Fender Deluxe VM Guitar Combo Amplifier (40 Watts)

[muzicmaken]

I've been trying to find more reviews and nfo on this amp. Anyone have it and is it a good investment: playing live, etc... How's it sound compared to other Fender combo amps?

THanks for the help

Ken

 

[ADK Teleman]

IMO these amps are absolute tone monsters! I love mine and use it every chance I get. Some folks don't like them because of the digital verb/chorus and tremolo but I think that they sound fantastic. If you get a chance try one out. You will not believe the amazing sounds you can get from them! Plus they are loud mine holds it's own on any stage mic'd or not mic'd plenty of power!

 

[muzicmaken]

Thanks Teleman....I've been thinking of getting that or the 65 deluxe reverb reissue

Not a lot of love for these amps as I can't find hardly any reviews other than Utube and the sound quality on a lot of the vids are not good. I might grab one up, they may not make them for long....

 

[jonkay1]

The Deluxe VM 40 is a real sleeper. Not sure why, it should be Fenders' amp of the year. This amp sounds fantastic. It's the best amp I've bought in decades. It is indeed a tone monster. Imagine having a DRRI, with 40 watts instead of 22 watts. It will give you everything you need and then some.

 

[Michaell]

I've been trying to find more reviews and nfo on this amp. Anyone have it and is it a good investment: playing live, etc... How's it sound compared to other Fender combo amps?

THanks for the help

Ken

Was going to ask the same question!

Played one the other day and loved it. Any owners of this amp care to comment? I'm concerned about durability!

 

[Gringo13]

I had a VM and a DRRI. I liked the DRRI better because I could get the all-tube overdrive, whereas the VM has some solid state components and is mostly preamp overdrive. I'm also a fan of tube rectifiers, so maybe that played into it. I used both amps for for different things and loved the tone of both.

The DRRI is much more "mod-friendly", where the VM is harder to mess with. I had a Weber ceramic speaker in the DRRI and could have put pretty much any aftermarket speaker in it. The VM has very little room and any replacement speaker will have to be very shallow, leaving only a couple (seriously) to choose from. Also, most amp-techs aren't very familiar with it.

Don't get me wrong, the VM sounds really good and I think it's a highly underrated amp. I would have never needed a DRRI, but a friend was selling it for a ridiculously low price. It wasn't like I was GASing for a better amp or wanting to upgrade from the VM. The onboard effects worked fine for me and the drive channel is definitely better than Fender's typical drive channel crap. Like I said, I continued to use both, but I just liked the DRRI more.

With all that said, however, I recently sold both of them and now soley use the Bassman LTD. Once I plugged into a good tweed amp, the Blackface days were over for me.

 

[jonkay1]

The VM is an all tube amp. That is, the preamp section and output section are tube driven, like the DRRI. The solid state segment of the amp has only to do with the onboard effects. It has digital reverb, which actually sounds very good. It has delay, which sounds acceptable, but not as good as say, a Boss DD-5. It has chorusing, and I have no idea why that was included. I own the VM40 and the DRRI, and I like both amps, but I favor the VM. The sound of twin 6L6s' vs. 6V6s'.

 

[Michaell]

thanks !

 

[Piotr]

The VM is an all tube amp. That is, the preamp section and output section are tube driven, like the DRRI.

AFAIK, this is not quite accurate. Clean channel has a solid-state preamp. But who cares, to be honest, if it sounds good

 

[jonkay1]

Yes, the amp sounds great, but I am feeling a little peeved. Fender advertises this as a real tube amp with digital effects. When someone stated that the amp was a hybrid tube/solid state, I didn't believe it. You really have to dig through Fenders' fine print to find it, but sure enough, it is indeed a hybrid. I find this odd, because it has preamp tubes and output tubes. Hybrids usually have one or the other, but not both.

 

[Gringo13]

Jonkay... it is, indeed, a hybrid amp. The clean channel has a solid state preamp and the drive channel has tube preamp. It is also a solid state rectifier. Personally, I like the dynamics of all tube, but the VM is still a fine amp. "All tube", though, it is not.

 

[jonkay1]

Isn't a solid state rectifier used in every Fender Twin ever made? A lot of guys would replace them with a tube rectifier because they wanted something called "sag" in the sound of the amp.

 

[Gringo13]

No... the late 50s Twin came with TWO rec tubes, but I'm not sure how much sag the amp was known for. Personally, I like the sag that some rec's produce more than the tightness from a solid state rec.

 

[vonasemj]

Isn't the the VM Deluxe similar to the SCXD but with more watts and a bigger package? I see the Deluxe doesn't have the 16 different voicings on channel 2 like a SCXD, but I'm guessing the channel 1's are similar, and channel 2 on the Deluxe is similar to channel 6 on the SCXD. If it is, I would guess that it would sound wonderful and you should be able to get the cranked sound of a DRRI at a much lower volume since it has a master volume.

 

[DGTJunior]

Reviving this old thread! I have this amp and want to know if which of the two 12AX7s is the pre amp gain valve? I want to try other valves to see how the tone changes, as I had the Bandmaster head version of this amp before and it sounded better through the gain channel. I have tried hooking the combo amp through the same speaker cab I used with the Bandmaster head, to see if it sounds the same as that old head but it doesn't. Any one have any ideas?