John Hendow

Over the years that I’ve owned my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, it’s seen a lot of stage and studio time. I don’t remember exactly when I got this amp; it must have been at least five or six years ago. In general it’s always been a solid performer with a few minor personality quirks: (1) the “red” gain channel is ridiculously overdriven and musically unusable (2) the amp breaks up far too early in the gain stage and (3) the stock speaker sounds like a ham sandwich.

A few years ago I experienced the most common of HRD ailments: the all-too-common cold solder issue with the 5W resistors (#R58 and #R59 on the PCB). It manifests itself as random channel switching and reverb switching. This is typically repaired by simply re-soldering the errant connections, but my local shop tech also added jumpers to help alleviate the overheating on these traces.

The first step for this amp will be a full retube. I have ordered a set of JJ tubes:

• ECC81 ( 12AT7 ) in V1.
• ECC832S in V2. This is a hybrid tube that is an ECC83S ( 12AX7 ) on one side and an ECC82 ( 12AU7 ) on the other side.  Essentially this will drop the gain in both the clean and drive channels and increase the headroom.
• ECC83S for the phase splitter.

I’ll install the tubes and fully rebias the amp. Then I’ll install a new speaker. I’ve ordered a Weber Chicago 12 which I’m told is a very nice vintage-sounding speaker with lots of clean headroom. Once the speaker arrives I expect the amp to have a significantly improved clean voice. A post-upgrade report will follow…

On Saturday 4/9 The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at “Hops n Props”, an annual microbrew festival held at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. We’ve performed at this event for a number of years and it’s always enjoyable. This show included a number of our favorite songs in the set list, with some of the big crowd-pleasers in each set. I brought along the new goldtop for this show and used it for the first set, switching over to the black strat to wrap up the night. The new guitar sounds very good and has a gutsy growl when slightly driven. For songs like “American Girl” it has a nice beefy tone that seems to sit in the mix better than the strat. I’m sure this guitar will get a lot of stage time in the band.

Our drummer Jeff was out of town this weekend we had the pleasure of working with our pal Shane Peck as a sub. Stefan and I worked with Shane for years in two bands: 80s Invasion and Black Celebration. Previous to that, Shane regularly performed with Jumbalassy as a sub drummer. Great musicians are worth calling on again and again!

One down side to performing at Hops n Props is that we really don’t much of a chance to try the beer. With only one quick break between sets, we’re lucky to get a single taste of one beer before we need to return to the stage. Once the music is over the beer stops flowing and everyone breaks down to load out. My wife helped out by fetching a taste of one of the IPA selections for me to try at the end of the night. Another great show with great friend in DMQ. Always a pleasure.