The secrets of getting that Fender Deluxe Reverb sound

[bird_droppings]

When looking to buy my first real amp, I first fell in love with the Fender Deluxe Reverb. Mostly I play clean, and in trying every amp in the local Guitar Center, that amp really stood out.

But.

I pretty much suck as a guitar player (although with lots of practice, I'm starting to suck in more interesting ways), so I'm largely confined to the bedroom for now. What I wanted in an amp was one that would let me experience tube goodness especially that area where the blues gets played, which is generally right on the line between clean and dirty.

So, my guitar teacher pointed out that the Deluxe Reverb (while a beautiful and important amp) was kind of useless for what I specifically wanted, since with no master volume, you can't get it to distort at all at bedroom levels without pedals, and if I ever chose to play out with friends, the DRRI is only a 20 watt amp, which means that to be heard, I could no longer play clean. What he said was that the Deluxe Reverb is largely a one-trick pony, although it does its one trick exceptionally well.

He suggested that there's only really one amp that can "do it all", and it's the Mark V. Then I ran into a working musician friend who basically told me to quit fooling around and get a Mesa Mark amp (although he prefers the Mark IV to the Mark V).

So, to make a long story short, I got one. And I love it.

But, I have been trying to get that elusive Fender sound out of Channel 1. And since I don't have one here at the house, I'm going entirely from memory, which is not that reliable really. I've been able to get a variety of great clean tones, but haven't really felt like I've nailed what I liked about the DRRI quite yet.

So, yesterday I took my amp down to my lesson (he asked to see it). He's owned a couple of Mesa's over the years, so he knows his way around Boogies. And he told me something interesting about the amp that I haven't been seeing anywhere. He said that on the clean channel, the center of the midrange is not at 12 o'clock, but is instead at 9:00 o'clock. Once you set the mids above that, you actually move into a mild overdrive which he demonstrated.

So, I'm not sure I've got the perfect settings to get that Deluxe Reverb sound, but keeping the mids down to towards the 9:00 o'clock position seems to get me closer.

This leaves me with a couple of questions. What do the experts say about the mid setting on Channel 1? Does it really act like an overdrive above 9 o'clock? The manual doesn't really say this, although I'm thinking it's true from my little experiments (at least at bedroom listening levels).

Next, I'm sure there are those of you out there that have both a Deluxe Reverb and a Mark V. My understanding is that the Boogie Mark I started life as a Fender Champ, so the Fender heritage is in there somewhere. The Fat setting on Channel 1 is supposed to be a blackface circuit, so I assume the Deluxe Reverb sound should be achievable. So, for those that can put them side-by-side, how do you get the best Deluxe Reverb sound out of your Mark V?

 

[screamingdaisy]

I can't help you specifically with teh Deluxe Reverb as I'm not a user of one, but I can give you a couple of tidbits of info...

1) A large part of the sound of any amp is the speaker, and the Deluxe Reverb comes with Jensens, which have a vastly different voice than the British speakers most use the Mark V with (I'm assuming you got the combo)? So, long story short you're not going to nail the sound exactly... but you should be able to achieve something you're happy with.

2) What he says about the mid knob is true. The treble knob also acts like a secondary gain control.

3) The Deluxe Reverb is 22w with a tube rectifier. Thus you'll get better results running your Mark V on either the 45w or 10w modes with the tube rectifier on.

4) Fenders have a naturally scooped midrange, so don't be afraid of turning your mid knob right down if you're trying to approximate that sound.

5) Deluxe Reverbs were available in both Blackface and Tweed eras.

 

[bird_droppings]

screamingdaisy:

All interesting info.

I knew that the speaker was liable to be an issue, although I doubt I'll get around to changing out the one I've got. I have the Mesa Widebody 1x12 cab which has the Black Shadow C90 speaker in it.

As you say, turning down the mids really helps getting the Fender sound on Channel 1. It's pretty sensitive to the mids. In fact I'm always blown away by just how much of a different sound you can get on the Mark V from just a very subtle knob change.

Isn't the DRRI an attempt to copy specifically the Blackface version?

And, I believe that the Fat mode is an attempt to copy the Blackface amps too, although not necessarily the Deluxe Reverb specifically.

 

[eudaimonia02912]

I don't try to nail the Deluxe Reverb sound, but when I want to get awesome blues tones, here's what I do:

Strat --> germanium fuzz pedal with just a touch of fuzz --> lightly overdriven amp (e.g., fat or tweed mode with the gain up), or crunch mode on channel 2 with the gain down.

I then can go from very clean to quite overdriven by controlling the volume knob on the guitar.

 

[screamingdaisy]

Isn't the DRRI an attempt to copy specifically the Blackface version?

And, I believe that the Fat mode is an attempt to copy the Blackface amps too, although not necessarily the Deluxe Reverb specifically.

Yes, the DRRI is a blackface.

Fat mode is based on the old Mark I clean and the Mark I evolved from a Blackface Fender preamp circuit. The original Boogie was a Princeton rather than a Champ, but from what I understand most early Fenders shared a similar preamp layout with the power amp, power supply, speakers and options (reverb/vibrato) being the difference from model to model.

 

[bird_droppings]

The original Boogie was a Princeton rather than a Champ...

D'oh. I knew that.

It's interesting just how much color all of the amps have in clean. You'd think that all "clean" channels would begin to sound alike as the equipment improved, like high-fidelity stereos.

But no.

They all have their own sound.

 

[theroan]

Because the Deluxe reverb has 6V6's, I would say use variac mode to give that softer attack. If you were to AB them, I think clean mode would be more accurate. I would keep the gain down, use the presence and treble to get that spank.

 

[Don]

5) Deluxe Reverbs were available in both Blackface and Tweed eras.

Deluxe Reverbs were available in blackface and silverface form. The tweed Deluxe was a completely different amplifier and did not have reverb.