Fender Blues Deluxe ??'s

[Brad]

What the take on this amp? The reason I ask is my buddy just took a nice looking one in trade. I tried one out when they first came out years ago, but it's been so long, I really can't remember much about it. I have not had the opportunity to fire up my buddy's yet. The one I tried was blond or tweed, his is black. Single 12, 40 watts. He may want to get rid of it, but I would appreciate your opinions on this for a blues type amp used w/ teles, strat, 335 and P-90 epuipped axe.

[Bruce Kiely]

Had one, and gigged with it most every weekend for about 1 1/2 years. Used a "parts" Tele (Fender 50s ash body with brass instead of steel saddles, USACG neck, "pickups of the week") through whichever OD I happened to like that week.

Mine was 100% stock. Got it used for a good price. Eventually had to retube. Went with Svetlana, I think.

I found it to be a reliable and good sounding amp. I regret selling it, actually. It wasn't my "dream amp" or anything, but it was fine for gigging, and I grew to like it alot.

Hated the OD channel ..... never used it (thus the OD pedal). Clean sounds were good, though. Voiced more like a tweed than a blackface, to my ears .... but still had plenty of clean headroom.

If you can get one used at a good price (I paid $600 Cdn., which is a little over $400 USD), you'd be getting a good sounding, reliable gigging amp, IMHO.

Cheers, and good luck!
BK

[eryque]

Bruce, are you sure that you thought it was voiced more like a tweed amp? I always thought these sounded like what you'd get if you designed a BF amp in the 1990s. The voice is vintage-ish BF Fender, but a little more hi-fi and less sweet.

I had it's younger, bigger brother, the Hot Rod Deville, and sometimes I regret selling it and going the vintage route. I'm not giving up my BF Pro Reverb, but I've got quite a bit of cash in it right now and the sound is great, but for live applications it ain't three times as great as what I got from my HR Deville. Wish I'd know enough then to get new speakers.

[Jim L]

The Pro Rev and the Deville are definitely different beasts... and you know you can always unload a vintage Pro Reverb for decent $$.

What year is your Pro? Mine's a '73 and I've put $$ into it over the years, but I think it's worth it. Any amp will cost you in repairs over time. I just put in some new Webers, a copper cap, and new Svets, and it sounds great. And it probably isn't any heavier than a Deville. Was your Deville the 4x10?

[eryque]

You're right, they are different beasts. And I do love my amp, but I'm finding that when I play it live the sound ain't that much better than I got with the Deville.

I'm pretty sure the Pro and the Deville weigh about the same. Not so heavy that I hesitate to take it with me somewhere for a gig or jam, but heavy enough that I really don't feel like hauling it into the house at the end of a long night :-)

Mine's a '67, in pretty good shape. Last year I put a pair of Weber alnico speakers in it, new tubes (JJs, I think), and had a great tech go through and fix a couple of persnickety problems. The power tranny went south a few years ago and I had to replace it. I've probably got close to $2K into this amp now, and I durned sure hope it doesn't need anything else soon!

[Bruce Kiely]

I could be way off base here, but yes, to my ears it's voiced more like a tweed than a blackface. I say that because it seems voiced for more mids than a blackface (thus the "tweed" analogy). However, having said that, it had lots of clean headroom, like a blackface. So, it seemed like a "tweed with blackface headroom" to me.

Just my humble opinion ..... not being an amp guru or anything.

Cheers,
BK

[Jim L]

I have to admit, that often in live situations, no one in the corwd will notice the subtle tone differences from amp to amp. And I also understand that a $2k amp often doesn't sound $1500 better than a $500 amp.

Hell, I was really impressed with my $325 Peavey Delta Blues at our gig last weekend!

So you spent the big bucks on the P12N's huh? Again, probably one of those things where there's a difference or some improvement, but you have to wonder if it's worth the $$, huh?

[eryque]

Bruce, I think it's funny that two people can have such different impressions of the same amp. The first time I plugged a telecaster into a Deville I was amazed by the scooped-mid Fendery sound (I'd been playing a LP & a Traynor up until then). I think they only sound mid-rangey if you crank up the mids :-)

Jim, close... I actually got a pair of 12A125-As, which is like a P12Q with an A cone, and I ordered them with a large paper dustcap. The idea was to get smooth breakup and to lose the piercing highs because my rig always sounds too bright to me. At home I usually have the treble around 3 and on stage it's almost never more than 5, so I figure that I've got plenty of room to boost the treble if I need to.

[Jim L]

The old Emis that I replaced in the Pro Reverb were pretty shot. I would play with the treble up around 6 or 7 w/o any icepick. I put in the webers and to it to a practice and couldn't understand where the harshness was coming from. Figured it might be the speakers needing to break in. It was really just a need to lower the treble setting. Now I keep it on 3 or 4. Bright switch always OFF.

[swijak]

The Modern Fender Deluxe/Deville series, along with Peavey's Delta Blues, are good "workhorse" amps for the money.

I gigged with a Blues Deluxe for a number of years and it was very reliable and got a fairly good tone out of it. I play mostly blues with Telecasters and Les Pauls (P90 and otherwise) and the BD served me well for a long time.

I have also gigged with the Deville 2x12 and 4x10 and the Delta Blues 1x15 and 2x10 amps on occasion and found them to be nice as well. As in the previous posts, I didn't care for the O/D channels on any of those amps and the reverb wasn't quite what I'm looking for. These amps can all benefit with new speakers and good tubes.


FWIW my main tube amps are now:

’64 Vibrochamp
’70 Princeton Reverb
’70 Bandmaster Reverb and an assortment of cabinets (I use this amp for Bass as well….)
Vibro King

If I could only have one amp it would be the BF/SF Princeton Reverb.

YMMV…

[Cam]

I had both of mine changed on my BD. They are directly mounted onto a circuit board as are the pots. If the input or pot takes a wack they can be a pain to replace. If the board gets cracked, that is a whole other issue. I had the traditional metal inputs wired to the board instead of putting the sealed plastic inputs direct to the board. Other than that it has been a good amp. I bought it used a few years ago for 400 loonies, sold it to a friend who sold it to a friend and I bought it back last year for 400 loonies. I like this amp.

[KC]

another fan of this amp -- it's no boutique special, but it does what it's supposed to, and mine's given me no trouble in the 9-10 years I've owned it. I put a Jensen RI speaker in it last year and retubed it with JJs and that made a big difference -- though I might put a weber chicago in there instead, if I was doing it again.

like everybody else says, the OD channel is pretty useless, but put a nobels odr in front of it and you've got a whole useful array of sounds on the cheap. you want to look sharply at the price, though -- these are not heirloom amps, and they only cost $600 new. tubes and speaker will run like $125 if you use the cheapo jensen. it would be pretty easy to get buried in one of these. good luck.

[coyotemorgan]

kc,

I put a Chicago in my BD and found it was very bass heavy. This amp already has a big low end. Try a Blue Dog instead. I bought the Alnico and it's a great match.

[pc]

I love mine. Had it since early '94, and it's still completely stock. Well, new tubes of course, but nothing other than GTs like it came with.

It just sounds better every year I have. You can hear it in action (live, miked with a Shure 57) on every MP3 track on my band's website. Teles & Strats, Fulltone FD2 & a little delay.

http://www.jacksgroove.com/music.html

I've even used it on studio dates where heavier stuff was needed. I've run a humbucker guitars into effects processors (for high-gain preamp stuff) then into the Blues Deluxe with no problems.

Definitely a workhorse, but plenty of great tone too.

[Tremo]

Well, I'd say it all depends on the type of "blues" you play. Do you play old school traditional, or blues-rock, or blues-metal (Moore, Trout, etc..), Brit blues, or whatever...

Also, do you plug straight in or do you use a lot of stompers? Do you use high gain?

How big of gigs do you play?

What's more important to you, clean tone or distortion?

I've heard those amps sound pretty good, and I've also heard them sound terrible. Those amps do have reliability issues as well. The input jacks tend to be fragile and are prone to breaking. The stock tubes leave something to be desired, as does the stock speaker. There are also issues with intermittant connections and soldering on the cheezy PCB. A friend has one and his reverb works only about 1/2 the time. They're also a bit of a PITA to repair.

There's a lot of variables to consider.

Personally I don't care for them, but YMMV.

[guit-45]

The Blues Deluxe is an alright amp, too bad it has a cicuit board though. If you get one I suggest never ever ever turning on the OD channel as it sounds tinny, and fake. The clean sound is however decent. And Im sure one could get well acquainted with this amplifier.

[Brad]

I'm going over to my friends studio tomorrow night to give his son a lesson, so I'll fire it up and see what I think. He'll let me take it for a few weeks and get aquainted with it. I'll see if it fit's. I rarley use the distortion channels on amps as I prefer the tone from various o/d's.

It's funny, I never really get along that well with Fender amps, yet I alway's seem to have one or two Fender "style" amps as my main giggers!! Crazy how that works out.

Maybe I should sell everything and get a Vox or Marshall!