Fender Blues Deville – work on your tubes

I dug out my Fender Blues Deville amp the other day and played it on what I thought was full in the middle of my living room expecting the walls to come down, I was quite surprised to discover that a loud fart was the best sound I’d get out of this. This all opened a door for me to try some stuff Ive wanted to try for a while since reading and learning a little more from others how important tubes are to amps. A few discussions from my trusty amp tech at Tipton Amps and a little reading up from people at Music Radar  and decided to work with some different tubes. A visit to HotRox and Tube Amp Doctor later, some cash has been splashed and time has fast forward I have  new set of tubes and my spare set of Fender badged tubes.

This little bundle included a 6L6WGC-STR GE-Style black-plate premium matched pair and TAD 7025 highgrade selected valve pack from Tube Amp Doctor, some gold series 12AV7′s from Groove Tubes, and gold and black model 12AY7′s from Electro Harmonix, as well as the Fender branded (Groove Tubes I believe) Red valves. I first put the Fender Red’s in as a straight swap out, the volume came back and all was well, however I wanted to experiment. I normally do a slight mod swapping out the first pre-amp tube from a Electro Hamronix 12AY7, this really cleans up the clean sound and gives a lot more head room, it also warms up the sound a little for me. Instead of the 12AY7, I tried the groove tubes 12AV7, this warmed the amp sound up compared to the Fender tubes, and certainly gave more headroom, but the clipping it gave was a little harsher than the 12AV7′s. My next plan was to remove the second pre-amp tube and again replace it with a groove tube. This was done and it really made a positive different, cleaned up the sound massivly, and removed the clipping almost totally, but then when I drove the amp harder I got the clipping back, but it was much better much more full, but also still a little mid/tinny, almost like a cheap distortion pedal for the mid’s sound. Groove tubes to one side, I dumped in the Electro Harmonix black 12AY7′s in place of the two groove tubes, ahhh that’s more like it much much nicer, fuller sound, much deeper clean, warmer, and the clipping is very natural, I really had to drive the amp to get it to break up too. Very pleased with this, on my Blues Deluxe I use the Electro Harmonix gold 12AY7′s, as I’ve said on this blog before, I think I can hear a difference in them, slightly smoother, dropping out the mid and high end a little, and softening the bass side a bit, now that said I only think I can hear that, in that I’m looking for something different becaue thse are supposed to be different. I dumped the golds in and was happier with them, either because I’m nuts, or there is a slightly different sound to them. Now for more experimentation, for the phase valve I dropped the Fender out and put in the TAD 7025 not much different in terms of tone, but it really opened up the sound, made it sound a little louder and the speakers rang out so happy with that too. Now the big boys, the plan is to give myself so much clean head room that the pre-amp valves don’t muddy the sound, the power amp tubes do, so I dumped the Fenders again, and used the TAD 6L6WGC-STR’s. Perfect, it’s like a new amp, I’ve got a great clean Fender sounding amp, that I can drive really hard, and when it dirtys I’ve got a really natural and full driven sound that’s pretty much all created from the power amp, rather than pre amp. I’ve still got a few glitches with this amp which will require amp tech touches, such as the drive channel is slightly louder than the clean (never use the drive channel so it’s not a big deal, but I’d like to know if there is a problem) and as I’ve not used this amp for a while I want it to have a good good service