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No, Fender never made tubes. That's a complicated process requiring a lot of special machinery. Currently there are as far as I know the following manufacturers:
Reflektor, Russia (EH, Sovtek, Tung Sol, others) owned by Mike Mathews (EH)
SED (Svetlana), St. Petersburg
JJ (Slovakia)
EI (Serbia) - producing again, though limited
Shugang and an unknown number of other Chinese factories
Western Electric, USA - only a handful of unbelievably expensive Hi Fi tubes (300, etc).
Emission Labs in the Czech Republic - again, hi -end hi fi tubes.
Any others?
Check Justin's site, troubleshooting rubrik, for the volume loss. I have a vague memory this is one of the common ailments of these amps. Muddiness, too, though there are easy ways to combat this (small change to the tone stack, different speakers). The amps put out a lot of booming bass that has to be controlled.
Is it 1 channel or 2? It's "sorta 2 channel." The drive "channel" kicks in an extra gain stage, which is V2a. (I'm doing this from memory). Both "channels" go through V2b. "more drive" ups the value of the cathode bypass. I'd have to look at the schematic to say for sure. So really it's a one-channel amp, with a switchable additional gain stage (also does a few other things) and a switchable boost on the additional stage.
For maximum clean headroom, follow the instructions on Justin's site under "Helpful Hints & Tips." You might think about the mid mod (adds a jumper to the midrange control, reduces boominess) and the reverb knob (removes a highpass filter which makes for harsh reverb). Both are easy, quick, reversible mods. I did them both, and put a switch in to move the reverb back and forth. I also replaced the master volume (25K linear) with a 250K audio pot - a higher value would have been better, but these are non-standard pots in a funky cage, and I bought the highest audio-value replacement pot from Fender. Made the drive channel somewhat useful, before, I avoided it like the plague.
Sorry Johnny, but although this is a far more modern amp than I like, I don't really consider it high-gain like a Soldano or Boogie. The clean channel is quite useful, and it responds well to a good tube in V1.
Having said that, since I built the 5e3, the Deville just sounds lifeless, so I don't use it much anymore. I'm hanging on to it though, as long as I have it. I'm thinking it might be a good platform for one of the new boss/fender pedals. I'll be picking up a FDR-1 one of these days to see how it sounds.
steven
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