Fender 65 Twin Reverb RI / 65 Deluxe Reverb RI

[Herbie]

Not too expensive?!? Your gigs must pay better than mine......
:-D

Hah! Knock-out!

I should have written what I meant: 'not too expensive compared to old BF Fenders or their fancy boutique ptp-versions'.

[D.G.]

A '59 Bassman RI is what I would recommend. It's far lighter than a Twin and far louder than a Deluxe. More toneful than either IMO. No reverb, but a HOF would take care of that.

[Greentone]

At one point, I had the following arsenal at home:

(1) a Fender tweed Champ
(2) a Peavey Delta Blues (same as the Classic 30, but the cabinet is bigger and the 12" speaker is bumped to a 15")
(3) a Fender Silverface Twin Reverb
(4) a Blackface Fender Dual Showman Amp
(5) a 5e3 Tweed Deluxe amp
(6) a 5C5 Tweed Pro amp
(7) a '59 Reissue Fender Bassman amp
(8) a '70 Ampeg B-15 amp
(9) a Polytone Baby Brute
(10) a Polytone Mini Brute III

Also, at that time I was gigging with a '66 Blackface Fender Deluxe Reverb amp that belonged to my bass player.

I had the opportunity, therefore, to use Fender tube amps from 5 watts, to 12 watts, to 22 watts, to 30 watts, to 45 watts, to 85 watts, to 100 watts. Using my outboard Fender Reverb Unit with the reverb-less Champ, Pro, Bassman and Dual Showman amps, I was able to keep the sound about the same as that of the Twin Reverb. It was just a matter of how loud did you want things. From least loud to loudest it went like this: Champ, Deluxe, Pro, Bassman, Twin Reverb, Dual Showman. The Dual Showman was truly loud.

Notice that with all those amps available I used the Deluxe Reverb essentially no matter what. I found 22 watts to be just fine. It helped that whether I was playing in a country band, a blues band, a society-gig band, or a jazz band that my drummer was a jazz guy. He wasn't a basher. Moreover, the bassist in the different bands was the same guy and he used a Polytone Mini Brute III with his Fender Jazz Bass. A Fender Deluxe Reverb will keep up with a 100 watt Polytone bass amp and a sensitive drummer. In the society gigs with a horn section I would be riding the ragged edge of grit in the amp--volume on 5--but things worked. A few times I bummed a Super Reverb from my bassist, but folks said it was too loud. I thought so, too.

[Stringswinger]

Not too expensive?!? Your gigs must pay better than mine......

:-D

Do gigs still pay?

I kid, all of my gigs do, but comparing what I make today and what I made gigging 35 years ago, the money is about the same. The dollar sure isn't...

(Sorry for the rant)

[Greentone]

True that. The gigs pay what they did in yesteryear, but the dollar is worth so much less.

[Woody Sound]

I saw him in 77 in the Hammersmith Odeon in London but felt that i could not define the music because it was too loud. At the time he had his thing about "if you think it's too loud then you are too old". I was 21 at the time - so who was he really playing for? But i was impressed that he could at all handle his Birdland in this "infernal noise".

And I remember reading an interview back then where he said he just ran his hand across the top of the knobs from left to right across all 6 twins, so that EVERYTHING was turned to 10.

I just could not begin to imagine how loud that was.

[Thumpalumpacus]

What would you recommend? I've been hankering for a 2x12" combo since I've never had one. I'm looking for a clean amp since I can get dirt from a pedal for blues/fusion. I'd be happy with a SS amp and I'm looking for used.

Folks say used JC-120s are like buses, one comes round every 10 minutes, but I haven't seen that on the online classifieds around me. Like I said, there was a Peavey Stereo Chorus 400, but I waffled on it.

I don't have any useful recommendations for a jazz gigger. I'm reentering the jazz world after a long stint in rock and blues, and I've never gigged jazz, but only took lessons. I wish I could help more, but I think I've shot my bolt so far as that goes.

The Peavey SC400 might do you. I owned one of those a long time ago, before I sold it after about a year -- it was of limited use to me, as the distortion was not useful at all, thin and fizzy (I was playing hard rock/heavy metal at the time). The cleans were good, but not as rich to my ear as my SF Bassman. The best thing about the amp in my book was the chorusing itself, which was really sweet and deep -- very chewy. The only real use I got out of it was using it chorusing mixed low in a couple of demos to add sparkle without cluttering up the mix.

I could see it being used as a jazzer, especially if you've got a full-hollow giving more air to the tone. But I think the advice from the other members here who've invested a lifetime in jazz playing is worth a hell of a lot more than my two pennies.

[Little Jay]

I have a Twin and a modified Blues Deluxe as my main tube amps. Love the tone and try to take them to the gig as much as possible, but I do gigs in tiny bars in the centre of town in the car-free area or with payed parking for $7 an hour, so I need to take public transport and even my bike. For the latter situations I have my Award Session BluesBaby 22 and even lighter my AER Alpha.The Bluesbaby can sound like a mini-blackface amp, the AER is quite a bit darker sounding, but works very well for me (especially with the Boss FRV-1 I bought lately, wow!).

So like Greentone, I have a little arsenal of different sized and powered amps for every occasion!

[fole]

I call 1x12" + 2x6L6 combos "half twins". Is Peavey available in the OP's Sweden? If so, consider a Peavey ValveKing II 50. 50W, 19kg.

It's not booteek, it's a working man's amp, $600 new, less used.

Peavey ValveKing II 50 50W 1x12 Tube Guitar Combo Amp Black | Musician's Friend


There's also the Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, but it seems not to get much love. Any fans of it here?

Regarding the Hot Rod Deluxe, I have a III and have changed the stock speaker to an Eminence "Swamp Thang" which sweetens the top end and tightens the bass. It is also very efficient at (I think) 102dB and 150W RMS power handling, which means that for a given sound pressure level the amp can be run down a bit. I've noticed that I now run it on 3 on the volume knob as opposed to 4 at similar venues. I also put the stock Celestion speaker, a G12P-80, in an extension cab for added spread on larger gigs.

[Boston Joe]

The whole business of being clean up to 4 has to do with the audio taper volume potentiometers. By 4 most Fender amps are operating at nearly full undistorted power--85 watts in the case of a Twin Reverb amp. After that, distortion (and power) increase.

To make matters worse, a lot of "audio taper" pots are actually two linear tapers with a knee in the middle. So instead of a response curve that looks like this:



You get something like this:

[Greentone]

Interesting. It always amuses me when I let younger people borrow one of my Polytones. They have never used an amp with a linear volume pot. They think, "the amp isn't very loud," but the fact is they haven't turned the volume knob up beyond half-way. They are used to Fender, Vox, and Marshall amps. The Polytone isn't really opening up until about six or seven. Most players aren't used to seeing an amplifier operated _cleanly_ on the 12 o'clock to 3 o'clock portion of the potentiometer travel. Yet, that's the way that old Ampegs, Polytones, and the old Fender Showman amp work.

[Telecastergirl]

I've had a pre-CBS Fender Vibrolux for many many years, and love it's vintage vibes. It's nowhere near as heavy or bulky as the Twin. I've also got a custom-shop Vibrolux re-issue. It's WAY hotter than the pre-CBS one...I can only turn up to about 3 before the neighbors ears start bleeding. So plenty of power. You should check these out....

[Little Jay]

I've had a pre-CBS Fender Vibrolux for many many years, and love it's vintage vibes. It's nowhere near as heavy or bulky as the Twin. I've also got a custom-shop Vibrolux re-issue. It's WAY hotter than the pre-CBS one...I can only turn up to about 3 before the neighbors ears start bleeding. So plenty of power. You should check these out....

My Blues Deluxe behaved the same: from 1 to 3 on the dial seemed very hot, but after that it didn't do a lot any more. I suspect your Vibrolux RI is the same: a reversed log volume pot that makes it seem it gets loud very quickly. It's actually a little sales trick by Fender: a lot of people think the amp must have plenty of power if it's already that loud when it's only on 3. But I'll bet both amps are about equally loud with the volume on 10.

[Boston Joe]

My Blues Deluxe behaved the same: from 1 to 3 on the dial seemed very hot, but after that it didn't do a lot any more. I suspect your Vibrolux RI is the same: a reversed log volume pot that makes it seem it gets loud very quickly. It's actually a little sales trick by Fender: a lot of people think the amp must have plenty of power if it's already that loud when it's only on 3. But I'll bet both amps are about equally loud with the volume on 10.

If you like to overdrive your amps, the second half of the range often gives you different degrees of saturation and compression. A couple of my old Mesas were like that. From 1 to about 4 was just volume. At 4+ you'd get a little hair. At 6 or so, you'd get some AC/DC sounding stuff. Up around 8, you'd start getting the Santana/Liquid sustain/feedback kind of stuff.

[BeBob]

The whole business of being clean up to 4 has to do with the audio taper volume potentiometers. By 4 most Fender amps are operating at nearly full undistorted power--85 watts in the case of a Twin Reverb amp. After that, distortion (and power) increase. I don't know how much output power a Twin at full cry puts out--probably something like 125-150 watts. However, the total harmonic distortion at that power output level is probably at 20% or more. The 85-watt rating is probably at between 5-10% distortion (which is pretty clean for a musical instrument _tube_ amplifier). Since the distortion is going to be mostly even-order harmonic distortion, 5% will be unnoticeable in a tube amp. I will bet that this power rating is achieved at around 4 or 5 on the volume dial...

This will be a techy post -- some of you may want to skip it if you don't like technobabble.

The first gain stage in a fender is fairly easy to overdrive because the 68k/1M voltage divider at the input to V1a does not attenuate the signal significantly, and because most of the Fenders we're talking about are using a 12AX7 in the first position. This makes the first stage of the amp extremely easy to overdrive, which is why Fenders have a reputation among rockers as being pedal-friendly.

Whether you use a linear taper pot or a log taper pot is a human interface consideration that the amp doesn't really care about. The amplifier doesn't consider the numbers on the knob. Although they're good reference points for us, the amplifier only responds to the voltage of the input signal, and you'll get that same voltage but at different positions on audio vs. linear pots. An easy way to get rid of that problem where Fenders get dirty by 6, and to provide a more useful range of clean adjustments, is to just rescale the voltage divider a the input jack so that doesn't happen. I know quite a few people who have replaced the voltage divider with trim pots/knobs for exactly this reason.

Regarding how much power you get out of any tube amp, a lot of it depends on how hard each stage is driven, and what kind of numbers you're willing to accept when it comes to distortion levels when charting power. Like Greentone said, it's hard to get a real handle about how many watts at what distortion level one of these amps will really produce unless you have test equipment. In the golden era Fender was always very nebulous about their actual test conditions and what kind of power/distortion the amps would reliably produce. That's not the case today, because the FTC requires realistic power output claims.

If you take a look at the 65TRRI Service Manual the power specs say "85 watts minimum RMS into a 4R resistive load at 5% THD with 1 kHz input to the normal channel at TP24, all normal channel controls full CW, all vibrato controls full CCW. Reverb and vibrato off."

For the 65DRRI the Service Manual power specs say "22 watts minimum RMS into an 8R resistive load at 5% THD with 1kHZ input..."

[BeBob]

To be honest, I can't say that I've ever met a Fender Twin that I considered heavy. But then I'm used to lugging around an SVT, whose rackmount head weighs 100 lb all by itself, and I have to do a dead lift / military press to put it on top of the refrigerator cabinet. Compared to dealing with the SVT, my Twin Reverb with EV speakers on wheels is a lightweight amp. I guess it's all about what you're used to dealing with. I'm thinking that the comments about Twin Reverbs being too heavy must be being made in reference to little combo practice amps.

On the subject of what sounds good, I think that no matter what type of amp you choose, for jazz you need a speaker/array that will let you avoid speaker distortion at any volume. That said, I'm inclined to agree that the answer for the electronics question is about 40W of 6L6 power. For me the little bottle amps just don't cut it. Fender made several amps in this range with multiple speaker configurations, some as combos, some as piggybacks. If the combos are too heavy for anyone then the piggybacks might be easier to transport since the head and speaker weight has been split into two different boxes.

When it comes to difficulty in lifting, I think the platform of the amp has a lot more to do in defining how difficult it is to move than just the weight. Many people complain that a stock Twin Reverb at 70 lb. is hard to move. I find that my Super Reverb, which weighs 16 lb. more, is easier to move than a Twin just because it is taller, the handle is at a more convenient height, and I don't have to bend over to lift it.

[Herbie]

Interesting. It always amuses me when I let younger people borrow one of my Polytones. They have never used an amp with a linear volume pot. They think, "the amp isn't very loud," but the fact is they haven't turned the volume knob up beyond half-way. They are used to Fender, Vox, and Marshall amps. The Polytone isn't really opening up until about six or seven. Most players aren't used to seeing an amplifier operated _cleanly_ on the 12 o'clock to 3 o'clock portion of the potentiometer travel. Yet, that's the way that old Ampegs, Polytones, and the old Fender Showman amp work.

Hmm... Is it possible that Polytone (Mini Brute IV from 70/80's) is getting quieter? I have no way to measure but it feels that I must turn the vol knob more now than say half a year ago.

I know that old caps can spoil the sound in tube amps but is it the same with ss amps? Is it the caps, could it be something else? No other symptoms, sound is still honey, no side noises etc.

If it is the caps, is the cap job DIY job or pro job? I know soldering. Are the parts hard to get?

Or is it just my ears getting old?

(Sorry for stealing the thread for one question, but this came to my mind when I saw the Greentone's thoughts about Pt vol knob.)

[Telecastergirl]

Much tougher for girls to hoist these behemoths. When I was young, I took great pride in "pulling my weight", but at this age, I'm happy for a helping hand...or a manageable amp.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Someone needs to create a "Gigmaster" minivan with a winch or lifting tailgate for getting heavy gear in and out.

[Telecastergirl]

I created my own "Gigmaster". He's 26-years old and shares my DNA.

[Hammertone]

What would you recommend? I've been hankering for a 2x12" combo since I've never had one. I'm looking for a clean amp since I can get dirt from a pedal for blues/fusion. I'd be happy with a SS amp and I'm looking for used.

I'd recommend a 1972 Fender Pro Reverb.

I'd recommend it to the OP as well, but he's in Sweden. I suppose one could find one there if one looked. Perhaps a Koch Multitone 2x12", 50 watt combo instead? Discontinued but there is probably no shortage of them in in his corner of Europe.

For reference, for silverface Fender combos from the late 1960s-early 1970s
- Fender Princeton Reverb (1x10") - 31 lbs.
- Fender Deluxe Reverb (1x12") - 40 lbs.
- Fender Vibrolux Reverb (2x10") - 50 lbs
- Fender Pro Reverb (2x12") - 58 lbs.
- Fender Twin Reverb (2x12") - 69 lbs.
- Fender Super Reverb (4x10") - 86 lbs

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

I'm looking for cheap, $400 tops. I'd also prefer to buy something in person.

Local prices don't seem inviting. Guess the asking price is for this 1960's Gibson Medalist 4/10.

[339 in june]

Local prices don't seem inviting. Guess the asking price is for this 1960's Gibson Medalist 4/10.

I don't know ...
695 US $ ?

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

I don't know ...
695 US $ ?

Hah! It's $CAN 800 = $USD 618. Should I send you the link?

[339 in june]

But have a look ! How much is it on this side ?
Gibson Medalist 1964 Amp For Sale Rock City