Re: [Harp-L] 65 Fender Deluxe RI

Hi Chris,
I blow thru a Deluxe Reverb with an RE-10 so see if I can help. The Reissues are pretty difficult to work on so I won't get into a lot of mods. To do so would probably require gutting the printed circuit board and replacing with a point to point board, probably not very cost effective, I'd probably charge something around $400-$500 for a job like that. BTW, $250 is a good price for this amp!! There really isn't too much difference schematically between the real 64 and the 65RI. The difference in sound is probably due to the composition of different materials used in the construction (transformers, tubes, caps, speakers, etc.) along with drifting of component values due to aging. Some of these you could probably remedy yourself...tubes and speaker. Look into replacing the speaker with the Weber 12F150. And try new tubes. JJ's 6V6's are great new manufacture tubes, try a pair of these then properly re-bias the amp. In fact, many of the new Fender amps are biased "cold" lending to a thin tinny sound. This alone may help quite a bit. Someone had mentioned that the BF Deluxe used a 5Y3 rectifier tube...this is wrong, the BF DR used a 5AR4 rectifier and so does the RI, though you may want to try using a 5Y3 or 5R4 rectifier, this will drop the voltages somewhat and increase sag and compression somewhat...if switching rectifier type again you'll have to re-bias the amp. After that you can try swapping pre-amp tubes. On BF/SF Fenders try a 12DW7 in the first gain stage slot and a 12AY7 in the reverb recovery slot, there are a lotta other tube swap combos you can experiment with which have been talked about here on Harp-L in the past.
Another internal mod that you maybe able to do on your own if you're somewhat comfortable with working on amps is removing the "bright" cap the is on the Vibrato channel (I presume you use that channel)...this is a 47pf cap designated C10 on the circuit board located near the Vibrato channel volume pot, this can be very carefully snipped off (don't even need a soldering iron), this will remove some of the "brightness" in the tone of the amp.
Lastly, since you like the 64, you may want to bring both amps to a good local amp tech and have him open up both amps and try to find differences in voltages and component values in the amps and see if he can make some mods or adjustments to the reissue to make it sound more like the real 64 DR.

Hope this helps some,
Don D.


----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Michalek" <Chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 6:15 PM
Subject: [Harp-L] 65 Fender Deluxe RI



I just bought a year old 65 DR from my neighbor for $250.  What do I
have to do to make this thing useable for harp?  I'm going to run a
EV RE-10 into for for blues.

For blues shows, I normally play through a 64 Deluxe Reverb but it's
not mine.  The '64 sounds awesome but the new one doesn't have the
same bite.

Thanks



Chris Michalek

www.michalekstrone.com


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