Cool Amp Find Vol. 4 – Fender Deluxe Reverb Electric Blue

Fender-Blue-Deluxe-smallThe Fender Deluxe Reverb is hardly rare, and there are literally thousands out there: Vintage, new, Blackface, and Silverface. You can spend $750 for a nice used Blackface reissue, or $2000+ for a pre-CBS (1965) vintage unit. Even in the “bad era” of CBS, the circuit remained largely unchanged. So if you must have the Real Thing, a 60’s Silverface is essentially the same.

We pickup up this particular model in trade. It’s circa 2008, but was pretty much new-in-box, wrapped in plastic. The Electric Blue model differs from a garden-variety reissue by virtue of the blue tolex, a premium set of matched Groove Tubes, a limited edition name plate, and a British-made Celestion Blue speaker.

This particular Cool Amp Find is more about my ignorance and prejudice about the Fender Blackface sound than it is about the rarity or greatness of the Fender Deluxe.

I’ve dabbled in early Fenders — Pro Reverb for example — both true Silverface and Blackface. While I have not owned a Twin, I’ve had plenty of contact with them. I was always hit with the same impression: Too hard, too stiff, and too loud. Given that Fender was making amplifiers that “worked” prior to modern PA systems, there was no environment where I ever got into the sweet spot of these amplifiers. A Pro Reverb on “6” is crazy, a Twin on six is fatal.

It turns out that my problem was not Blackface, it was that I was using the wrong amplifier.

I have now learned what countless other guitar players have already figured out: The Blackface Deluxe Reverb is probably one of the most perfect guitar amps ever. Loud enough on stage to match the drummer, enough headroom to handle pedals, but supple enough to get natural tube amp grind. Plus it’s easy to carry, and there is no shortage of parts, mods and tweaks.

While I’ve not experienced a non-Celestion Deluxe, I like the warm early breakup and strong low end of the Celestion blue. By nature I’m a constant tweaker, but we’ve had a lot of gigs lately and all I’ve had time to do is drop in a Mullard GZ-34 rectifier and a longer speaker cable so I could use my Radial JDX box for the PA. I’m toying with the idea of a Mojo Pine Deluxe cabinet to cut a little weight and give it a little warmer vibe.

But overall I love it, and I feel silly that it took me this long to discover the DR. It works well with single coils and humbuckers, and it makes perfect sense that backlines everywhere are littered with the Fender Deluxe. It’s now my #1 gig amp, and unless I’m outdoors, I don’t need anything bigger.

Given the great tone and portability of the Fender Deluxe, whether you purchase new or used, it’s killer value. If you don’t need channel switching, built in effects (other than Reverb or Vibrato) or modeling, I can’t imagine anything better in this price range. And if you really want hand-wired splendor, you could probably purchase a used Deluxe and have someone do a turret board conversion for less than a new boutique amp.

Sometimes in the chase for ultimate tone, we ignore simple solutions that are right under our nose. The Fender Deluxe is simultaneously mundane and also just what I’ve been looking for.

Here is a demo video of a G&L guitar, using our Fender Deluxe Reverb. The player is Berklee instructor Scott Tarulli. There are no effects other than light compression and reverb. The gain tones are the Deluxe Reverb on the normal channel cranked up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJFtFlAbdn4