Fender Hot Rod Deluxe Discussion

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[quote author="walter"]Can someone post a picture of the inside?[/quote]
If you open the schematic on the first post and scroll down, you see a layout of the pc boards.
 
Just take a stock Fender, add an extra gain stage, build a divider on the plate circuit, put the amp face down on the carpet, turn it up to 11, and adjust the max gain to the max distortion you want for that particular axe.

Then go after the coupling caps to get the envelope you need for the "tone of the month" club, and you are pretty much there.

Try a 3 meg plate resistor if you want some fun.
 
[quote author="walter"]Yes I see the layout, but a picture is worth a thousand words.[/quote]
I'll try and get one posted over the weekend. I thought there was one on that site I posted a link to, but can't seem to find it.
 
[quote author="CJ"]...turn it up to 11, and adjust the max gain to the max distortion...[/quote]

I'm really not after a lot of distortion. Just some sweet tones with sustain. It'd be nice to be able to switch between a good clean Fender sound and at least one other usable sound (Marshall-estique or Voxy). That might be possible by switching coupling and by-pass caps, which is what I really want to explore. Finally, I could use the 2nd switch for a "lead" gain-boost or something.

[quote author="CJ"]Try a 3 meg plate resistor if you want some fun. [/quote]
I'm putting on my list of things to try! (sounds like the makings for a good "tube distortion" pedal)
 
Also try a .022 for C5, I like this in older fender amps to clean up the muddy, but with such a bussy circuit it may not make a difference.
 
Well, for those of you still interested - it’s been over 9 months now, but better late than never as they say. I took a new position at work back in May and my head has been buried in the sand since then. I literally didn’t get around to working on my HRD until the holidays! :shock:

After changing parts and and tweaking around on it, I finally ended up with the following mods:

Complete re-tube using JJs from Eurotubes (including balanced inverter tube & matched power tubes)

Changed C2, C6, C10, C18, & C24 to orange-drops (used original values) just because I wanted to. :wink:

C1 changed to 22uF ele to kill off extra low end – made it a little less muddy.

Tone Stack - I played with the values quite a bit using the Duncan Tone Stack calculator as a guide (boy, that thing is handy!) before settling on the following: C7 changed to 300pF mica; C5 & C6 changed to .022 orange-drops; R12 changed to 82K; jumpered wiper of mid pot to it’s CW side. These changes made it closer to a bassman tone stack. The tone controls now interact with each other to a much higher degree than before.

At this point, the Drive & More Drive modes were sounding better, but the Drive mode was still a little dark and the More Drive mode still had some buzz. One of the mods I read suggested disconnecting pin 9 of the relay going to the C3/R27 junction and adding another J111 to switch in C3 only when More Drive was selected.

Instead of doing that, I figured some of the buzz was due to the 1uF (C8) being switched in to bypass V2As cathode resistor (R17) when More Drive was selected. Since the More Drive gain was so high already, I decided to pull C8 completely and then use Q1 to just switch C3 in & out with More Drive.

To accomplish this, C8 was removed and the side of C3 (now a 300pF mica) going to the relay/R27 junction was lifted and connected to the R23/Q1-Drain junction. I also changed R23 to 1M to match R27 (maybe not necessary, but I did it anyway). At this point there was less buzz in the More Drive mode with just the right amount of gain, and the Drive mod was about as clear as the clean channel, which was more or less what I was shooting for.

C11 (across the master pot) was changed to 680pF mica to further tame the Drive/More Drive highs a little, but I can’t tell that it made much of a difference.

The master pot was changed to 250KA. That gave it a more linear feel – it doesn’t jump up quite as fast as it used to.

C23 was changed to 2700pF mica to let a little more low-end through the Drive/More Drive modes.

I added 68pF micas across the volume & drive controls (between the CW end & the wiper) which gave it a little more sparkle all around.

Last, I replaced the external speaker jack with an SPST to switch the feedback in and out (gray wire connecting the 8 ohm OT tap to R69). Whoa baby, is this ever cool! Of course, it’s a lot less tame without FB, but man, does it ever make that amp come alive! The existing FB ratio is 10:1 and sounds too sterile to me. I’m going to try a higher ratios of 20-30:1. But, whatever I end up with, the FB-whack switch is staying!

Funny thing, no previous mods had been made to the circuit, but someone had replaced the stock output transformer with a 4K/4ohm “bassman” OT from Antique Electronics. (AE just list it as a “Fender replacement”) I have no idea why anyone would do that unless they were running another 8ohm in parallel and thought this OT would sound better. Strange. Anyway, I ordered the larger 4K/8ohm 40W OT iron from Weber which should arrive this Wednesday.

I also took a look at the stock Eminence's (Legend 125) response curve and found it to have a “relatively” larger peak around 2.5K than most of the other speakers, which explains why no matter what I did to the circuit, I couldn’t get rid of all that harsh upper-mid sound. You can see a graph here: http://www.bltsound.com/eminence/legend-1258.pdf You can also hear the peak in the sound samples on the Eminence site. (The levels of these samples are all over the place. I had to record and normalize them in order to make true comparisons without being "volume" biased.)

After much reading, listening, and agonizing, I decided to replace it with a Legend GB12 (Greg Martin’s favorite speaker). By comparison , it’s curve looks like this http://www.bltsound.com/eminence/legend-gb128.pdf As you can see, the peak is still there, but the rest of the curve is up there closer to it, so the peak isn’t as large, relatively speaking. The GB12 is also supposed to arrive this Wednesday so I’ll replace it when I replace the OT. I'll come back and report how it sounds after that if y'all are still interested. Hopefully it won’t take me 9 more months to get to it, lol!

I’ll also probably try is raising R22 like CJ said, but only to 220K - 330K instead of 3M. :wink:

Don’t know if this is enough information to make up for 9 months, but that’s about all I’ve got for now.
 
Nice post!

Maybe a pot on the feedback?

I ran my twin without feedback and it sounded great.
A little punchy, but git players use the hands to control the amp.

I was amazed at Eddie Van Halen a couple of weeks ago, when he is really crankin out the rapid fire notes, his hands barely move, the left hand stays at the same position, he just reaches out further, usually covers 5 or 6 frets, the picking hand does not move either, as there are a lot of hammers and pulls, so in order to play fast and good, you have to have economy of movement, and a very lite touch thru a very loud amp, which is very hard to do without a lot of noise, but he does it.
so having the amp be a part of you is what playing electric is all about, you don't play the guitar, you play the amp, at least for VH type of stuff.
 
Yeah, I thought about using a pot for adjusting NFB and didn’t because I knew it would be scratchy, but heck, it really doesn’t matter. It’s not like I’m going to be messing with it in the middle of a song.

I know what you mean about the amp responding to your playing like that. Same principle works with acoustic guitars, too. My favorite acoustic is one a friend built for me. It may not be the loudest tone-monster I've ever played, but it’s response is unbelievable! Once I got used to that, I couldn’t stand to play anything else.

Got my OT today. I may just start working on this thing…
 
hey i discovered this acoustic thing by accident, its kind of a left hand pull off, but you actually get under the string with your finger, usually first position chords, you lift it up and let it snap on the way to your next fret.


Trying to get it not to be an accident, but a trick.

What king of guitar was that you wetre playing that read your mind?

I like Gatemouth's analysis, "I finally found a guitar that thinks like I do".
 
Maybe look into a DIY beamblocker idea for the speaker. That might help with the peak.

http://www.webervst.com/blocker.html
 
the new blues deville?
yeah, Gerald , not the subway guy, but the Weber guy, although he could probably stand to lose a few, says they did not interleave the windings, so you get a Mercury instead of a Triad.
:twisted:
 
[quote author="CJ"]Trying to get it not to be an accident, but a trick.[/quote]
Yeah, that's always the difficult part, lol!
What king of guitar was that you wetre playing that read your mind?
A friend of mine, John Arnold built it. He's been at it for many years, but has only built 61 of them. Mine was the last one - got it over 2 years ago. I think I posted about it here before. I "ordered" it in 1990 and finally got it in 2005. He mostly does repairs and just builds every now and then. I think there's a picture of me with it somewhere in the Brewery.

Gatemouth's quote is pretty much it!
 
Got the OT and speaker installed tonight. Cleans and low Drive settings sound really good! Clean has the best "Free Ride" tone I've heard so far. Lower Drive settings nail that Los Lonely Boys "How Far Is Heaven" lead sound.

Drive has a good Fender-y crunch when cranked through it's range, but I'm still not that happy with More Drive. It doesn't buzz like it did, but there's still something missing. Also, I'm a sustain freak, and that just isn't happening either. Need to do more tweaking here...

Switching out the NFB gives it a midrange grind that reminds me some of a Hiwatt. Needs a Vox type "cut" control in that mode.

Gus - That beam blocker is a cool gadget. I started to order one when I got my OT, but didn't. I might give it a shot later on, although this speaker isn't as harsh. Still a little bright, though.
 
you can do an LA2 type mod by playing with different value caps across the feedback resistor, when it is switched in.
it lets more hi freq stuff in as neg feedback, hence, less high end.

in order to get a good low volume sustain without a mesa 400 volt preamp B+ harsh santana "shes not there fizz" then you need a dual master vol after the phase inverter.

you set up your overall volume in clean mode with the master master, which will be close to your overall volume in suatain mode, the first volume knob will bealrady on 11 of course, then you adjust your sustain with the in between master control.

The good part about this is, is that there is less of that transition drama when a guy hits the master switch, if you have a foot pedal brought out.
I hate that when it is blatently obvious when someone switches in some sustain.
It should be a smooth transistion.
The phase inverter master acts more like a limiter, than a volume boost, if you know what I mean, because it limits both clean and dirty signals.


This is as much clean sustain your amp will be capable of, without using an outbord effects pedal.

If you hate changing 9 volt batts and having the wires break, then you will want to use no boxes, and thus one less cord to plug in.\

So if the amp still does not have enough mojo, you have to either add another stage, which is a pain, or tweak the existing stages for more gain.

How do you do that?
Easy with tubes.
Just plug in a 12AX7a in the phase inverter spot for starters, and report back immediately.


Or, get some hotter pickups.

There are some youtube vids of of Edger Winter with Ronnie Montrose doing free ride. if you search a bit.

I swear, everybody was so F'd up back then. The band was messed, but the audience didnt care, becuase then were even more messed up!Deringer, sheesh, his eyes were half closed most of the time.

I wish people had that spirit nowdays.
That VH concert was good, but the audience was dead.
Only one guy got cuffed in the whole place, and they let him go.


that sounds like an "in between out of phase" strat sound, but montrose has alwyas liked the humbuckers.
there is some cool Montrose at winterland from the first album on you tube also.

I put a little 3 in 1 oil on the rosewood before I play that song, you cant hit those chord slides on a sticky neck.
And if you hang up and miss, everybody heres it on that song.

OK, the strat sound is the intro, you are talking about the vibrato sustains.
That is definately a Gibson.
The way he gets that is to excite the string with a shake that is super imposed on the original factory standard Montrose signature slow hand vibrato frequency. Nobody uses that vibrato speed, BTW.
That is how you can tell when Ronnie is playing on anything.
For a vivid lesson on this, see "Town Without Pity"
Crank it, if your spine does not tingle, you are clinically or musically dead.

Don't tell anybody about this trick.
It takes a lot of energy, becuase you are adding energy to the string, which is very tricky to do.
Only a few freaks...

Funny, Ronnie has terible stage fright.
Tghat is why you do not see him out there much.
One time at the Cow Palace at a New Years show with ZZ Top, which is a huge place, the power went out on the opening number three times.
Ronnies hands were shaking so bad, I thought he was going to go into a seizure and collapse.
Funny to see the real people behind the image they put out.
 
[quote author="CJ"]you can do an LA2 type mod by playing with different value caps across the feedback resistor...
[/quote]

Bwahahaha,

Uncle Chris almost gave away da sekret hof da feedback importante... if anybody cares.
 
[quote author="CJ"]...then you need a dual master vol after the phase inverter.[/quote]
I thought about putting a master in there, but didn't realize I could get more sustain with it. Is a dual master better than just using a single pot across the pentode grids (aka Matchless)? I already have a 12AX7 in the phase inverter.
OK, the strat sound is the intro, you are talking about the vibrato sustains.
Yeah, I was talking about the intro - classic clean strat to my ears. I always play that when checking out a clean channel. Never tried the 3-in-1 trick tho, lol!

Interesting stuff about Montrose having stage-fright. I never would have guessed but I reckon it happens to the best of them.

By the time I saw Edgar, Ronnie had already left and Rick was playing. I did however catch a Montrose show on their first tour. They were opening for Slade and easily stole the show! It was around '74, I think (I was 16). I went to a LOT of shows that year, most of them are just a blur but that one stands out vividly in my memory. They just blew me away.

Funny story about that - there was this crazy friend of mine that lived up the street. His parents would never let him go anywhere with me and my other friends. (We used to joke that they chained him up in the basement, lol!) Anyway, he sneaked out and went with us that night. It was in an arena type building with no seats on the main floor. We would always arrive early and make a mad dash to stand immediately in front of center-stage. Just before Slade came on, my crazy friend ripped off the duct-tape holding down Noddy Holder's tripod mic stand, and tipped it over. One of the roadies saw him do it, but ran out and mistakingly began slapping and cursing the guy next to him. It's really funny thinking back, but I remember at the time being pretty freaked and thinking "Maybe his parents were right after all!" The other poor guy kept proclaiming his innocence, but of course the roadie didn't believe him. Later on during the show, the crazy friend flung his jacket toward them and it landed across Dave Hill's guitar neck. He just laughed and threw it back out into the audience. Those were crazy times!
 

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