MasterKtulu
New member
First off, I liked my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe III stock, it’s a good cheap tube amp (Not perfect by far, but good none the less). I bought it solely for its clean channel, to plug my multiple pedals through.
The first thing I changed, was to replace the stock Celestion G12P-80 (Seventy 80) speaker. The stock speaker was OK at lower volumes and had those great “Fender shimmering highs” but the mids were too scooped and the bass was a bit too tight in the clean channel and farted at higher volumes. So I bought an Eminence 150 Watt Texas Heat Speaker. The speaker keeps the top end bite that I wanted but sounds fuller and can take any amount of bass and volume I want without farting.
The second thing I did was replace all the stock tubes. With my dual Pearly Gates loaded guitar, the clean channel start to breakup with the volume only at 3 (And some might really like that but I want as much headroom as possible out of my amp). And the Drive channel is only acceptable to me with the gain at 4 or lower and the More Drive is utterly useless to me. So after a bit of research, I decided on a pair of matched JJ 6L6-GC Power Tubes that I biased at a colder than usual 70mV for more headroom. Then instead of three 12AX7 preamp tubes, I placed a JJ ECC81 (12AT7) in V1 to drop the gain in the front end for a later breakup, a JJ ECC832 (12DW7) in V2 to drop the gain the drive channel and a regular JJ ECC83-S (12AX7) in V3 (Phase inverter).
Result: The volume of the amp is a bit lower, but still very loud. The amp sounds clearer and has a lot more headroom than before. The clean channel with the volume at 6 is still super clean and only starts to slightly breakup at 7 now. The drive channel has about half the gain than before, sounds a lot better and has a more blues feel to it now. Even the more drive is usable now, and sounds like a proper boosted high-gain amp now.
These mods aren’t for everybody, but for more headroom and less gain, the 170$ (Canadian) I spent on the speaker and the tubes was a great investment.
The first thing I changed, was to replace the stock Celestion G12P-80 (Seventy 80) speaker. The stock speaker was OK at lower volumes and had those great “Fender shimmering highs” but the mids were too scooped and the bass was a bit too tight in the clean channel and farted at higher volumes. So I bought an Eminence 150 Watt Texas Heat Speaker. The speaker keeps the top end bite that I wanted but sounds fuller and can take any amount of bass and volume I want without farting.
The second thing I did was replace all the stock tubes. With my dual Pearly Gates loaded guitar, the clean channel start to breakup with the volume only at 3 (And some might really like that but I want as much headroom as possible out of my amp). And the Drive channel is only acceptable to me with the gain at 4 or lower and the More Drive is utterly useless to me. So after a bit of research, I decided on a pair of matched JJ 6L6-GC Power Tubes that I biased at a colder than usual 70mV for more headroom. Then instead of three 12AX7 preamp tubes, I placed a JJ ECC81 (12AT7) in V1 to drop the gain in the front end for a later breakup, a JJ ECC832 (12DW7) in V2 to drop the gain the drive channel and a regular JJ ECC83-S (12AX7) in V3 (Phase inverter).
Result: The volume of the amp is a bit lower, but still very loud. The amp sounds clearer and has a lot more headroom than before. The clean channel with the volume at 6 is still super clean and only starts to slightly breakup at 7 now. The drive channel has about half the gain than before, sounds a lot better and has a more blues feel to it now. Even the more drive is usable now, and sounds like a proper boosted high-gain amp now.
These mods aren’t for everybody, but for more headroom and less gain, the 170$ (Canadian) I spent on the speaker and the tubes was a great investment.
