All user reviews of 3/5 for the Fender Hot Rod Deluxe

Fender has been the golden standard for guitar amplification for over 50 years. From the earliest RCA-inspired circuits to modern models like the Supersonic, Fender has been a prime player in the game every step of the way.

The Hot Rod Deluxe was introduced in 1995 as part of the Hot Rod series, which also included the Hot Rod Deville 4x10.

The Hot Rod Deluxe is a 1x12, 40 watt combo amplifier, powered by two 6L6GC's and voiced by three 12AX7A preamp valves. with a single channel and 3 switchable levels of gain.It has a preamp line out jack, as well as a power amp line out jack that allows it to use an extension speaker cabinet. There's also a footswitch jack for an included 2 button, 3 function footswitch.

UTILIZATION

The Hot Rod Deluxe is a master volume amp, allowing you to dial as much warmth into your clean tone or as much distortion into your overdrive as you want. A 3-band EQ helps further shape your tone, while a Presence control adds clean treble and a Reverb level controls the built-in spring reverb.

A rather interesting feature of the Hotrod Deluxe is its 3 stages of overdrive. Rather than having 3 separate channels crammed into one small combo chassis, Fender went the economical way and added an extra preamp tube to stack extra gain stages into the mix, essentially just adding more and more distortion to the bass tone. And this is where they strike out.

When demoing the Hot Rod Deluxe, one thing becomes quickly evident. The overdrive is pretty nasty. It's rattly, unfocused, and harsh, and I suspect the Jensen Special Design speaker that comes with the amp doesn't help matters.

The Clean tone is decent, however, and takes pedals rather well. And for this purpose the amp makes a solid grab-n-go or even a backline amp. But, I mean really, it's a Fender. They couldn't get away with having an amp with a bad clean tone. It's just sacrilege.

SOUNDS

The Clean Tone, depending on gain setting, can go from sparkly, spanky clean to slightly overdriven, tweedy goodness. The use of humbuckers drives the amp even farther, whereas single coils still allow the amp to breathe a bit by comparison.

Unfortunately, the clean tone, for most players, is the only usable tone in this amp. The Drive mode isn't terrible, but it isn't great either. It's a bit of a rattly omen of what's to come with the More Drive mode. More Drive pushes the amp into all out trainwreck (and not in the Ken Fischer sense) territory. The tones in this mode are harsh, muddy, piercing... it's just bad. It does a fine job of making your guitar sound like a $75 beater fresh out of the dumpster. Which is fine, if you're into that sort of thing. Not so much, if you're not.

EQ settings are decently responsive, though not so much in the overdrive modes. The amp has an underlying harshness no matter how its set, and I suspect the speaker choice has a large influence on that. Reverb is economical and mediocre in depth and texture.

OVERALL OPINION

The Hot Rod Deluxe serves best as one of those amps you buy for $300 on Craigslist, take home, do some mods to it, upgrade the speaker, and use it for a small gig amp where most of your non-clean tones will be coming from pedals. I don't consider it an intrinsically versatile amplifier.

The Hot Rod Deluxe III is said to have made considerable improvements on the overdrive modes, and I've yet to hear or play one, but I can only hope this is true. Still, the Hot Rod Deluxe has its uses, and it's not the worst amp out there, but I can think of several other models of Fender combo I would request as backline long before this one.

These amps have been one of the most if not the most popular amp Fender has ever built. They have three channels or two with a boost on the second and a fantastic tone. These amps sound great and take great orders from its users. They obey when instructed to do so for gigs and practicing. They have a great tone and a take pedals extremely well. These amps will travel the distance with you night after night of gigging. You can rely on them except for the light indicator that tells you if the amp is o or not. These little bulbs are notorious for going out on these amps. This amp is special factory run that just changed the tolex of the amp and nothing on the inside.

UTILIZATION


Fender Hot Rod Deluxe III Combo Guitar Amplifier Features at a Glance:

* Amplifier type: Tube
* Output power: 40W
* Speaker: 1 x 12" Celestion G12P-80, 8-ohm speaker
* Output impedance: 4 ohms or 8 ohms
* Preamp tubes: 3 x 12AX7
* Power tubes: 2 x 6L6
* Rectifier: Solid state
* Inputs: 2
* Channels: 3 selectable channels (Normal, Drive, and More Drive)
* Controls: Presence, Reverb, Master Volume, Middle, Bass, Treble, Drive select switch, Drive Volume, Bright switch
* Effects: Spring reverb
* Effects loop: Preamp output/power amp input
* Speaker jack: Extension speaker jack
* Covering/grille cloth: Black textured-vinyl covering with Blackface-style black/silver grille cloth
* Height: 18.75"
* Width: 23.5"
* Depth: 10.5"
* Weight: 45 lbs.
* Footswitch: 2-button, 3-function footswitch included
* Cover: Amplifier cover included

SOUNDS

Now that they have a usable gain channel then this amp has much more flexibility that before. The old amps were just outright sloppy. The bad thing is that these amps are made in Mexico. Only if the Hot Rod lll were made in the USA would I buy this amp. So they are going to be cheaper made and will break down on you a lot quicker. I'm not sure if they fixed the jewel light from going out on this model. Everyone who owned this amp knows that the light always goes out on these things.

Anyway, use this amp with any nice guitar. I like this amp with a solid Gibson Les Paul. I used it with a Line 6 Dl4 and a Ibanez Ts9 and I had some great tones that cut through the band quite well. The distortion is a bit muddy on these and I generally would use a pedal.

OVERALL OPINION

If you are on the market for a good tube amp that has two moderate low gain but usable gain then this might be the amp for you. However I would never buy this amp since its made in Mexico. Too bad to because this is a great amp and the Hot Rod lll's are even better as far as distortion wise For the price of this amp I would buy a used Marshall JCM2000. At new these amps come in at around $759. You can even pick up a Peavey 5150 for the price of this thing.

The Fender Hot Rod Deluxe is a fairly standard amplifier featuring two channels, an onboard gain boost for the drive channel, reverb, an effects loop and 40 watts of power driven by a single Eminence speaker. It is powered by a pair of 6L6s in the power section and it is basically meant to offer a decent Fender clean coupled with a reasonable drive circuit for everything from crunch to higher octane tones. It's a very common backline amp and I've used them at numerous club and festival shows. It's a pretty loud amp like many Fenders and cuts through in a band mix quite well.

UTILIZATION

Dialing in this amp for good tones is reasonable. It does suffer from a pretty awful sudden volume jump that can be a disadvantage when dialing in sounds. It has a fairly reasonable EQ and reacts as it should to control adjustment. The tones themselves are decent. I find this amp sounds a bit anemic due to the single speaker configuration. I've had better luck with the 4x10 Hot Rod Deville which has a punchier attack to my ears. It has a pretty good range of tones from clean to high gain and despite sounding a bit thin it can be made to be a great workhorse amp.

SOUNDS

This amp sounds at home with a variety of different guitars and in a variety of musical contexts. It has a great classic Fender clean sound that gets great sparkle and clarity especially with a single coil loaded guitar like a Strat or Tele. The crunch tones have a great raw energy to them that is right at home with a Les Paul or ES335. The highest gain tones have a nice open airy quality but can be prone to buzziness at uber high gain. It's not an amp that was built with metal styles in mind but it does sound good for classic or hard rock, especially if boosted.

OVERALL OPINION

All in all I think the Fender Hot Rod Deluxe is a decent workhorse amp for some looking for a versatile amp with good clear Fender cleans and a reasonable drive tone. They can be had for about $500 used which is a fair deal. I'm not the biggest fan of the single speaker layout but it works well enough for what it is.

There are a couple new features in the Hot Rod Deluxe that are very important to me. The first one being that speaker that is standard is actually usable. They used to have some cheap speaker in there that wasn't very musical and a lot of guys would switch out the speaker for something much more sweeter in tone. The next feature is a usable gain channel two and three. Before the gain channels were so bad that I never even used them. They sounded terrible and nothing like a tube amp distortion.


Fender Hot Rod Deluxe III Combo Guitar Amplifier Features at a Glance:

* Amplifier type: Tube
* Output power: 40W
* Speaker: 1 x 12" Celestion G12P-80, 8-ohm speaker
* Output impedance: 4 ohms or 8 ohms
* Preamp tubes: 3 x 12AX7
* Power tubes: 2 x 6L6
* Rectifier: Solid state
* Inputs: 2
* Channels: 3 selectable channels (Normal, Drive, and More Drive)
* Controls: Presence, Reverb, Master Volume, Middle, Bass, Treble, Drive select switch, Drive Volume, Bright switch
* Effects: Spring reverb
* Effects loop: Preamp output/power amp input
* Speaker jack: Extension speaker jack
* Covering/grille cloth: Black textured-vinyl covering with Blackface-style black/silver grille cloth
* Footswitch: 2-button, 3-function footswitch included
* Cover: Amplifier cover included

UTILIZATION

Details
Type Tube
Number of Channels Three
Power 40W
Speakers 1 x Celestion G12P-80
No Effects
Reverb
EQ Treble, Bass, Middle
No Modeling
Number of Tubes 5
Preamp Tubes 3 x 12AX7
Power Tubes 2 x 6L6
Inputs 2 x Instrument
Outputs 1 x Speaker
Footswitch I/O
Effects Loop
Height 18.75"
Width 23.5"
Depth 10.5"
Weight 45 lbs.

SOUNDS

Now that they have a usable gain channel then this amp has much more flexibility that before. The old amps were just outright sloppy. The bad thing is that these amps are made in Mexico. So they are going to be cheaper made and will break down on you a lot quicker. I'm not sure if they fixed the jewel light from going out on this model. Everyone who owned this amp knows that the light always goes out on these things.

Anyway, use this amp with any nice guitar. I like this amp with a solid Gibson Les Paul. I used it with a Line 6 Dl4 and a Ibanez Ts9 and I had some great tones that cut through the band quite well.

OVERALL OPINION

If you are on the market for a good tube amp that has two moderate low gain but usable gain then this might be the amp for you. That is if it is the newest model. The older models had an unusable dirty channel.

I would recommend getting this amp is you need a decent clean amp that has a good tone for pedals. I gigged a lot with my amp but always ran pedals in front of it. The other two channels were pointless. If you need distortion then don't get this amp. However I would never buy this amp since its made in Mexico. For the price of this amp I would buy a used Marshall JCM2000. At new these amps come in at around $700. You can even pick up a Peavey 5150 for the price of this thing.

This 40 watt amp (March 12 AX7 6L6 + 2) has 2 channels: 1 clean channel with a single volume knob (like this can not be wrong), and a crunch channel with volume controls for drive, and the bass middle treble settings are common to the reverb 2 channels.

UTILIZATION

The configuration is too simple the clean channel with its single volume knob and if you want to saturate the channel you buy some earplugs.

SOUNDS

The clean sound is good, actually found the grain Fender but especially do not put too much reverb, beyond 1.5 it looks like a drum sound is embedded: it sucks.
On channel 2 crunch sounds are not evil on the other hand distorted sounds are "shit", the sound is crushed scrap unusable if they put more drive to Donf.J 've tried everything SansAmp plug 1 1 V Twin Mesa nothing to make the popping sound is zero. I even ended up connecting a Marshall cabinet 1936: the sound is always zero. I even replace the HP original (Eminence) by a good Celestion Vintage 30 in attack on his wins in roundness in precision but the popping sound it is still as NIL.

OVERALL OPINION

This amp is for those who want to play the blues crunch and whose saturation is not necessary. For my part I sold quickly, preferring his little brother JUNIOR BLUES which despite its 15 watts and a single channel, deposits and saturates + natural way. I have sold and I found the amp RIVERA on my dreams Chubster 40 you can read my mind.

12 "8-ohm Fender Eminence speaker
Lamps 6L6 Groove Tube 12AX7 preamp tubes and 3.
3 channels "normal," "drive: and" more drive "-with gain and master controls for the" drive "channel and" bright "switch for the" normal "channel.


UTILIZATION

clean, rock, riff, blues

SOUNDS

here but the fact there's more at Fender

OVERALL OPINION

like any amp lamp must be allowed to take the temperature and after we go

a 65 twin reverdb is far better