5e3 Education

[jbear]

Hey All,
I have an offer for my Custom Vibrolux Reverb. The amp being offered is a put-together, PTP, TomaTone...here's the info. I got:

"It says "TomaTone" made by Bryan toma in peachtree city. You won't find much info on him because he's primarily just an amp repair tech.
When you run 6l6 its basically just a beefier louder sounding tweed deluxe, the tone is the same. Its got fender deluxe trannies and a 102db speaker so its pretty much a tweed deluxe that can handle gig volume better and a little less sag.
The cab and chassis are from an old hot rod deluxe but it has a new solid birch speaker baffle, turret board, all new mullard mustard caps, new tube sockets and cloth wiring. Nothing fancy just meant to be a BA sounding work horse amp."

The amp takes 6V6's or 6L6's
I have no 5e3 experience...anyone care to give an opinion?
Thanks folks!

 

[jon the art guy]

Re: 5e3 Education

Those are some fundamental rock n roll tones. The 5e3 is the "Tweed" circuit Deluxe from good ole Fender. It's very stripped down and, for what it was supposed to do...didn't do a very good job.
Here's a random vid from youtube.

There isn't any reverb on the amp, or at least there shouldn't be. There also isn't going to be any fx loop...
although all that stuff has been heartily worked out and modded by amp builders across the world for decades. It's honestly hard to tell what particular brand of awesome you're going to get with this amp.

You better not be looking for modern tones though. These just...really don't do them.

What I mean to say is that a lot of the grit on these amps comes from the power section, as the preamp section is pretty small and easygoing. If you try to jam br00tz tonez into the frontend via a pedal, it's not going to come out the speaker sounding quite...right, I guess.

...but you don't want to do that. Just savor the old-school grit these provide. I wish I had one of these.

As far as the higher Db speaker, that's just going to make it louder. A lot of volume actually comes from the speaker build. As much as the wattage, sometimes. You can get a 3db bump in volume from a high efficiency speaker, or a 3db bump in going from a 5 watt to a 20 watt tube amp.

power tubes: 6l6s put out a lot more clean, some people say cold, volume. 6v6s are lower output and very warm and will distort quicker on the volume knob. You can do either in the amp.

Fender transformers is all right. (shrug). Depends on what the output transformer is as to whether the builder made a very Deluxe-y Deluxe or something more akin to a Princeton.

Whatevs. Look man, if you want to play old rock, really old rock, blues or country...this is the grandpa that made everything else happen. If you win, I look forward to an update from you!
Good luck, man.

 

[jbear]

Re: 5e3 Education

Thank you! That helps.
I found this and the owner says that pretty close
http://www.tweeddeluxe.com/
His has a little more bottom...he sent this to give an example (not his actual amp):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X1AOlkabwo&feature=youtu.be

My style with this amp would be a Robben Ford thing...light OD with a Dumble pedal and that's about it.

 

[jbear]

Re: 5e3 Education

Speaker is a Texas Heat as it stands.

 

[jon the art guy]

Re: 5e3 Education

Speaker is a Texas Heat as it stands.

Here's a vid comparing a very common speaker v. the Texas Heat. Sounds like your amps is going to be a nice, mellow machine. The Texas Heat seems to roll those spiky tops off very well and adds a lot of girth to the tone.

Remember. It's the girth the ladies like.

Again, I wish you luck man. It's the sort of amp you keep for as long as possible.

 

[Powdered Toast Man]

Re: 5e3 Education

Never heard of TumaTone.

The cab and chassis are from an old hot rod deluxe but it has a new solid birch speaker baffle, turret board, all new mullard mustard caps, new tube sockets and cloth wiring. Nothing fancy just meant to be a BA sounding work horse amp."

Your CVR is worth roughly $800 (give or take) on the used market. You can get a quality 5E3 kit or build with a solid pine lacquered tweed cabinet for under $1000. An HRD cab is MDF fiberboard.

So this is a mongrel amp made from random components built by an "amp tech" who has no known reputation as an amp builder. In terms of resale value, you stand to lose significant value on this trade. 5E3 kit builds that are much more authentic with a quality cab have lower resale value to begin with. Imagine what you'd get for this mongrel if you wanted to sell it. Not to mention that the 5E3 is a three knob amp. An HRD chassis has like 7 knobs on it. What are the rest, just holes or dummy knobs?

I terms of versatility, it's going to be less so than your CVR. I own both a CVR and a 5E3 and I would not take this deal if it were me.

That's my $0.02.

 

[jbear]

Re: 5e3 Education

Those...are some very salient points and greatly appreciated.
My original thought was to sell this and get a Ceriatone Lunchbox (Dumble-mini clone). I may stick to that plan and just be patient. On the other hand...I am digging this CVR a lot more than I had anticipated, so...
It's really tempting when you hear a nice sounding amp...sometimes I forget that I've got some already.

 

[jon the art guy]

Re: 5e3 Education

Never heard of TumaTone.



Your CVR is worth roughly $800 (give or take) on the used market. You can get a quality 5E3 kit or build with a solid pine lacquered tweed cabinet for under $1000. An HRD cab is MDF fiberboard.

So this is a mongrel amp made from random components built by an "amp tech" who has no known reputation as an amp builder. In terms of resale value, you stand to lose significant value on this trade. 5E3 kit builds that are much more authentic with a quality cab have lower resale value to begin with. Imagine what you'd get for this mongrel if you wanted to sell it. Not to mention that the 5E3 is a three knob amp. An HRD chassis has like 7 knobs on it. What are the rest, just holes or dummy knobs?

I terms of versatility, it's going to be less so than your CVR. I own both a CVR and a 5E3 and I would not take this deal if it were me.

That's my $0.02.

ooh...yea. excellent points.
Ya know, I didn't even ask about what the price point was. I was assuming you were coming in low, as it's obviously a parts-bin special. The parts in a 5e3 are few in number and if he gutted a HRD he could probably get most of what he needed to build it, so I was assuming he was selling low too. Might be way off-base. I hope he's not asking like...more that $750 max.

 

[jbear]

Re: 5e3 Education

The more I think about it...I've wanted a Ceriatone for a long time, and rather than chasing amp after amp...I'll just cool out and let it happen. Meanwhile...Ima play this CVR a while. It gets dogged, but prepared as I was to turn it around...it's sweet.

 

[Powdered Toast Man]

Re: 5e3 Education

I hope he's not asking like...more that $750 max.

I'd hope he's not asking more than $350-$400 max.

I just did a quick search of 5E3 completed listings on eBay. Used clones are going for between $500-$650. If you sit and watch musician message board classifieds they pop up for similar prices.

Search for Custom Vibrolux Reverb and they're going for $700-$800 used.

 

[jon the art guy]

Re: 5e3 Education

I wasn't too far off then. I've seen them go for under $1000 when scratch-built by a local guy who's got some amps in a few famous hands (lil dawg amps).

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: 5e3 Education

I wasn't too far off then. I've seen them go for under $1000 when scratch-built by a local guy who's got some amps in a few famous hands (lil dawg amps).

I own a Li'l Dawg ... Jim's no local guy! He's a highly respected amp builder w a sterling reputation. One of his tweed Deluxes is next on my Hit List, but just the head version, and that alone will run $1k with upgrades. (New, not used) I got my Champ clone from him last year ... ran about $600 new.

 

[jon the art guy]

Re: 5e3 Education

I own a Li'l Dawg ... Jim's no local guy! He's a highly respected amp builder w a sterling reputation. One of his tweed Deluxes is next on my Hit List, but just the head version, and that alone will run $1k with upgrades. (New, not used) I got my Champ clone from him last year ... ran about $600 new.

He's like 20 miles from me. sold me an eminence speaker. Perfectly awesome gent and a font of knowledge

I also think of him as local because he works (at least when I bought from him) out of his suburban garage. I totally figured it was just a CL hobbyist who was sick of his Jensen speaker, so when he opened up the garage and had tweed cabs hanging from the rafters drying (he was rollin' his own at that point) and a couple chassis up on holders getting worked on, I started asking questions...and he answered dutifully. Awesome guy.

He was telling me about the Deluxe of his that he had to tweak the cab on so it would fit in an RV stow box. It was going to a blues guy who was all tour and was looking for the perfect travel rig. Total craftsman and artisan.

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