New to the forum, and a question about my Deluxe Reverb.

[SASQUATCH]

I am the singer and rythm guitarists (well I play lead on a few songs) in a working blues/soul band. I have a modified 1992 Fender American Standard Telecaster and plug straight into a DRRI. The DRRI was made in 2000, and I got it fairly recently in a trade. It is very clean, and was bone stock except the original owner had replaced the speaker with a Weber Alnico P12N clone.
I sent it to Uncle Alberts Amplifiers in Indianapolis for a checkup, and had a few mods done to it: The amp was checked for any faults (none found), & retubed with EHX preamp, Tung Sol power, and Sovtek rectifier tubes. The amp was rebiased correctly, he converted the unused "ground" switch to a half speed switch for the tremolo, and added a "Class A" switch to the underside of the chassis to allow the amp to either run stock, or run in class a at 12 watts, like a tweed deluxe. I am thinking of having more mods done to it, and having several componets replaced, but everyone seems to recommend Silver Face amps and then redoing/modding those. It seems the consensus is that the SF amps are much more reliable than the DRRI. I am quite happy with the tone I am getting, but I want a very dependable amp.
Am I better off trading my DRRI for a SF Deluxe Reverb and modding it, or will replacing some of the parts in my DRRI increase it's reliability. Sorry this is so long, and thanks for any suggestions or help!
-Brian

[quackerz]

1) Why has the world started to classify cathode-biased as Class-A?

2) Please do not mangle a silver-face amp.

3) Keep modding your DRRI if that's what you're into. You'll destroy the value and integrity of a silver-face Deluxe Reverb.

- Happy owner of an un-modded silver-face Deluxe Reverb

[cacibi]

I don't personally think that a Silverface would necessarily be more reliable than a DRRI. In fact - the DRRI might be more reliable in the long haul, I would just think it would be harder to do some repairs on the PCB than on a hand-wired, eyelet board.

[Bluesbob]

to the forum. Silverface (SF) amps are easier to repair (and modify) than the DRRI because they are wired point to point (PtP) rather than using a printed circuit board (PCB). Individual components like capacitors and resistors can be changed without having to remove PCBs and wires can be followed alot faster than the traces on a PCB. The jacks and pots and such which are soldered directly to the PCBs are also more likely to break loose, hence the reliability issue. That being said, a PCB amp can be as dependable as a PtP amp, it just requires a little more TLC. As far as modding a SFDR - go ahead, just don't try to make it something it can never be, like a high-gain grinder or metal machine. My '73 SFDR has been modified by replacing (and up-grading) the filter and bypass caps, and some of the coupling caps (commonly called a cap job), while some of the unneccessary caps have been removed and other caps and resistors have been changed to different values (called blackfacing, which means bringing the amp back to the original specs of the blackface-era amplifiers). It also has a new Celestion Vintage 30 speaker, which kind of changes the traditional tone of the amp, but I saved the original Oxford and can always change it back. What you shouldn't do to one of these amps is hack it up or fill it full of holes or otherwise destroy the original basis of the amp. If you want to run EL34 power tubes with cascading gain and a solid-state power supply, buy a different amp. By the way, it sounds like your amp tech knows what he's doing, I'd contiue to mod the DRRI.

[Tremo]

I say stay away from the mod-meisters. those guys are bad news.

[jonzer]

I'd just leave it alone and play it.
I thought there was a problem with mine a few weeks ago and started a thread about it. Now I can't replicate the problem as I think it was a bad cable. I've had this thing for five years, unmodded. Bought it used. I can't think of anything that'd be much more reliable.