Fender Supersonic: Thoughts?

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Peaj

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I've always thought this looked like an interesting amp. I'm particularly interested in the 60W head. Seems like it's sort of Deluxe Reverb-inspired but with built in overdrive, higher wattage, and it's a head, so I can slap it onto my cab.

I've been always on the fence about hopping off from my DSL and moving into something more Fender-ish, and this seems like a good affordable option. Any thoughts?
 
I have some experience with one. The cleans were good, toggle between bassman and vibrolux. I thought both to be, well Fendery.
The good channel, gain, is decent. It was a respectable gain and feel. Good for hard rock. Maybe describe it as smooth.
Warning! Here comes my bias.
If you want a high gain Fender get a Prosonic if you can. It will out match a Supersonic any day of the week in the gain department. More mean, more snarl. I have owned one for near a quarter century.
The Supersonic is respectable though,wins the traditional Fender clean award. I heard there were some issues with the early ones but don't know first hand. ( net knowledge ).
Hope this kind of helps.
 
I have an older Supersonic head, the cleans were too "ice-picky" to the point that the Vibrolux channel was unusable. I do like the dirt, and have used the dirt channel on recordings, sounds great. I ended up experimenting with different tubes until I found a particular set of tubes that darkened the cleans a bit.
 
I haven't owned one but I've played through one. My local shop had a brand new SS60 that had been hanging around their sales floor for over a year. One day I was in there and the sales clerk asked me to plug into it and tell him what I thought. I played it and found the cleans ice-picky, brittle, and unpleasant. The drive was ok but it's that dual gain stage drive and it can be tricky to dial in. I told him as much and he nodded and said, "yeah that sounds about right."

I will say that I have also plugged into the SS22 (or is it 20?) and I thought that amp sounded much better than the 60. I don't think the 60 is very popular because I've seen them pop up used from time to time at prices equal to or cheaper than a HR Deluxe or Deville.
 
Have you played around with the DSL clean channel? The Nashville Clean setting is based on a Fender tone stack. Being a long time Fender guy I find this setting close enough for horseshoes. There are also more EQ options for the "Fender" tone on the DSL.
 
The SS60 clean to me more bassmany but and reminds me more of the custom 68 series normal channels that they tried to make bassman like but end up their own thing I guess. and it's different than on the 22 which is newer
The drive channel sounds less boxy and middy than the 22. Both amps are loud.

The ss22 I've actually owned and the chan channel is very very deluxe reverb vibrato channely but solid state rectified and so tighter at high volumes and the onset of breakup is little sudden
the fat boost is very useable and gives more girth and volume
The drive channel is very versatile and it's like the first channel with a cascaded gain stage and a little bass cut and mid bump, and the range of gain is wild and having two gain controls let's you dial in sizzle with gain one and compression with gain 2. When the power tubes kick in it can get a warm singing but just slightly muddy boxy thing but overall very good I think for like blues rock and hard rock or modern country or jazz fusion, can maybe do some metal with good cab. Maybe not the voicing I'd pick for lots of metal, least not the 22. It has the low end limitations of a deluxe reverb ri, basically.

Speaker swap and eq in the loop make it super versatile tho
The dialed back the strength of the reverb anticipating you'd be playing live with gain at least some of the time

Check out the 22 it's a fun amp I think.
 
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Peaj said:
I've always thought this looked like an interesting amp. I'm particularly interested in the 60W head. Seems like it's sort of Deluxe Reverb-inspired but with built in overdrive, higher wattage, and it's a head, so I can slap it onto my cab.

I've been always on the fence about hopping off from my DSL and moving into something more Fender-ish, and this seems like a good affordable option. Any thoughts?
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Had one not a bad amp. Cleans on my PRS Archon are better and the OD side is whole other ball game. Might want to take a look around for a used Archon IMO.
the SS 60 head is cool but the OD side was not my flavor and build quality was just ok and not in the same universe as the PRS. Will be a major tonal difference from your DSL in particular on the dirt side. I would take a little PRS MT 15 over the SS both on the crunch side and is another world for cleans. I had a couple Prosonics and bought the SS thinking it was a modern Prosonic but it wasn't. They are really cool amps for some if you want more vintage style OD tones and don't need really pristine cleans and like a little hair in the cleans . Make great Blues or Blues rock amps in particular.
 
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