogie got into the game.

12/2/2005 11:39 AM

Hijack - speakers.. 15's?

Interesting comments on the speakers, esp "N" vs "K" jensen models.
Has anyone heard the 15" models to offer an opinion on them? The price is great on the C15K, and I like the power handling (so I can focus on playing, not keeping the speaker from dying). I love my original P15N, but I keep blowing it.. (amp is a 1x15 tweed Pro)

any thoughts, opinions, rants welcome.

12/2/2005 1:30 PM

If the current P15N is anything like yours, the C15k should meet your needs. The P15N may be slightly more efficient in the 2k range, but the current P15k and C15k are pretty close going by the graphs, the biggest difference being the much higher power handling of the C15k.

My experiences with the reissue Jensens have been up and down. After unhappy results with the C12N and the Mod 50 and Mod 70, I try a C12K and it's a nice speaker. Just for fun I bought a couple 6 1/2" mods for a pair of "omnidirectional" speakers I have...hoping to use them with guitar.

The speakers are way too bright for my intended use, but when tried with my bass rig (for 500Hz and above) they are absolutely great! Bright and smooth, yielding horn tweeter like high end, only cleaner and more smoothly. I may have to rethink my bass rig needs.

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