Tweed questions

**st.bede** · 10-05-2023, 03:11 PM

My 5E3 tweed deluxe clone sound so excellent but, I can not typically turn it up enough, due to volume loudness, to get it into the sweet spots. I love the interaction between the volumes and how I can use both. I also sometimes like to jump it. I also like the strangeness of the tone knob.

I have three thoughts:

One, I should buy a higher end attenuators. (I have an old hot plate. It does not work well with the tweed). The newer attenuators apparently have a more nuanced impedance relationship to the speaker. A 5E3 is such an interactive amp, that I wonder if that would even work?

… or, Two, I should buy a lower watt tweed amp. How similar is a 5F1 Champ? It looks like a completely different amp, but it might get a nice rich tweed-deluxe-ish clean edge of breakup… IDK?

… or, finally give in and just get a Kemper with the Kemper speaker Cab. Of course, that would be overkill for this particular question. There are a bunch of other reasons for my purchase of a Kemper. I do wonder if anyone uses a Kemper for jazz stuff? Is there even enough profiles that cover that particular approach?

Of course I could pull out all my amps and do the profiling myself but my mic collection is limited. (57, 421… and some other odds and ends, not so much with a guitar focus).

**SandChannel** · 10-05-2023, 04:35 PM

A Champ is still pretty loud. I would just suggest using a clean/cleanish boost (like a Bad Bob) to throttle the front end a bit and get the dirt that way. Think of it as using hotter pickups. I much prefer modern modelling amps (Boss, Axe, Helix, etc) to the Kemper. Think of the Kemper as recording an amp at one moment in time... whereas the others give you the ability to build up a sound and add EQ and effects as needed - making it more useful in a room/gig/stadium. The Kemper is a bit more limited - great in a studio though.

**Gitfiddler** · 10-05-2023, 04:38 PM

I also struggle with getting the most from my tweed rig. Mine is a Fender Tweed Deluxe Head, that mates well with just about any cab. Getting the most out of it depends on how adventurous you are. You already seem familiar with the odd tweed tone stack.

After watching several videos that discuss the nuances of tweed circuits, I found the best tone as follows:

Plug into the Instrument Channel 1
Turn up the Instrument Volume to 12
Turn up the Mic Volume to 10
Turn up the Tone Volume to 10 or 12

Turn DOWN the Volume on your guitar to around 4 or 5
Adjust the Tone on your guitar to suit your desired brightness/darkness

Another issue with Tweed circuit rigs is how different they are with Humbucker vs Single Coil vs P90 guitars.

Basically, lots of knob twisting is needed to get the most from a 12 watt tweed amp.

That is NOT the case with a 5f1 Tweed Champ circuit. This simple amp only has a Volume control. And it gets dirty pretty quick. So I use the same formula as with the Tweed amp...turning up the Volume to around 5 or 10, then turn the guitar volume down until it cleans up.

These are incredibly touch sensitive amps and a ton of fun to experiment with.

**bluejaybill** · 10-05-2023, 07:02 PM

Tweed Deluxes can be great but, like all Fender tube amps, they have a. sweet spot, above which they just tend to distort more and not get much louder. They are great if the volume you are playing at matches that sweet spot, as well as the amount of distortion you desire. For me, most Fender tube amps are too loud for home use- I have a wonderful BFDR that I find is really a bit too loud for home, but great size for stage. I do seem to be able to get my Fat Jimmy, a somewhat lower wattage Fender style amp, to sound good at home, but it can get pretty loud as well.

So either get a smaller amp, a SS amp, or an attenuator. I have a Fryette Power Station which I bought mainly to tone down my vintage Marshall and Vox amps, but it's other great trick is making amps louder- so you can turn your tweed deluxe into a 50 watt monster if desired! I like to take the DR at very low clean level, like 3, and boost it bit with the Power Station- into a bigger cabinet it is virtually a Twin Reverb. Still, pretty loud for home use! But I wish I had it back in the day, a DR with a 50 watt boost into a 2x12 would have been just what I was looking for in my main gigging days.

**Cunamara** · 10-05-2023, 07:37 PM

Getting the "sweet spot" is dependent on what you think the sweet spot is. For me and my 5E3 (a home built Mission Amps kit), the sweet spot is the normal channel volume at 2 (rather than 12, which is Neil Young territory; I am playing jazz, after all) and the tone knob at 3. This is at home, on gigs the volume is at 3. Volume is controlled from the guitar and tone is fine tuned likewise. Speaker is a Cannabis Rex, so pretty efficient and warm. Standard cabinet.

At low volume, I can use the relatively flat tone stack to get a nice jazz sound with all my guitars. That amp really likes single coils; I was just playing my Tele through it this afternoon and delighted at the tone. I have Bruce's "Humbucker I and II" mods which allows the use of the other volume knob to attenuate the bass, which really helps with my archtop.

An awful lot of jazz guitar was played through Rudy Van Gelder's tweed Deluxe!

**D'Aquisto Fan** · 10-05-2023, 09:11 PM

The only thing I would add to this thread is that the tweed Deluxe does not define the tweed sound. There are so many different types of tweed amps. And obviously, each amp should be judged and appreciated on its own merits. I've had a couple tweed Deluxes and although cool, they were never my favorite. I prefer the big box Tremolux over the Deluxe. Also tweeds with a more "refined" tone stack via Bass, Treble, Presence such as a narrow panel Pro, Super or Bandmaster reduce some of those thick, congested mids of a Deluxe and allow for my clarity in the signal in my opinion. The Champ is great, but the small cabinet makes for a smaller sound without much bass response.

**st.bede** · 10-05-2023, 10:15 PM

Thank you all for your insights. They are all very helpful.

**Alter** · 10-06-2023, 03:54 AM

For quiet home playing the champ was my favorite, but I had the Victoria version which has a slightly bigger cab with a bit more bass, so the sound was very balanced even at low output, no boxiness. Glorious amp! It depends on the volume level you play. For me, at apartment levels, the 5F1 sounded fine, and was more comfortable and alive than the 5E3 (which was a -nice quality- clone)

I found an eq pedal useful if you want to drive the amp a bit more and still feel like you play the amp and not the pedal.

**bluejaybill** · 10-06-2023, 01:09 PM

Originally Posted by D'Aquisto Fan

The only thing I would add to this thread is that the tweed Deluxe does not define the tweed sound. There are so many different types of tweed amps. And obviously, each amp should be judged and appreciated on its own merits. I've had a couple tweed Deluxes and although cool, they were never my favorite. I prefer the big box Tremolux over the Deluxe. Also tweeds with a more "refined" tone stack via Bass, Treble, Presence such as a narrow panel Pro, Super or Bandmaster reduce some of those thick, congested mids of a Deluxe and allow for my clarity in the signal in my opinion. The Champ is great, but the small cabinet makes for a smaller sound without much bass response.

Totally true, in my heyday I used a pair of tweed Bassmen with a Roland RE501 Chorus/tape echo. What a glorious sound! And thy have a lot more headroom and sound awesome clean. Wish I still had one!

Tweed Champs, on the other hand, I have never had any luck with. I had one from 1960 sitting in my studio for decades and I never used it. I wouldn't look at it as a smaller Deluxe, it has its own thing going on, and has very little headroom. Newer clones mitigate some of those issues from what I have heard.

**D'Aquisto Fan** · 10-06-2023, 02:36 PM

Originally Posted by bluejaybill

Totally true, in my heyday I used a pair of tweed Bassmen with a Roland RE501 Chorus/tape echo. What a glorious sound! And thy have a lot more headroom and sound awesome clean. Wish I still had one!

Tweed Champs, on the other hand, I have never had any luck with. I had one from 1960 sitting in my studio for decades and I never used it. I wouldn't look at it as a smaller Deluxe, it has its own thing going on, and has very little headroom. Newer clones mitigate some of those issues from what I have heard.

Wow. That sounds like you had an awesome rig! Of course, at this point in my life I wouldn't want to drag a Bassman out to a gig, let alone two of them! And I agree that a Champ isn't a mini Deluxe. It has its own thing going on. Sometimes I run my Champ through the speakers and cabinet of my Super. That sounds great.

**Billy Z** · 10-06-2023, 02:55 PM

The Hot Plate is great to use with a 5e3. Also, try using the second input. Turning the tone control down does affect the gain as well. Also, make sure you have a 12ay7 in the preamp instead of the common 12ax7. the 12ay7 actual sounds much more dimensional and sweet. Adding a negative feedback loop tames the amp too.

**Cunamara** · 10-06-2023, 03:06 PM

+1 on the 12AY7. Better sound for jazz, lower noise.

**omphalopsychos** · 10-06-2023, 05:41 PM

I owned a champ for a while. It definitely gave up the goods at a low volume but I eventually sold it because it was too boxy. It really felt like a toy compared to my harvard or any other larger amps.

Frankly if you are into a 5w tweed amp, the best one was built not by fender but by dearmond. 5w, larger and deeper cabinet, 10" speaker. Glorious tone. This is one of my favorite amps of all time. It's there with my Tweed Harvard with fun home-volume amps.

Tweed questions-9450_01-jpg

I don't know if other replies mentioned this, but speaker choice makes a huge difference. A lot of modern speakers are very efficient. Especially 12" ones. Note that 3 db is equated to a doubling of "perceived loudness". In other words, if you currently have a 100 db/1m/1w speaker in there, you can substantially decrease the headroom by installing a 93 db speaker.

If I had a 5e3 and wanted to play it exclusively at home my speaker of choice would definitely be a Tone Tubby Sky Blue Alnico. I had one in my Gibson GA 25 (paired with a Tone Tubby 8" speaker) and it was wonderful. Not practical for headroom playing with a loud band but it really let me open the amp up and also provided a great coloration of its own. People usually say Tone Tubbies are dark speakers, but this one is made with a cloth surround. Any of the TT speakers with cloth surrounds are much brighter than the normal models.

**st.bede** · 10-06-2023, 06:46 PM

Again thank you all.

My tweed deluxe (clone) sounds great once I get the volume up a bit.

I did not have the results I was hoping for with my THD Hot plate. (It has worked really with other amps. I have used it a lot with a Marshall “bluesbreaker”. I also had excellent results with a ProJr… strange, because the ProJr is very tweed-ish sounding).

My tweed deluxe clone is very responsive and it just lost that feel and sounded too crunchy, too soon. Maybe it would be good for a Neil Young thing.

I am wondering with a more developed attenuator, (one that relates more to the impedance issues), if I could retain more of the feel and ride on the edge of breakup?

The TT speaker idea is interesting, and not one that I would not of thought of.

How would you describe loud… ?

**orri** · 10-07-2023, 12:38 AM

I feel a volume pedal in front of my 5e3 clone (or other amps) can give me more "sweet spot" like clean sound at a lower volumes.

A volume pedal is a bit more neutral than using the guitar's volume knob because the guitar volume pot interacts with the tone circuit.

My 5e3 also has a mod whith an adjustable voltage regulator that can lower the HT (post rectifier dc voltage), which results in lower volume with less change in sound characteristics than the volume knob.
IMO you can use it to lower the (perceived) volume by ~10-20%, but the or it is lowered, the more it changes the character and if you go beyond 50% it becomes a different amp. Still a usable one, but the volume knob interactions and gain sound behave differently.
(Lowering this voltage also biases the tubes colder which makes them last longer, arguably at the cost of "hotter" sound but when practising at home you can do that trade off)).