ImmortalSix
John Mayer's Mankini
Well, after about a month's time searching for my perfect amp, playing between 20 and 30 amplifiers, logging some of my notes here, I have finally acquired my new amp!
I did a trade with a bro from TGP: my Blackheart head, cab, and attenuator + a few bucks for this DeVille. Great guy, fair trade, clean transaction (we drove from opposite ends of the state to make the trade in a parking lot, and we were both very glad to see that the other was a nice decent dude, no surprises, equipment as described.)
It's a Fender Hot Rod DeVille 212, a 60 watt, all tube 2x6L6, 3x12AX7, 2x12" combo amp with 2 channel switching and some pretty legit reverb, if you're not familiar with them. It was Made in the U.S.A. and has a gold "50 Years of Excellence" badge which would lead me to believe it's a 1996 (my Strat is a '96 and bears the same badge on the back of the headstock). Kind of cool that my Strat and my new amp are both from '96.
I am very glad to report that the tone criteria listed in my "Help I6 Find a new AMP!" thread have all been met.
The clean channel on the amp is so bassy and full and clear and warm that it really defies further description. If you have only heard about, but never been in the same room with "the Fender cleans" we all talk about, do yourself a favor and make it a point to play one. It feels and sounds unlike anything you've heard before. On my first experimentation, it sounded kind of "impossible" to my brain, that it could be so loud without being harsh, trebly, or vibrating into a million pieces. Love this.
The drive channel is, in my opinion, kind of a mountain-valley-mountain situation:
With very,very little gain, a setting I describe as "clean sparkle," it sounds good. I'm talking about a basically clean setting that has a touch of bristle or sparkle, like what you hear in accent parts on soft rock songs.
Everything between "clean sparkle" and high gain: meh. No bass, and the note definition is flubby. The drive channel, overall sounds fuzzy. Not fizzy, but fuzzy. Kind of like it doesn't know if it wants to be voiced old-school or new-school, and it just kinda gave up on picking one or the other.
High gain: back to sounding more authoritative. Gets tight again near the top of the gain knob, would be great for violin-like fusion stuff, or bridge pickup drop-D riffage in your alt / metal band. I was fairly surprised about how decent it was in the high gain department. Those 12AX7's are definitely earning their keep.
The drive channel, disappointingly, lacks the "holy ****" bass of the clean channel. What I found, though, is that the clean channel, when hit with a pedal like my Monte Allums modded Boss DS-1, gains all the drive of the pedal, and still retains the full, tight, bassy warmth of the clean channel. It's a truly remarkable "best of both worlds" situation.
To my ear, my Monte Allums "Rectifier Mod" DS-1 into the clean channel sounds (no, not like a Mesa Rectifier,) an awful lot like a Marshall JCM 800. I wasn't listening in and hoping it would sound like that either. I just heard something that I played, and it sounded just like Tom Morello's early 90's Rage Against the Machine tone, which is famously JCM 800. That's a good thing --- because as I said, the drive channel on the DeVille leaves a good bit to be desired.
More to come in next post.
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pcorn:
