After many years my vintage clean amp sound from my Peavey Classic has now been dumped. It’s been a great work horse but was no longer giving me the sounds I wanted for how I’m playing currently. After talking to my trusty amp tech Trev at TipTon amps he suggested look at the Fender Blues Deluxe range.

Bit tatty but sounds great !
Fender amps have never really been one of my favourite amps partly down to an old school teacher I had who had a Fender amp, and his tone was awful, it was like a more trebble based Hank Marvin sound – yes, it wasn’t good. The sound suited him and his playing but it still haunts me to this day. Based on Trev’s advice I went to my local music shop and tried the Fender HotRod Deluxe amp, and the Fender Blues Deluxe amp, I was lucky as they had both in. I liked both, but prefered the Blues Deluxe amp, it had a better gain channel and I prefered the clean channels sound, it seemed warmer. I’m sure you’re aware that guitar amp prices are through the roof now thanks to our weak pound, so I decided to hit the second hand market. I found one for a good price local to me, when I turned up to pay for it the amp was battered to hell and had a few obvious faults and potentially a few less obvious faults. I lowered the price down to what was almost robbery due to the condition of the amp but it still sounded good. I took it to my amp tech at Tipton Amps who find out there was more problems than the obvious battering. After some solid repair work, the amp is now back in my hands sounding better than ever. Expect some new recodings, I’m already working on a sound that this amp is perfect for.

Fender Deluxe Amp Top
I had a (in my view) solid idea for an intro / bridge section for a song and after messing around with it last night decided it was worth keeping in a short recording so I can play around with it more later, however for it to work I need to find a specific guitar sound as that’s how it sounds in my head. I know it’s a stat sound (lucky for me) and I can hear it on the bridge/middle pickup, with a mid drive with the trebble rolled back more than average, but then there is something missing, I think it’s an octivia style pedal (thanks to a discussion with someone else) so instead of buying one, I’m going to borrow one to see if I can get the ball park sound I want, then if it works, I’ll build my own. Any guitarist will know that the tonal search is a never ending quest, so don’t expect to hear this song any time soon unless I happen to stumble across the holy grail. I’ll get back to you on this specific sound hunt.
Well, it’s good but expensive news today. The good gents at DataClinic have managed to recover a pretty big chunk of my lost Protools data. It’s not been cheap and I’m weighing up the value of actually having it recovered for this cost, and although it’s going to hurt and in simple terms it’s not physically worth it for the 80-100GB of data they have managed to recover, I’ll go with it and pay to get the data back as some of it was of personal value to me and when I listen again I may find some stuff I didn’t know I’d recorded, so although it’s going to hit the wallet hard and it’s not worth it, I’m pleased to have it back and the effort DataClinic have put in, they are a great service and if you want data back, I can recommend them.