gringopig's guitars
1971 Fender Deluxe Reverb
Fresh and silver-faced, the line up in 1968 was refreshed from the Blackface amps of the mid '60's to take on the look of the '70's. This was the amp that powered studios and stages worldwide and helped the Beatles record their later songs. These amps are very much overlooked despite being nearly identical to the Blackface era amps of 1964-67. If they are overlooked then you can pick them up still for a good price.
The history of the Fender Deluxe (with or without Reverb) goes back to the Tweed era of the 1950's. The Fender Deluxe amp with its Fender designated 5E3 circuit is very well liked and the best known of the Tweed amps, even though Fender had a full range of amplifiers in many configurations from the student level Harvard to the high power Twin and Bassman amps.
These amps have the distinctive 'Tweed' tolex which is still put onto amps from Fender today that have little or nothing to do with the original '50's amps. The Blues Junior for example which is a modern amp in all regards and has only a superficial resemblance to the classic Tweed amps.
The Tweed era ended in 1959 and from 1960, the Brownface era came in with fundamental circuit changes and a new look. Gone was the ragged glory of the Tweed circuits with the simple circuits with no negative feedback and in was the sophistication of the Brown panel amps with built in Tremolo effects, negative feedback to promote stability and linearity. This addition of negative feedback changed the character of the sound to be one that was cleaner and more accommodating to the guitars of the era; especially the ones from Fender's competitor - Gibson which was now replete with the powerful Humbucking pickup.
The Deluxe of course changed with the times and gained the Tremolo effect, which became more common on amplifiers despite being first used on the Vibrolux model in 1956 and subsequently the Tremolux. Seems like Leo couldn't get it straight with Tremolo and Vibrato!
The Deluxe amp was starting to look more familiar with the front panel moved from the top to the front, a brown faceplate and cupcake knobs. This is the big shift from the Tweed sound. The amp featured Tremolo via a modulation of the bias supply to the power section but still employed two 6V6 to achieve 20 Watts of power.
I have an amp of this era - a 1962 Tremolux which features on another page and it too has this Tremolo system.
Next up for Fender though was the most well known look and sound - the Blackface era.
The aesthetic changed slightly again, to a black front panel, witch hat knobs, a new fancy logo on the grillcloth in 1965 and an even more scooped 'Fender' sound and now featured even more effects with built in Reverb!
The Deluxe non-reverb persisted though as a separate model, as seen below
The model which is still Fender's best known amp has know been immortalised by Re-issues in '65 and '68 formats and it is this amp and format which we now associate with the mode 'Deluxe Reverb'
It would seem that Leo Fender liked shaking things about a lot in terms of the look of his amplifier range, and in 1968, the look again changed.
Away went the black panel, to be replaced with a fancy silver one but largely, nothing much changed. Circuits were modified to aid clean headroom and to minimise distortion but the Deluxe reverb remained very similar.
Of course, when the Beatles were given these new Fender amps they gladly accepted. They got a lot of free stuff!
You can see their lovely new Fender amps in the let it Be film - Fender Twin models and McCartney has a Bassman head and cab too. The so called 'drip-edge' models.
These early Silverface amps had a silver bead running round the grillcloth and lasted a short time until Fender removed it for the later ones. Note the features though:
Fender logo with 'tails' underneath
Deluxe reverb - Amp
Silver panel with blue/green lettering
Is it turquoise? Cyan?
I'm not sure what that shade would be called really but it lasted through the years until 1981 when the Silverface amps were replaced.
So my amp is a 1971. It shares the features of the tailed logo which became tail-less in 1973 but has the '-Amp' part of the model missing. This happened in late '71 and all though 1972 so I am dating mine to 1971. I checked the transformer codes and speaker codes too. Note that the Mains transformer has been replaced with a Hammond model at some point in its life.
It was bought in 1973 in a music shop in Edinburgh which has long since gone and has had a complete rebuild by Time Travel Audio in Leith.
Click on Gallery above for more
I bought this for a good price and considering that Blackface Deluxe reverb amps are unobtainable, I was lucky to get this. It's an early model, so very similar to the blackface circuit; perhaps a little more headroom in the phase splitter circuit.
Subsequent models were made and in the late '70's, the pull boost feature was offered but even these are very similar to the '65 era amps. They didn't get the ultra linear treatment like the Twin reverb got.
I happen to like that ultra linear clean heft but others don't. Or rather they have been told they don't. Few even bother to try them - which is good for us!
Above is a late model 1979 Deluxe Reverb and you can see the later logo. Without the tail but now with 'Made in USA' under the Fender logo.
These are still great amps and soon after in 1981 Fender lost the plot and started producing the fake Blackface amps like the 'evil Twin' - the Twin amp and the red knob Twin both of which sought to capture the new hair metal era and failed miserably.
In fact, Fender only really recovered when they introduced the '65 Deluxe Reverb re-issue which was a reproduction of the 1965 classic Blackface amp but with a PCB board.
I have one of these and can attest to it being good. Once all the faults are fixed though - like supplying it with the 230V tap in place not 240V and the crappy Tremolo circuit replacing the opto roach (which I reverted back)
Listen up Fender. In the UK we have 240V. Not 230V. It makes a difference!
Check out my demo of my classic Deluxe Reverb. It sounds great!
