Fender Vintage Reissue '63 Tube Reverb

This is a free-standing reverb unit, made by Fender in 1963. Almost all the ones that you will buy nowadays are reissues but they are still the same basic idea. The idea is to run this between your guitar and the amp, as it will give you a deeper, surf-rock style reverb that isn't quite possible on a guitar amp. With a regular amp, such as a Fender Twin Reverb, the reverb unit itself is pretty small, and is nailed to the wood of the guitar, which gives the sound less room to move around, and thus, less reverberation. The springs are in the center of this unit, and the tubes in it help drive the reverb even more, resulting in some huge sounds.

UTILIZATION

This thing is pretty easy to edit. It has 3 knobs; Dwell, Mix, and Tone. The dwell knob controls the amount of reverb that the unit produces, the mix knob controls the amount of dry signal vs wet, and the tone controls whether the reverb comes out brighter or darker. The setup is kind of weird at first, some people like to run it through the effects loop while others like to run it before the amp. It's almost entirely a personal choice. I personally have had more luck running it before the amp as you lose less volume. The manual explains the whole thing pretty clearly.

SOUND QUALITY

I like this unit the best with my other fender products, namely a Fender amp (almost all the greats like the Twin, Champ, Blues Jr. and Deville will do), as well as a Jazzmaster, Jaguar, or Tele. The strat doesn't usually cut through as well but it still works well. Theoretically this will work fine with any guitar but I'm sure Fender tests it with their own, which is probably the reason that it sounds so good. This is great if you are looking for surf rock tones like Dick Dale, etc. but it can also work really well with a lot of sounds.

OVERALL OPINION

I think that this unit is pretty cool; however, lugging it around is not always a pleasant experience. Thus I'd say leave it in the studio, unless you are a surf-rock player who plays a lot of gigs. If it's not a crucial part of the setup for you than it's really not necessary. For me personally, I don't think I use it as much as I should considering how much it costs. I'd say be absolutely sure that you need a super-high quality reverb for your guitar, otherwise avoid it unless you work in the studio a lot and need a quality reverb there.