Vintage Bench Test: 1960s Fender Deluxe Shootout

The history of Fender Deluxe amplifiers can be traced back to the beginning of the company, but by the mid-1960s, they became almost unrecognizable compared to the amplifiers of the Tweed era. Let's take a look at what happened in the first half of the 1960s and compare amplifiers from the era of brown and black panels.

by the time

In 1963, the Deluxe Reverb was launched, and there is almost no similar thing to the first Tweed Deluxe (5A3 in 1948). In the following years, with the gradual development of circuits, appearance, output power and on-board functions, many other luxury models were also released.

The last Tweed Deluxe series was produced in 1961. In the same year, Fender completely changed the Deluxe amplifier. This is the new look of the new decade. The tough brown Tolex covers a larger pine cabinet, and the front panel has a brown control panel with a clear white label.

The round brown "cupcake" control knob replaces the old chicken head, but retains the two channels of Tweed Deluxe. Fender eventually admitted that no one had plugged a microphone into their guitar amplifier, and the new channel names were "normal" and "bright".

Until 5E3 (including 5E3), all Fender Deluxe have undergone cathode bias. The brown Deluxe is the first model with a fixed bias of 6V6. This gives Fender the opportunity to modify the Vibrolux Tweed oscillator circuit and make the 6G3 the first Deluxe with onboard vibrato.

The brown Deluxe also opened a new era for speakers. Ceramic Oxford gradually replaced alnico Jensens, although our test subjects are now equipped with alnico

ruby. Except for the replacement leather handle, the amplifier is close to mint in appearance and is completely original in appearance. There is no guarantee that the amplifier is in a similar real state electronically, so let's look inside.

Apart from a compassionate recovery and some security enhancements, almost no electronic work is done. Most of the original blue Ajax signal capacitors have disappeared, but the SoZo replacement looks important, and the wiring of the cloth cover is almost new.

All electrolytic capacitors are substitutes, except for a resistor on the bias board, all resistors are original carbon composite materials. The Mallory 150s also replaced two tremolo capacitors, luckily the power cord is grounded.

For the 6G3 circuit, Fender has used the post-output transformer negative feedback in Deluxe for the first time since Tweed 5C3. The 5E3 zero-gain cathode phase inverter was abandoned due to the long tail pair type, and its 12AX7 can push the power tube to overdrive.

The bright channel is different from the normal channel in only two components. The latter has a 0.1uF capacitor on a separate tone control instead of 0.2uF. There is also a 0.002uF bypass capacitor across the plate resistance of the first tube of the normal channel, which dumps some high-pitched components to the ground.

The two channels rejoin before the shared second gain stage through two 220k mixer resistors. These effectively separate the two channels and eliminate the volume control interactivity that many players use to move 5E3 to wilder areas. The final adjustments include a more robust GZ34 rectifier tube, which increases the B+1 voltage to a nominal 375v. This, in combination with a fixed bias, increases the power from 15 watts of 5E3 to 20 watts.

With enough clean headroom and volume to adapt to today’s performance environment, coupled with rich onboard spring reverb and vibrato, lightweight portability and sweet speed when pushing, it’s no surprise that many players will use Deluxe Reverb As the ultimate Fender power amplifier.

However, not all black panel luxury reverbs are the same. Our first task is to figure out which model it is. The first version of the deluxe reverb was AA763. Fender then made some minor modifications to increase the net headroom, including reducing the value of the tail resistor from 27k to 22k, and changing the value of one of the board resistors from 100k to 82k.

The reverberation mixing resistance was increased from 4.7M to 3.3M to reduce the dominance of the reverberation level, and the grid braking resistor was reintroduced in 6V6s to control blocking distortion and improve overdrive characteristics. The value of the mid-end capacitor of the tone stack has also been changed.

Finally, the cathode resistance on the driver side of the tremolo valve was increased from 56k to 100k, and the model name was AB763. It is considered the ultimate version of luxurious reverb, which is what we have here.

Around 1967, CBS introduced new silver cosmetics, which further changed the circuit. Many players like the earlier version. It is very common to convert the silverface Deluxe Reverbs to a black panel specification.

There is an'OD' stamp on this Deluxe Reverb tube map, which corresponds to April 1965. The chassis number and the original transformer code are consistent with this, but the power transformer is a modern alternative to TAD.

Fender's standalone reverb was introduced in 1961, and by 1963, the on-board spring reverb was incorporated into the amplifier. The fender just sticks to the established model name and is labeled "Reverb" at the end. The Deluxe Reverb cabinet is wider than the 6G3 cabinet, and the difference between the circuits is so large that it is completely redesigned. But here, we will limit ourselves to explaining the key differences.

The long tail phase inverter and the fixed bias 6V6 power tube pairing are retained, but the 12AT7 phase inverter tube is used instead of the 12AX7. The nominal value of the 6V6s board is 415v, which actually exceeds the recommended maximum of 6V6s Voltage, and Fender added shielding resistance and current limiting resistance.

The vibrato has been completely redesigned, instead of acting on the power tube bias, it is applied to the preamplifier stage of the vibrato channel before the phase converter. Unlike the brown Deluxe single triode tremolo circuit, the black panel design uses both sides of the 12AX7 and optocouplers, which combine the light source and the photoresistor.

The spring reverberation feed is after the sound stack. The 12AT7 is configured as a spring disk driver in parallel, and a single 7025 transistor stage is used for signal recovery before recombining the reverberation and dry sound signals through the reverberation level control and mixer resistance.

The normal and vibrato channels are just similar to some extent. Reverb and tremolo are only applied to the tremolo channel, and there is a 47pF bright cap on the volume control of the tremolo channel. Reverb lowers the signal level, so the vibrato channel also has an additional gain stage to make up for the difference. The effects and extra brightness cause most Deluxe Reverb owners to ignore the normal channels.

All these features are important, but the Deluxe Reverb sound stack has the biggest difference in all sounds. For the reverberant and non-reverberant black panel deluxe version, Fender uses more complex treble/midrange/bass tones-although the midrange is fixed.

When the treble and bass are zero, the frequency response is nominally flat, but when both are set higher, it is often called a "midrange." In fact, once it has gone through the second stage of gain, it is more like a boost in bass and treble.

In terms of appearance, the state of this Deluxe Reverb is not as good as our 6G3 Deluxe, but from an electronic point of view, it is closer to the factory specifications. There is a complete blue Ajax signal capacitor, and only the electrolytic cell is updated. Two 1R resistors have been connected between the 6V6 cathodes to facilitate the bias setting, and the preamplifier board resistors have been changed to keep the noise level low.

Thanks to the factory selector switch on the rear panel, the amplifier has also been safely grounded and powered by British utility power. The Oxford 12K5-6 is probably the original speaker, but the Eminence GA-SC64 here is a suitable modern replacement.

At some point, most of us may have played luxurious reverb or something similar. This cannot be said for the rare brown Deluxe, because it was a stopgap measure made by Fender between 1961 and 1963.

6G3 Deluxe is even disposable against the background of the brown fender. That is

Early use of brown Deluxe

Album and

Is a loyal fan, some people regard these amplifiers as mini

Disguised as a mudguard.

The main reason is that the first tube has a 220k plate load resistor instead of the usual 100k unit, and the cathode shares a 1.5k resistor. This will cause the front end to be very hot, similar to the blond Bassman, so the brown Deluxe is very prone to speeding.

use

It can clean up to about three, and by then it will be quite loud. It's a warm and clear tone, with such a high touch that we never played a 1960s Fender amp, which makes us feel closely related to music.

The vibrato is deep and strong, but never interferes with the front of the note, or when you want to do some punching and definition, it seems to be the wrong stage in the loop. The perfect swamp.

Pushed above three points, when the tone is smooth, blooms and eases to an incredible duration, it surpasses heaven. A lot of overdrive can be used, but it does not have the violent fluff or clumsiness of 5E3, and it combines better.

We found that the Marshall analogy can be misleading because it is largely based on 6G3’s need for speeding. The brown Deluxe tone is more cultural, there is no hissing, and there is a cream-colored denture roar. Even with the Celestion, it will not sound like "British".

To make the most of it, you need to get used to volume and tone control interactions. Both will increase the gain when turned up, but the volume control will also increase the circumference, and the tone control will emphasize the treble frequency.

This gives you some room to set the volume, treble and overdrive, and subtly adjust the midrange. The normal channel sounds the same but darker-although it is not the most versatile amplifier, the core tone is so amazing that it hardly matters.

Entering the luxurious reverb, setting the two channels to be the same can show that the extra treble does not necessarily equal the extra clarity. We found that the tone of ordinary channels is fuller, more "straight-through", and has a naturally balanced quality, but there is no difference between the worlds.

The tremolo channel is shining and has sweetness in the high pitch response, never burning. use

This is an undeniably beautiful combination, the reverberation is large, deep and three-dimensional. It also integrates seamlessly with the drying signal to create a perfectly unified whole.

Vibrato has a vibrating sound quality, and has a fairly fast attack and decay time.​​​ The vibrato loop may require attention, as the effect will disappear before reaching speed

 Frequency, we may prefer a slower setting, or even slower.

But this is not about swamp pulsations that rhythmically pull on the heartstrings. Of course, this is a classic effect-combined with reverb, you can immediately recognize this effect from countless classic recordings-but overall, we prefer the sound of the brown Deluxe tremolo circuit.

With Strat, everything on the volume control can be kept tidy until about seven o'clock. In addition, the comfort and continuity of speeding has been enhanced, but it will never become so "heavy". We do find that we need the help of pedaling to push things into the SRV field. Insert one

When using P-90s or humbuckers, you will find that there is indeed a good place in the volume control. Compression and decomposition will compete between 4 and 5.

The luxurious reverb provides universal tone shaping, exquisite sound quality, super sweet speeding, pedal platform applicability and evocative car effects. This is an important milestone in the history of Fender amplifiers, but as a general-purpose guitar amplifier, it is still difficult to beat.

In contrast, 6G3 Deluxe is essentially a stepping stone between the tweed era and the black panel era. It is more rooted than the country, and more like the Houston than the Twang of Tennessee. Deluxe Reverb is obviously a more complex and iconic amplifier, but if Fender only adds spring reverb to 6G3 and asks to spend some time on Deluxe development, that would be great for us.

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