I am often asked how to get better tone from a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. These industry standard amps are everywhere and are frequently house backline gear during an open mic or multi-band show. You have to admire how well Fender has placed these entry level “vintage modified “ tube amplifiers, but many reviewers and users agree they are less than perfect. I’d suggest Fender acknowledges that too, since they provide custom shop vintage tube amps which do get some great sounds – at a premium price. I didn’t enjoy the last time I played an HRD because I know how good amplifiers can sound, but sometimes there is no option to use my own amplifiers so I used the clean channel with a tube screamer type pedal and took what I got.
How do you get great tone from an HRD? Here is my easy, and less easy suggestion.
Easy: Use it as an amp stand for your Fat One amplifier. It gets your Fat One amplifier off the floor so you can project all that wonderful tone into the audience better. If you need to move more air to better fill the room, you could consider using the HRD speaker as an extension speaker for your great sounding Fat One amplifier. The OEM speaker is not very good, but it is not the worst speaker in the world. Better would be to upgrade the OEM speaker with a Weber 12F150 – which doesn’t “fix” the amplifier but makes a big difference, then use it is a combination amp stand and extension speaker.
Less easy: The first thing to realize is only the clean channel can ever sound ok – don’t use the drive or more drive channels – you’ll only feel bad because they never will sound good. Start with new power tubes. I like the JJ / Tesla 6L6GC tubes from Tube Depot at about $35 for a matched pair. Bias them up for middle power dissipation operation. I like using about 60% which for these tubes is about 30 - 40 mA. Next, as I mentioned above, change the speaker. The Weber speaker above would make a world of difference, is easy to change with some basic tools and costs about US$100. The next best upgrade for the money is the output transformer. A good quality Heyboer OT for Fender 40W amplifiers running a pair of 6L6 tubes will cost you about US$50 and after the speaker is the next best upgrade. It is not a drop in replacement, but if you want the best from that amplifier you need to do it next.
Once you have replaced the tubes, speaker and OT as I’ve suggested, you are basically done because it won’t get significantly better. I’ve pulled these amps apart further and do not want anything to do with them. There are a myriad of low cost parts put together with low cost techniques and you can upgrade caps to change the tone, but now you are spending money with diminishing returns. If it doesn’t sound good to you after these primary upgrades, it likely never will.
There are all sorts of other mods available on-line but once you’ve hit the big dollar, big impact items, now individual tone subjectivity comes into play and one person’s mod may not do it for you. Check them out, but be cautious. After the mods you have done, if the amp still does not work for you, you may be able to sell it as an upgraded HRD for reasonable money and get most of your money back. Be prepared to provide the original parts to the new owner who may not have your enlightened view of tone and want OEM parts.
I suggest the easy approach. A Fat One Tweed Super with 30W, 2 vintage-style 10 inch AlNiCo speakers, P2P wiring and hand built, packaged in a finger jointed pine cabinet and wrapped in tweed is a great tone generating amplifier. It also fits very nicely on that HRD amp stand.
