Fender 59 Bassman vs Deville
itsevolutionbaby
Posts: 144
Ok, what is the real difference between these 2 amps? Also what is the difference between the Deville and blues deville? I am sick and tired of my JCM 900 and want something new. I will trade the head and cabinet in, and will probably take a beating on doing so. I would love an 30w orange, but at $1,250 that looks to be a bit too expensive right now. Any advice is appreciated....
What ain't a country I ever heard of. Do they speak English in what?
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the deville is a channel switching amp, normal and drive. and has reverb. solid state rectified.
the hot rod deville has a boost on it's drive channel.
personally, i don't think the drive channels on the devilles sound good. the normal channel is fine though.
Oh and the Blues Deville is the predecessor to the Hot Rod series, early nineties vintage, reissued last year, they are great sounding amps. Fender added "More Drive" to the Hot Rod series, probably to try and compete with Marshalls ultra gain channel on the DSL's. Basically, skip the channel switching it's not as good as you can get out of that amp in other ways. A couple of TS pedals toegther or clean boosts or maybe a Clark Gainster, yeah, you can do better than fenders channel switching, probably the same jackasses that designed the Dynatouch line.
They are all very fine amplifiers, and thats the reason you need to play and compare them all, to find out what works for you. Some might sound brighter than you want or darker or just right. The cleans are all slightly different due to the character of the amps and the speakers, you can change the character with tube swaps, cap changes, and speaker swaps.
i had a deville for a while. very loud and very rich on the clean channel. i could never turn it loud enough to overdrive it though.
OH, well in that case, non channel switching is perfect. There are people who do mods on the reissue bassmans as well. There's a great thread over at the gear page about it. You'll love the shannon with it, you might even want to add one more or some kind of Clean or dirty boost in front or behind the shannon.
i wouldn't bother with the hot rod deville if you don't want amp distortion. just focus on the tweed reissue and the bassman to compare.
I think they ask 1200 for the LTD but I've seen them for 9 and under on fleabay and etc. Having webers like the Tweed Twin would take out some of the ice pick but would make it even more. It might be a little over budget. Especially since you can get a Clark Beaumont for 1200 and the Orange at 1250 I guess. I really like the Orange Rockers too.
You have the 15w Orange correct? Do you ever fiind the need for more volume? I was considering one of these, but I never see them used. There are 2 stores in Houston that carry them, and both are bad stores. Prices are high in both, and they dont stock mucn outside of the ad50tc head and cabinet. They had the ad50 combo but that is waaay out of my price range.
what kind of situation are you in?
if it's a small rehearsal room with two guitars competing, the 15W might not have enough volume. especially if you've got a loud drummer.
however, in a one guitar situation, or with a quieter drummer, or with the ability to mic, the 15W is fine. it's a pretty loud little bugger on it's own.
totally different voicing than the fenders though. and not even like the marshalls. they've got their own personality.
I have never needed more than my little amp could give, although sometimes I desire more clean headroom and I don't like running the gain knob above about 10:30. If anything I get volume complaints but hey, I'm used to that. If not for my little weber mass I'd probably get evicted. The fender Deluxe is a very pleasing 22 watts. The RI AC 30 Vox CC I tweaked for my ex GF's wealthy but clueless guitar player was way way way to loud for most of our situations. I don't know of a reason you'd need more really, you could add a cabinet, if Ex has one I'd love to hear the results and you can certainly mic it. I haven't tried speaker swaps or outboard cabs yet but I do have new Tung Sol and EH preamp tubes that should be here Friday along with my new EI EL84's. We'll see how that works, the sovtek 12AX7 LPS's squeal a bit past 12 O clock and have a tendency to get fizzy and squishy, this doesn't happen on the Rocker 30 which has considerably more power. Basically, in the majority of applications 18 to 20 watts is a gracious plenty. I had enough running a stage piano into my 130 watt Ultimate CHorus at high volume and enough against a Blues Jr as well. Oranges are considerably more round and deep sounding than the average Fender and Vox as well, so adding volume does not necessarily add brightness so engaging a quality OD like that of the shannon allows more of that fatness to come through and it's very detailed and harmonic. You'll still love the bassman and you won't need more than 40 watts, they can pretty much keep up with anyone. Oh, and check these out....
http://www.thdelectronics.com/products/yellow_jacket.htm