ive had screen grid resistors burn out on hand wired point to point fenders (princeton reverb II and a bassman 135). Both nice amps and gigging workhorses. I also used to have a hot rod which was fine - although i did do a couple things to make it more reliable for the same reasons but in terms of reliability theres no issues that any other amp do not suffer from. Amps of all builds and types have things break down fromn time to time. The reasons you hear about ppl complaining that their HRDs have broken down is because there a just so many of these amps around. Its simple a numbers game. Also searching on the fender forum is not gonna get a lot of ppl complaining that their marshall has broken down or that their rivera has gone awol so its really a waste of time. Sure the HR amps use pcb construction....but so do mesa/boogie! Yes they have cheap jack sockets....but they are cheap great sounding amps that are easy to fix/mod/replace parts etc.
My onlt two honest criticisms of the HR series of fenders (and i have owned and gigged an HRD as well as a BJR) is that the stock speakers are pretty lame and cant handle nice clear treble tones and definitely flab out in the bass end....but any cheap speaker will do that. With a speaker upgrade any of this series of amps is a serious gigging professional musicians rig. My other criticism is the cabinets which are prone to rattle as opposed to the lovely sexy heavy finger jointed pine cabinets of the really expensive amps from fender or even the chunky ply cabinets from some other manufacturers. However....any amp with the sort of cabs that you find in the Hr series will do the same. A heavy finger jointed pine cab will prolly add up to 500 bucks at retail level to the cost of an amp.
The guy has 1000 aussie to spend....hes not looking for the best sexiest amp in the world...hes after a workhorse for gigging. For 800 aussie he can get aused HRDLX and spend maybe 150 aussie on a Lorantz speaker (wicked sounding top quality australian built speakers) and have some spare change for brand new tubes and have a great sounding pro level amp.
Sure there are any number of amps out there...but for something that sounds good and fits the budget there is nothing better. 2 channels plus boost and spring reverb as well as any number of websited offering information on tweaking the amp to taste. These amps cant be beat. The only amps in the price range that can compare are the peavey classic 30 or the Laney VC30...both really nice also but they dont really fit his description quite as well. The other one too look at would be a DSL40 combo but the clean sound has nothing to compare withe the fender. FWIW I once plugged into a stock HRD amp when sitting in with a band in a live music night club and the engineer was pissing his pants at the guitar sound - and this guy knows what hes talking about...hes tour manager for peter green as well as Lulo Reinhardt and has been liver mixing bands since the early 80s. Now the guitar tone nerd inside me prefers some more expensive and sexy amps, but its a good example of what works for a live setting. So yeah there are a lot of ppl out there who have strong opinions on these amps, but thats cos these things have becomne pretty well the industry standard these days.
For 1000 aussie its really a pretty simple choice.
They're a great deal in the used market and they are know for their clean channel. I have no idea how plentiful they are there though.
