Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

its cool they are offering that, makes sense since the originals are so sought after. dont love the speaker choice but it makes sense from a marketing stand point and probably sounds ok
 
Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

newking70 said:
just get a silverface, and blackface it.
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One of my favorite amps is exactly that. It's a 74 non master silverface Pro Reverb that was rewired to 65 specs. The dual 6L6 212 Pro Reverb is my favorite Fender amp. Seymour's too....he has a few blackface Pro Reverbs.

I'll never understand why Fender has reissued every blackface model except the Pro Reverb. They made a Pro Tube Series Pro, but never a reissue.
 
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Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

:eyecrazy:
Cool reissue but for the average Joe a used drri and a speaker swap will also do the trick? It's the same circuit. Layout and component choice make some difference, but how much?
Still from a serviceability pov, yes this is great! Sounds like maybe they made a little nicer cab too, that's always good. I'm sure the drri gets pretty average wood and are thrown together quickly.
They should do it for the Princeton too.

Also, I'm reading "modified ab763" circuitry. Wonder what's different?
 
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Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

FuseG4 said:
:eyecrazy:

Also, I'm reading "modified ab763" circuitry. Wonder what's different?
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Reverb and trem on both channels?

For roughly $2k on the street they make get some business back from the clone builders.
 
Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

I miss my FSR (Sweetwater) Deluxe Reissue. That was such a sweet little amp. Would have been even better in a P2P.

I think that I'd have to roll with the Friedman Buxom Betty in the $2K+ range. It's supposedly the same tone as the clean channel of the new BE50... and based on my short time with that gem... It's one of the best cleans I've ever heard. I'm going to have Dave mod the clean channel of my 2015 BE100 to be like that tone. But I'd still love to have a Betty as a pedal platform.

Anyways... I loves me some Deluxe goodness, but yeah... I'll take the Betty.
 
Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

I'm not impressed, especially by the crazy price tag. If you ever played a Louis Electric Deltone, you'd hardly give a second look at the 64 Deluxe. It's great that Fender handwires one now so people who spent $5000 on a beat up relic can spend another $2500 trying to sound like a drunken John Mayer playing on a porch up in the mountains, but it's really not that interesting.
 
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Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

It's been a while since I've asked a noob question, but what's the advantage to hand wiring? Easier modding? Mojo?
 
Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

Chistopher said:
It's been a while since I've asked a noob question, but what's the advantage to hand wiring? Easier modding? Mojo?
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It means that they aren't manufactured by precise machinery. Imagine a vat of molten solder, and passing over it are PCB boards with all kinds of components dropped into the little holes pre-drilled into the PCB. The bottom of the PCB touches the surface of the molten solder, and bam! you have a soldered amp motherboard. Handwired usually is done with higher quality components, often relying more on attachment to the chassis rather than a board; or if they are wired to a board, it looks very different from a machine manufactured board. Most people believe handwired is the most reliable, but the critics also make a good point in their main argument that machines can precisely manufacture and therefore are more consistent. In my experience, there is a definite quality difference in handwired amps simply because they're made intentionally to be better than machine made amps. Same thing with guitar pickups. People swear by handwound pickups, but as it pertains to pickups, I'm not sold on the idea.
 
Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

Chistopher said:
It's been a while since I've asked a noob question, but what's the advantage to hand wiring? Easier modding? Mojo?
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As far as the populated board (board all the resistors/caps reside on), it means it's far easier to assemble, mod, change values, repair.

...and magic smoke. :naughty:

Another consideration is the typical pot (volume, tone, etc) found in handwired amps has "flying leads" and therefore the connection is sturdier/safer from damage than PCB-mounted pots.
 
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Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

Yup in many cases handwired means they did a more accurate repro, for instance AB763 spec is 1/2W resistors unless noted, DRRI is 1/4W. This may make small differences in the noise floor. The Supersonic 22 (and I think the DRRi) had the reverb send/return cable on the noisy side of the chassis with the power transformer, on a handwired job the reverb coming out the correct side can cut noise in the reverb circuit. So there might be some pretty noticeable benefits to handwired if they did it right,
 
Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

Chistopher said:
It's been a while since I've asked a noob question, but what's the advantage to hand wiring? Easier modding? Mojo?
Click to expand...

SavageRiffer said:
It means that they aren't manufactured by precise machinery. Imagine a vat of molten solder, and passing over it are PCB boards with all kinds of components dropped into the little holes pre-drilled into the PCB. The bottom of the PCB touches the surface of the molten solder, and bam! you have a soldered amp motherboard. Handwired usually is done with higher quality components, often relying more on attachment to the chassis rather than a board; or if they are wired to a board, it looks very different from a machine manufactured board. Most people believe handwired is the most reliable, but the critics also make a good point in their main argument that machines can precisely manufacture and therefore are more consistent. In my experience, there is a definite quality difference in handwired amps simply because they're made intentionally to be better than machine made amps. Same thing with guitar pickups. People swear by handwound pickups, but as it pertains to pickups, I'm not sold on the idea.
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Not necessarily. You have to be really careful as "hand-wired" has becomes somewhat attached to a sense of "quality" in the mainstream. This is not true in the slightest. I bought a $3000 Fender Vibro-King - supposedly their Cadillac amp. "Hand wired" and all that marketing speak. Imagine my surprise when my power transformer went and was experiencing all kinds of other issues and when I took it to my local trusted tech I found out that all the transformers are Chinese made and the caps and resistors are the cheap bottom of the parts barrel stuff they put in their Hot Rod series amps. Sure it was hand wired in that it was assembled by hand by someone in the Fender factory, however they're still using all the same parts as the rest of their amps. So there's absolutely NO correlation between hand wired and quality.

The reason hand wired as become synonymous with quality is that the old amps from the 50's and 60's were hand wired. Since the old amps are better then it must be those pesky PCB's that are to blame, right? Wrong. Companies like Mesa have been using PCB construction since the get go and they are known as high quality products. It's all comes down to design and component selection.

Using equal components there would be zero difference in tone and quality between a PCB based Deluxe Reverb and a hand wired Deluxe Reverb. This is all clever marketing by Fender to cash in on ignorance/nostalgia to push into a market currently dominated by boutique and home builders.

I also don't get the "easy to service" argument either. If an amp is built properly in the first place then it shouldn't need servicing beyond occasional tubes and a rebias for decades to come.
 
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Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

Powdered Toast Man said:
I also don't get the "easy to service" argument either.
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Whether replacing a fried resistor or cap (or of course trying different values/modding), it's much easier to replace components on PTP than PCB.
 
Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

LLL said:
Whether replacing a fried resistor or cap (or of course trying different values/modding), it's much easier to replace components on PTP than PCB.
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See the rest of my argument. I'm not an amp tech so serviceability is a whole lot of not my problem.

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk
 
Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

Good post, PTM. I think we've gotten used to the fact that boutique clones picked up where vintage amps left off, in terms of component quality.

Now, we need to take into account that mass production style companies like Fender and VHT are going to use handwired as a buzzword, then use cheap components to cut cost. It probably is best to be cautious about ovrrpaying for a Fender PTP amp, when there's much better boutique options.

So far, the most impressive "American style" amp company is Electroplex. Made in Fullerton, and The Rolling Stones love them. I fell in love with them a few years ago at the LA Amp Show.

https://electroplex.com
 
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Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

Undoubtedly the big boys have used "handwired" as a buzzword and as an excuse to tack an extra $2K on the amp price.

Regardless I've worked on both and PTP is superior to PCB for the reasons I've mentioned.

Just gotta roll yer own if you don't want to be some amp manufacturer's bee-yotch.

Speaking of, did anybody check out that Weber amp kit link?
 
Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

LLL said:
Undoubtedly the big boys have used "handwired" as a buzzword and as an excuse to tack an extra $2K on the amp price.

Regardless I've worked on both and PTP is superior to PCB for the reasons I've mentioned.

Just gotta roll yer own if you don't want to be some amp manufacturer's bee-yotch.

Speaking of, did anybody check out that Weber amp kit link?
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i checked it out before buying both the 22W fender combos I bought, wondering if a weber kit was the answer, but I'm at the "reading about how to build tube amps" stage still and progression out of it is slow going but someday might plunge on one of their other kits.

For many I'm sure it's the same: I couldn't resist the instant gratification of buying the already-built Fender-badged yes-I-know-it's-overpriced PCB amp. Plus I believe their cabs used to be thinner plywood than a DRRI cabinet, not sure if this is still the case,

But tube amps and the science behind them interest me so much, I seriously do hope to put a kit together some day!
 
Re: Finally, Fender gives us a handwired Deluxe Reverb!

Gearjoneser said:
So far, the most impressive "American style" amp company is Electroplex. Made in Fullerton, and The Rolling Stones love them. I fell in love with them a few years ago at the LA Amp Show.

https://electroplex.com
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Thank you, I hadn't heard of them and now want to see what they're about. I live in North OC and like to "buy local." Luckily, that means I have pretty good choices as-is.
 
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