Fender 68 custom pro reverb

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philthis

New member
This is the best thing Fender has done in a wile for a club player. It actually has good tone. It's not original 68 good, but it's good tone at a reasonable volume and not so loud and boomy as the originals are. It's easier to control.
the speaker is ok.......I'd experiment with a Celestian gold or a 65 creamback.
you know what would be interesting is running this amp with a 4x10 cab full of Celestian creamback.
I'd send it to Jen's Cruz at Kruse Kustom amps and let him mod the output making it playable at like 5 watts, then 20 Watts, then full watt.


It plays like a fun gigging amp
 
I was curious about this amp. I know it is silly to compare it to an original Pro Rev, but it seems to be a distilled version of it. Great power level & weight. I bet it sounds good with pedals, too.
 
As you know the originals have lots of harmonics so if you think of a wah pedal and you think of all the upper part of that wah spectrum? To me that's kind of what I think of when I think of the harmonics of the original amps it just has more top end and harmonics in the tone like getting that extra part of your wah. Whereas the new one has a lot of mid-range it's still very articulate and it has a beautiful punchy midrange but it is a little bit more compressed so you will not have that ultra top or ultra bottom end and that might have something to do with the transformer as well as the hand wired which we all know is vastly superior but this amp isn't bad it's very articulate and playing with a strat I got great tones in fact several people came in and said what's that amp so it sounds really good for a modern-day cheap Fender amp I think the real ones they make that are handwired or what 4000 bucks something like that but wow who's going to take a $4,000 amp out gigging every night unless you have more dollars than cents right
 
fender can make a fantastic amp, look at the 40w and 80w tweed twin amps. they sound amazing and they better for that price.
 
I think my issue is that they keep recycling names. This amp would probably be a lot bigger, but the first thing I read about is 'don't expect it to sound like an actual 68 Pro, because there are huge differences'. Just call it something new...it will be OK.
 
Fender made great amps in the 60s. So great that to build one today would cost them a lot to produce. The old ones are hand wired. There are parts that would cost a lot to produce today. It would be time, and labor intensive. Even companies like Tone King that produce modern day replicas charge a lot to make them.
THe other problem is.....there are a lot of those old Fender vintage amps and you can pick them up for cheaper then the company can build one brand new. They have awesome tone but they are loud and boomy being made for rooms or dance halls that lacked a P.A. back in the day. They are also heavy and sometimes cumbersome to haul around.
The new version sounds pretty good, is cheaper to buy, and can be modded to sound even better. Not better then an original but still pretty good.
 
i recently got a '66 pro reverb and it isnt boomy at all. i dont think the new pro is much different than an old one volume wise. a speaker swap will make a huge difference in volume. if you put a gold in the new '68, itll get noticeably louder than with the stock speaker. my old one has one original jensen and one square magnet replacement and its not overly loud for a 40w 2x12 amp
 
i dont know how accurate they are either in general and there are some obvious changes. as far as the old ones, there is no mids knob on a pro. but volume 6, treble 6, bass 3 is what i usually start with if i can have that amount of volume on stage. which is not always the case so volume 3, treble 5, bass 4 is a great, full, clean sound.
 
It's good tone, not black face tone but still pretty good. It's 40 watts. So it's still got plenty of clean headroom but at volume 3 when the power tubes finally open up it's more manageable db wise because it's also got the input 2 feature which cuts the db volume down as well. That means easier practice, writing, and rehearsal db levels but also the ability to play clean with a loud drummer.
 
philthis said:
It's good tone, not black face tone but still pretty good. It's 40 watts. So it's still got plenty of clean headroom but at volume 3 when the power tubes finally open up it's more manageable db wise because it's also got the input 2 feature which cuts the db volume down as well. That means easier practice, writing, and rehearsal db levels but also the ability to play clean with a loud drummer.
Click to expand...

How would you compare it to an ideal blackface tone?
 
philthis said:
It's good tone, not black face tone but still pretty good. It's 40 watts. So it's still got plenty of clean headroom but at volume 3 when the power tubes finally open up it's more manageable db wise because it's also got the input 2 feature which cuts the db volume down as well. That means easier practice, writing, and rehearsal db levels but also the ability to play clean with a loud drummer.
Click to expand...

I think of BF tone more as a neighborhood than a specific place. My Bassman is a different beast than a Super, Twin, or Deluxe, but they still have a commonality to them, tonewise.
 
Mincer said:
How would you compare it to an ideal blackface tone?
Click to expand...
If you look at the modern cheap fenders like a blues Jr, a DeVille, it's more refined. If you look at the fender 65 reissues it's more dynamic and a better tone.
if you look at a true black face they have harmonics and they are super responsive. This thing is about 85 percent there tone wise and about 85 percent response wise. It only has a single 12 and it's ok but not a stand out speaker. If I could get a real pro from 65 to say 70 without a master volume I'd buy it to record with but I'd never gig it.
This thing is easy to fit in your car, it's a single 12 so you could add an extension or get a conversion kit from like.....mojo tone and turn it into a head and then a 2x12 cab or like a 4x10 cab. At that point it's super easy to haul. It's my favorite 40 watt Fender clean outside of a vintage. Not sure of the inside build quality though. They make other amps that cost significantly more but their not significantly better than this. I think a tone king amp is better but not significantly better. Maybe 20 percent. Part of it's good tone I'm guessing lies in it's simplicity. It's worth a try if you happen apon one when your out and about. It's also got more midrange then a twin so it cuts through a mix easier but it doesn't have that nasty spikey top end everyone hates.
 
Good to know. I haven't had a chance to try it around here, but wattage and weight-wise it is about the ideal Fender.
 
Mincer said:
Good to know. I haven't had a chance to try it around here, but wattage and weight-wise it is about the ideal Fender.
Click to expand...

I agree, for a bar amp with near boutique tone and fairy cheap price for that type of tone it's a good value. I'd swap the speaker myself for a gold or 65 creamback.
seriously you could send it to Kruse Kustom amps and have him create a volume switch so you could cut that power to 20 or 5 watts. Look him up. Gear Joneser put me on to him.
 
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