Being such a big fan of the “regular” Fender ’65 Deluxe Reissue Reverb, I quickly reserved a ’64 Deluxe Hand Wired as soon as I heard they were available. After all, what could be better: Hand wired with high quality components, pine cabinet, and reverb on both channels.
So with much anticipation it arrived early January from Sweetwater, the mega store we can’t help but like. Oddly enough around the same time I also purchased a used ’65 DRRI for the other guitar player in my band. He wanted one because he liked mine so much. In some ways the used DRRI is closer to the ’64 Hand Wired model than my own DR, because mine came from the factory with a Celestion Blue (and blue tolex). The ’64 and ’65 both have the same Jensen C12Q speaker.
The ’64 DHW (Deluxe Hand Wired) is very pretty, the workmanship is great, and the grill cloth has a perfect old-but-not-worn look. The pine cabinet is nice, and the weight is super gig-friendly. I was not about to pull the chassis on a brand new amp, but I’m assuming they did a nice job inside too.
But in the end the ’64 DHW went back to Sweetwater, and my DHW experiment had ended. Why?
What I noticed right away — and so did my other guitar player — is that we don’t like the Jensen C12Q much. It might be authentic but it’s kind of thin sounding, and the breakup is a little raspy and rude. By jumping the output of the amp to various cabinets we quickly learned that we were both happier with the tone of the Blue, or other British voiced speakers. And also that a lot of the early breakup of the amp was the speaker and not the amp. With a different speaker the DHW does have better headroom and will handle pedals well at moderate stage volumes. For pedals it works best plugged into input #2, and I liked the slightly warmer tone of the Normal channel best. Now it’s easy enough to change a speaker, but I just paid $2499 for the amp, and did not feel like dropping up to $200+ on Blue or Warehouse Alnico.
Secondly, the DHW just sounded a little stressed and more hard edged than my Blue DRRI. Now this can be tubes, or a lot of other factors, but DHW sounded as though they maybe tweaked it to break up a little sooner and be a little louder. Almost as if it was biased too hot. Compared to my DRRI, the feel was different regardless of speaker: More urgent sounding, and less of the “give” that I like out of my DRRI.
Now I almost never leave anything alone, but at $2499, I wanted to love the amp as is, and not start tearing into it trying to get it where I wanted it to be. So Sweetwater happily accepted the return, and $65 of UPS later, it’s back home in Indiana. Where it will probably not stay for long.
Moral of the story: Speakers matter immensely. I already knew that, but this was a great reminder of how much of a difference they make. Also, I just like most “British” voiced speakers better even in an “American” amp. And while from a standpoint of tone and maintainability I like non-circuit board amplifiers, that alone is not the key to happiness. I really like my “blue” DRRI despite the fact it has a fragile (to repair or mod) Fender circuit board and pedestrian components. Lastly, no matter how much you love your guitar, the amp is at least 50% of the equation, probably more. Search out amplifiers as zealously as you search out guitars, and respect how much influence they have on your tone.