Advice sought: is a Fender Brown Deluxe good for swing?

[radiofm74]

Dear all,

A reasonably-priced, nice condition Brown Deluxe has surfaced around here. I already have my store of amps, but this one intrigues me. The real question for me is whether it has what I'd call "warm cleans" and enough headroom to be gig-able in relatively small places with a swing band. Youtube doesn't help as it's full of people cranking their brownface amps into distortion. For reference, I tried an original brown face Princeton not too long ago and found that it was cool, but completely unsuitable for the use I'd have for it.

Background: I do have a fine collection of amps including a 64 Tremolux (30W), a 46 Zephyr (12-ish W?), and "midget", a tweed champ clone (5 W) for home. For swing, a DeArmond pickup plugged in the Zephyr is my idea of "sounds good". Tele + Zephyr = Western swing heaven. But the amp is a little too quirky and fragile for gigs, and despite having 2x6L6 it doesn't have enough clean volume unless miked. The Tremolux is my go-to amp for everything but swing – not the right voicing to my ears.

That's why I am thinking about pre-Blackface Fenders. Warm clean tones (at least tweeds do have that…), more reliability, more volume and headroom. My #1 candidate is a tweed Pro but they're rare and pretty costly (talking about the reissues). If suitable, the brown deluxe would also have the nice advantage of filling a perfect "niche" in my amp arsenal: I have no brownface, and no 20-ish W grab'n'o combo. And of course, as an old amp junkie, I'd be thrilled to have it for the sake of having it.

But it will be a total redundancy/luxury unless I can use the sound and gig it. I'd rather keep the money and look for a tweed (or brown) Pro or Super than buy the Deluxe as "one more cool home amp".

Any relevant video/audio samples super-welcome!

[dconeill]

I'm not a pro, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Whether the amp will be suitable for purpose depends on what the swing band is like. I played for several years with a big band comprising 4 saxes, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, piano, upright bass, guitar, and drums. There were no guitar solos. I used an 80-watt, 1x12 solid state amp (Evans Eighty) with the volume set at around 40% or so, and it was sufficient. The Evans was designed not to distort even if it was set to 100%.

Before the Evans, I used a Fender Super 60 for awhile, but that didn't work out - to be loud enough I had to raise the volume of the Super 60 into its distortion range, which was unsatisfactory.

Depending on your instrumentation, it could be that a Deluxe wouldn't be loud enough and still be clean.

[radiofm74]

I'm not a pro, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Whether the amp will be suitable for purpose depends on what the swing band is like. I played for several years with a big band comprising 4 saxes, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, piano, upright bass, guitar, and drums. There were no guitar solos. I used an 80-watt, 1x12 solid state amp (Evans Eighty) with the volume set at around 40% or so, and it was sufficient. The Evans was designed not to distort even if it was set to 100%.

Before the Evans, I used a Fender Super 60 for awhile, but that didn't work out - to be loud enough I had to raise the volume of the Super 60 into its distortion range, which was unsatisfactory.

Depending on your instrumentation, it could be that a Deluxe wouldn't be loud enough and still be clean.

Thanks a lot! For the rhythm part I tend to play acoustic in a mic and it's definitely ok that I am at low volume. I go through the amp for the solos, and at that point the horns are usually quiet or playing some light texture. We don't play very big venues but I can see the need for mic'ing it on the bigger occasions, as you say.

The question, I guess, is more whether a brown Deluxe is capable of a rich "old school" clean sound - more tweed than blackface - and could work well with DeArmond pickups.

Thx for the input!

[neatomic]

brown deluxe is one of the great amps...not that many around and therefore highly overlooked

doesn't have the mids scoop of the blackfaces...& has some of the tweeds gruffness...think kenny burrell

paired with the right speaker, it's one of the warmest, fullest sounding little amps ever..and packs some punch volume wise

huge fan

cheers

[Kirk1701]

The brown Deluxe is a surprisingly versatile amp. Billy Gibbons used it to great, grinding effect on "Tres Hombres." Dickie Betts used it in studio with the Allman Bros. It was also popular with the Wrecking Crew guitarists on the Beach Boys and other pop records (that jangly, clean lead tone is all brownface).

For swing, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. I like a bit of grit for single line stuff from the swing era.

[radiofm74]

Thank you all gentleman. I think that if it's still there, I'll get it. In the WORSE case, I'll have got me a wonderful little combo that needs to be mic'd!