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POLL: 74 Deluxe Reverb vs. early 80s Deluxe Reverb II


iamthearm

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You don't see the Deluxe Reverb II's show up a lot for sale, if that tells you anything.

 

IMO, it's a close call, and it really depends on what you're looking for. The DRII has channel switching, preamp cascaded gain stages (ala earlier Mk series Boogies) and a solid state rectifier, while the Deluxe Reverb has slightly better cleans, a tube rectifier and trem. Both are excellent sounding amps.

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The '74 probably isn't modded at all. You can put 6L6s in an old DR and simply bias it for them. The transformers can handle it just fine. WARNING: This isn't true of any other Fender amp I know of. This was commonly done due to the lack of 6V6s at one point. You get slightly more bass and it's slightly slower to break up, but the difference isn't huge between the tube types.

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The '74 probably isn't modded at all. You can put 6L6s in an old DR and simply bias it for them. The transformers can handle it just fine. WARNING: This isn't true of any other Fender amp I know of. This was commonly done due to the lack of 6V6s at one point. You get slightly more bass and it's slightly slower to break up, but the difference isn't huge between the tube types.

 

 

You can use 6L6GC's in a SFDR while using a solid-state plug-in rectifier. Losing the 3-amp current draw of the 5U4G rectifier helps the rest of the power transformer keep from overheating.

 

This is SFDR only, they had a beefier PT because of the 5U4G rectifier tube, BFDR and DRRI should not be run with 6L6GC's, but people do anyway.

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Compared to what you got I would to..

 

 

I used to own a 1965 BFDR - fricking mint it was too. Had a road case for it and everything. Traded it away when the reverb 'broke'. Oh to be young and incredibly stupid again. If you ever go up to Los Gatos, stop in to see Keith Holland at his shop and say 'hi' to it for me.

 

Bastard.

 

lol

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wat

 

 

The last real 6V6GT came off the line in the mid '80's, when the US military finally quit buying tubes. There weren't any 6V6GT's made between then and the introduction of the crappy Sovtek in the mid '90's (which is when Fender RI'd the DR). The EH was the first decent 6V6 to come along and that was in the late '90's, which is when DR Z and others finally started making 6V6 amps.

 

Real 6L6GC's were also not made between 1989 and the mid- to late-'90's. Which is when the Sovtek 5881 gained a massive foothold.

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well a super clean '71 pro reverb with blackface mods just showed up for roughly the same price. looks like i know what i'm doing.

 

The Practical Man's Twin. :) Far more useful for most people than a Twin is. IMHO, at 40W, it's "just right" in terms of power - or at least a heck of a lot closer to it than a Twin is. It's lighter too. Great amps - IMO, one of Fender's best.

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You don't see the Deluxe Reverb II's show up a lot for sale, if that tells you anything.

 

 

It tells me they didn't make very many of them during their short tenure.

 

I've seen a lot more of them for sale than I've seen people using them.

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I had a buddy back in the '90s that had a Riviera-modded Princeton Reverb (a '60s BF) - I guess is was previously owned my Jim Messina according to him (woot?). It was his understanding that the amp was one of the prototypes for the PR II - it sounded absolutely horrible to me. Thin, squishy, no balls - all preamp gain. I was so bummed that beautiful amp was raped to make such a monstrosity.

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'74. Because it's the sound everybody wants.


The Rivera-era model - well, let's just say he, like everybody else, has learned a lot about overdrive in the past thirty years.

 

 

Concerning the overdrive: if you ever used Mesa amps, you would manage to achieve good sounds with these ones too. The Treble knob has similar character.Although I'm fan of the Rivera-era, I would choose the Silverface for pure clean tone.

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