Re: new vs early 60's vibrolux
Can't tell you anything about the older vibrolux reverbs, but I own the current Custom Vibrolux reverb model.
It's basically a modded brownface vibroverb ri. The brown VV ri was one of fender's original series of reissues, and was discontinued after a fairly short time. Bruce Zinky, then head of Fender's Custom Amp shop and responsible for the Vibro King and tonemaster amps, took the VVri circuit and made a few mods. Firstly he made reverb and tremolo shared across both channels, and changed the trem circuit. Zinky also removed the negative feeback loop to give the amp a rawer feel and reduce clean headroom, and also replaced the speakers with eminence blue alnico copies (now replaced by jensen 910rs). It was then renamed the 'custon' vibrolux reverb (CVR).
I seem to remember that you're interested in a decent amount of clean headroom. The CVR was designed to be an ideal small club blues amp, that overdrives fairly early. I've had a negative feedback loop added to mine and made switchable, which smooths the tone out and increases headroom. With the mod switched in, I'd say clean headroom is slightly more than a Hot Rod Deluxe. The difference is the intrinsic tone of the CVR sits more prominently in the mix than an HRD.
