So, I've owned a Fender Dual Showman Reverb for around 3 months now.
It was the subject of my first TDPRI post, and months later, I made the drive to Orange, Texas, with $1000 in hundreds and twenties in my glove box, and picked it up. I was able to crank it to 6 on the master in the parking lot, which was incredible. Needless to say, my ears were ringing all the way home.
Drove it home, parked it in the dining room, and was greeted with the best clean sound I've ever heard. I've played a pristine '65 blackface Fender Twin with original tubes, and that didn't come anywhere close to the incredible sound I had here. The dual 15" speakers really have an awesome crisp bass response and it absolutely smokes my bandmate's JCM800 50-watter. In rehearsals and gigs, it's the best tool for any job. If I need a good surf tone, volume to 7, treble to 7, and reverb to 7. For rock, volume to 10, boost with overdrive pedal. For clean, well, this amp is practically all clean. For high gain, this provides a really awesome grounding effect. My rhythm guitarist loves using it for U2-esque delay fills and piercing high triads in the middle of rhythm sections. It's incredibly easy to diagnose and it'll take anything that you throw at it with ease. I didn't notice a tube redplating for 10 minutes when it was idling and I was talking with the drummer. Put a spare in and it played for another 2 hours without any problems. Finally, while many people say that 100 watts of clean power is way too much for any reasonable application, you don't have to have the master up all the time. I think that it's better to have the option of playing clean at incredible volumes and less of a dirty tone than to be able to get a saturated tube tone everywhere.
Edit: I would like to say that one of my favorite things about it is that its a vintage Fender that I don't feel scared moving around. Its got style points but its not so expensive that if it gets stolen I'm out of 5k. My old Univox UB45 was so finicky that I never wanted to bring it anywhere. My carpeted Carvin X100B was really tacky. Its just an incredibly pretty, solid, and reliable amp that isn't too expensive.
These are my complaints: the head and cab weigh 150 pounds together, so when I leave the cab at home, I need a 4-ohm cabinet at the place, which can be hard to find. The transformers on the amp are very unbalanced, it's like carrying a briefcase with a brick on one side and a book on the other. Finally, treble on 10 will cause uncontrollable feedback and uncontrollable hearing damage.
I've loved having this amp, and I think that any complaints about master volume silverface Fenders are completely unwarranted. This big guy sounds incredible and I've loved owning it for these past few months.
It was the subject of my first TDPRI post, and months later, I made the drive to Orange, Texas, with $1000 in hundreds and twenties in my glove box, and picked it up. I was able to crank it to 6 on the master in the parking lot, which was incredible. Needless to say, my ears were ringing all the way home.
Drove it home, parked it in the dining room, and was greeted with the best clean sound I've ever heard. I've played a pristine '65 blackface Fender Twin with original tubes, and that didn't come anywhere close to the incredible sound I had here. The dual 15" speakers really have an awesome crisp bass response and it absolutely smokes my bandmate's JCM800 50-watter. In rehearsals and gigs, it's the best tool for any job. If I need a good surf tone, volume to 7, treble to 7, and reverb to 7. For rock, volume to 10, boost with overdrive pedal. For clean, well, this amp is practically all clean. For high gain, this provides a really awesome grounding effect. My rhythm guitarist loves using it for U2-esque delay fills and piercing high triads in the middle of rhythm sections. It's incredibly easy to diagnose and it'll take anything that you throw at it with ease. I didn't notice a tube redplating for 10 minutes when it was idling and I was talking with the drummer. Put a spare in and it played for another 2 hours without any problems. Finally, while many people say that 100 watts of clean power is way too much for any reasonable application, you don't have to have the master up all the time. I think that it's better to have the option of playing clean at incredible volumes and less of a dirty tone than to be able to get a saturated tube tone everywhere.
Edit: I would like to say that one of my favorite things about it is that its a vintage Fender that I don't feel scared moving around. Its got style points but its not so expensive that if it gets stolen I'm out of 5k. My old Univox UB45 was so finicky that I never wanted to bring it anywhere. My carpeted Carvin X100B was really tacky. Its just an incredibly pretty, solid, and reliable amp that isn't too expensive.
These are my complaints: the head and cab weigh 150 pounds together, so when I leave the cab at home, I need a 4-ohm cabinet at the place, which can be hard to find. The transformers on the amp are very unbalanced, it's like carrying a briefcase with a brick on one side and a book on the other. Finally, treble on 10 will cause uncontrollable feedback and uncontrollable hearing damage.
I've loved having this amp, and I think that any complaints about master volume silverface Fenders are completely unwarranted. This big guy sounds incredible and I've loved owning it for these past few months.
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