Gutted & Rebuilt Fender '65 Deluxe Reverb Reissue | How Did the Builder Do?

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[@markmanning3387]

As a builder, I really appreciate this 'How did the builder do' series you've been doing. Very informative. 👍

[@qua7771]

I'll agree with you about the wiring. I recently ran into a problem running wires that way. I got all kinds of weird oscillations, ghosting and muddy lows. I originally thought it was my filter caps. Wiring matters!

[@MinivanMegafun100]

I did the same thing with that conductive sleeve when I made a bunch of patch cables for my pedal board. I didn’t realize that black sleeve was conductive and it was making contact with a bunch of ends and grounding out. Well after having to take apart and resolder about 20 cable ends I learned a valuable lesson.

[@trbr1799]

Always informative videos. Thanks Lyle!

[@seanlavery2236]

Thanks for another great informative video Lyle! I recently built a 5C1 Champ with a 6X4 rectifier out of an old sound reader for a projector. Pretty cool project but I was at very low output and I've been chasing the cause...Turns out I made an arra. I mean an error. Lol. I used the same Mogami cable as this video...Problem solved. Thanks Lyle!

[@leiferickson3183]

One of the first amps I learned on back in the 80's was a silver face bandmaster reverb I had bought super cheap. I tried making is extra quiet by replacing all the resitors with...METAL OXIDE !!! resistors - Boy did that sound bad! I put all the carbon comps back in and replaced the first stage resistors with Carbon film. It made a world of difference. Learning things is a path not a destination.

[@efsglass]

Great series!!

[@fiddlix]

The guitar and pushing the amp really reveals how bright those metal films on plates are.

[@cpfs936]

"Really damn good." High praise coming from you, sir! (Oops, watched the rest of the video! 😐) I love your no-B.S. approach.

[@Irkin_Bollikans]

This really is a work of art for the eyes. Really neat grounds. But I think everyone learned something here. Keep up the detailed work and keep evolving ✌

[@russellesimonetta3835]

All metal films,, quiet all orange drops,, lead dress looks like a HiWatt. But as a hobbyist building amps is a learning and developing skills project. Being insulted is kind of like sniffing your own cork. A good teacher doesn't shame but encourages.Don't get me wrong, I appreciate your sharing knowledge.

[@weschilton]

Thing is, he's not acting as a teacher, he's a tech trying to work on an amp that has been built so that its very hard to work on. Sometimes the lessons come from unexpected places.

[@montygore]

I use the 174 coax in high power transmitters in the GHZ range. Fantastic cable.

[@bradleystereoguitaramplifi9616]

Thank you! I learned something here.

[@oldguy5381]

Can’t say enough for experience.

[@edwardhannigan6324]

Pretty looking amp, and great to see the little issues it throws up when properly probed by an expert..Great stuff, very informative..Thanks for sharing..Ed..uk..😀

[@giulioluzzardi7632]

At school my tutor would start the day by saying "Keep it simple, stupid" to me when I over complicated a project . He got fed up repeating himself all day so he shortened it to "KISS" so all we heard was "kiss" but it stuck and after 40 years of dealing with wires and boxes I can say I only failed on 2 jobs (that no-body else wanted to touch) by not touching any equipment till I understood the circuit and the brain of the designer(even sans schematic). Your viddy reminded me of dear Mr Watts(tutor) , I give you 100% for your patience and a great big thankyou.The amp sounds pretty good at this end , the harder tone may work well for some?

[@paulgizelt3381]

I've built quite a few amps in my time, and while I'm mindful of lead dress, none of my amps ever look as neat as some of these things I see on the interwebs. On the other hand, my amps are dead quiet and very reliable, so right angles, super tight twists and esoteric components may not actually be the answer to a good build.

[@qua7771]

I did this on my last build, and it gave me trouble with oscillations from crosstalk, and interference. The wiring was somewhat microphonic as well, as they vibrate near each other. I learned not to run wires in parallel. Neat isn't always good.

[@turn3]

Right angles are never a good choice with wire. Why stress the wire, just for looks?

[@qua7771]

@@turn3 Plus it's a longer run. Anything going to the grids should be soldered directly to it, or with the shortest lead possible. It would still look neat, and may even clean up some of that wiring mess. It may be hard to explain to a customer. A few terminal strips might help. There needs to be some space between wires carrying signal if they are not shielded.

[@holgate1970]

Many thanks for these very informative videos. Do u have a any opinion on Alessandro hand wired princeton or deluxes?

[@christianboddum8783]

What a blunder with the insulation material!! btw. I use Mogami a lot ;-)

[@andrewhodgson8895]

Thank you for an excellent video. I think you got the balance just right, regarding the original tech. Hopefully, (after completely disagreeing with you) he’ll come to realise you have some valid points. I’m a complete novice on amps, but the same issues happen in every walk of life - try telling an electrician his MCB is the wrong value! 😳😂

[@liquefactionist]

Very good about the wires next to each other. Plate and grid move opposite in voltage and so the coupling is "amplified". I assume no spaghetti dinner under the board.

[@Andy_Yates]

Really appreciate this style. This amp is certainly pretty to look at, but was not designed with service in mind. I've only done a handful of personal projects, and a couple times I caught myself saying, I hope I never have to get this thing out. You know when you say that, you're going to have to take it out 😂. Also the cheap-ass in me sees that and goes, oh they used so much extra wire making the right angles

[@useme2305]

what's better in fender amps? polyester or polypropylene? also, carbon film vs. carbon composition resistors..what do you prefer?? i just built a princeton for a friend with polypropylene and carbon films except in the power and bias stage where i used metal oxyde. it's pretty awesome.

[@Jonathan_Doe_]

Undo all the pot and jack socket nuts? Then the whole board with all the pots and jacks should lift up?

[@Jonathan_Doe_]

Oh boy I’d love to send you some pics of a JCM800 Bass Series Clone I’ve got that a guy built. Need to completely redo the layout because it’s a hot mess 😂.

[@simonkormendy849]

Some types of shielded audio cable can generate something called triboelectric noise, if you've ever tried tapping on the outside sheathing of an instrument lead and heard a corresponding noise coming through the amp at the same time, that's what triboelectric noise sounds like, essentially the instrument cable is acting like a microphone and generating an electrical signal when you tap on it.

[@mfam1306]

Thank you for posting this. It answers the question I had in my mind of "I wonder what an amp with all metal film resistors sounds like? I'm sure it's quiet, but what about the tone?" When it comes to resistors, how do you balance low noise floor and high quality/dynamic sound? What's the best type of resistor for certain locations, etc.?

[@joeltunnah]

He didn’t do a blind test. Aside from the hiss of carbon comps, there’s no way you can tell the difference in a guitar amp (which has a frequency response of about 60-8kHz) between metal films and Lyle’s beloved carbon films.

[@mattjohnson6916]

Great analysis of the challenge those shielded cables can cause! Question, if you don't mind: With Brown/Black/Silver panel Fender amps like that, do you prefer to use isolation washers with the input jacks and connect their grounds separately to the main ground bus wire, or leave them stock so they maintain a direct ground to the chassis with toothed washers?

[@PsionicAudio]

I just use the chassis to jack connection with toothed washers. Simpler, solid, one less thing to go wrong. No difference in a Fender if the rest of the grounding is good.

[@hheidrick]

I see this in my line of work also. To many people worry about how it looks more then the practicality of the work. Look beautiful but doesn’t work. Don’t get me wrong it’s nice to make it look good and take pride in your work, but think about it, if you had to rip that board out it wouldn’t have looked the same going back in. It’s like polishing a turd!

[@TheAxe4Ever]

I do like the way he has the wiring neatly done at 90° angles. Very old Orange-like.

[@PsionicAudio]

Visually appealing isn't always good for sound.

[@TheAxe4Ever]

@@PsionicAudio True. True. Same with women too. 😂

[@jambajoby32]

@@TheAxe4Ever 💯

[@howardskinner4916]

A layer of semicon? I wouldn't have expected that.

[@nickwilson9210]

Great video, I would love to have your knowledge, please keep making videos I learn a lot. Thanks 🙏🏻 I would love to send you my amps to rebuild. I don’t have anyone local like you. I am collector have around 12 amps but I have always wanted to gut my Princeton. Also is it possible to make ac30 custom classic x modded to a ac30 6/TBX. I used to have one and believe the chassis is the same but one has more valves due to the vib/trem I think 🤔 and maybe a ef86s can’t remember. Tube AMPS, Vox AC30 ccX Vox Ac4 hw Dr. Z maz18 Marshall SV20H (59 SLP) Morgan ac20 Fender Princeton 65 RI Fender blues deluxe tweed Fender blue jr tweed Fender 59 bassman RI Egnator tweaker 15watt Modelling amps Yamaha THR Universal audio OX Strymon Iridium

[@simonkormendy849]

There's at least two problems with carbon comp resistors I can think of off the top of my head, firstly carbon comps are prone to going noisy, I recently had to replace 5 carbon comp resistors in my 1975-1976 non-reverb Fender Super Twin because they generated loud crackly noises, secondly carbon comps have a tendency to drift out of tolerance and go high in value, one of the carbon comps I replaced was a 47k/1W 10% it actually measured 53k which was out of tolerance, I replaced all 5 carbon comp resistors with 1W 5% carbon film types of the appropriate values and that fixed the loud crackly noise completely, the amp is a lot quieter now, carbon comps are also notorious for generating a lot of hiss noise too.

[@paulwatson8809]

I once bought some unfamiliar but high quality instrument cable to pad a speaker order for free shipping. The patch cables i built had good continuity but all exhibited varying degrees of signal loss. Took me ages to figure it out. The culprit? The black conductive inner sleeve. All of my beautiful work and heat shrink overkill had to be taken apart. Wish I had seen this video...

[@8sigreg]

I used some of that wire to build patch cables for one of my pedalboards because I wanted to know if it worked better than the George L wiring. After having that center conductive wrap short out several connections, and having to redo them, I learned to hate it. Did those sound better? No. Were they worth the hassle? Definitely not.

[@riley0187]

@@8sigreg the black inner insualtion stops microphonics

[@zuperdee]

It looks like the builder of this amp was trying to do it in HiWatt-style, hence the use of all that solid-core wire and right-angle bends. If you’ve ever worked on or seen pictures of HiWatt amps, you would immediately understand why this builder might have been inspired to do it this way. HiWatt amps have some of the cleanest, most reliable and elegant wiring EVER!

[@tedmich]

2" hole saw through chassis top! What, you didn't try tantalum resistors?

[@CRUNCHCOLE]

Some of the turrets have wires going into them but they look like there is no solder in them. Especially the one close to the second tube from the right.

[@joeltunnah]

Yeah the soldering isn’t great.

[@joeltunnah]

I haven't found shielded cable to be necessary inside amps. Maybe I've just been lucky.

[@jasonnoonzio3473]

Rubber grommet next to choke ?

[@goodun2974]

Are you saying that the Mogami cable has both a braided shield *and* a conductive rubber shield? I've used shielded cable similar to that for for permanant nightclub sound system installations, but that stuff didn't have a braided shield, it only had a single, straight "drain" wire plus the carbon conductive shield. I've never tried it on tube amplifiers, only as interconnects between mics/mixer/signal-processing/amplifiers. I don't know how well the carbon-conductive shield would have held up under the heat of a tube amp. That cabling had excellent RF rejection but it could occasionally be slightly microphonic in certain circumstances.

[@PsionicAudio]

This is Belden, but it and the similar Mogami W2524 I use have spiral wrapped copper shield over the conductive layer.

[@leiferickson3183]

@@PsionicAudio I like the W2944 console wire. No conductive layer, and it is small and flexable for low level signals.

[@Jonathan_Doe_]

Problem with NOS tubes is, vacuums are a hard thing to maintain, and tubes have many potential vacuum failure points with all the pins coming out.

[@montygore]

If using coax to sheild noise one end end of the braid should. Not nessary to ground both ends on an amp.

[@cgavin1]

Orange drops just give me instant cringe. Reminds me of Torres and the 80's and all the beautiful old amps that were cut and butchered to make way for the devil's capacitors. 🤣

[@jodysmusic]

Is that the guitar end of a silent cable plugged into the amp?

[@PsionicAudio]

Yeah, both ends of this cable have them, as some guitars are easier with a right angle plug.

[@jmo1366]

Where are you located?

[@JeremiahL]

You should try replacing the starter on a Toyota corolla... lol

[@zbaby82]

It seems to lack punch and sustain. Could it be the tubes? Also it looks like the builder was inspired by a vintage Hiwatt amp.

[@PsionicAudio]

Except HiWatts have the lead dress of different stages separated. HiWatts also have dumb ground concepts. But that's another story...

[@riley0187]

tone stack adjustment on lower mids

[@JenkemFactory]

The difference in resistor material is really interesting! perhaps mostly because no one in the "audio community" seems to really be able to explain what that is or the actual impact it could have to the sound 😅 In some engineering fields it does become relevant, enough so that modern Spice simulations use non linear models for resistors. Carbon comp resistors are generally highly voltage dependent, having increased resistance for bigger voltage drops, and slow thermal time constants (notable changes can be expected after about 10s if im not terribly mistaken). This ofcourse means that some resistors could cause pleasant compressing distortion in some positions, but also unpleasant expanding distortion in other positions.. So my critique is that I don't think it's respectable to state that metal film resistors sound "hard" compared to carbon comp, this is an extremely slight effect that can only have positive impacts on the sound at some specific points in this circuit. Metal film resistors have some capacitive conductance at high values, but not enough to impact any relevant frequencies. It would be nice to hear what veterans in the field have to say about this subject in more detail!

[@joeltunnah]

Cork sniffing at its finest.

[@MooCow2X2]

This amp reminds me of the Princeton NR clone I made many years ago. (Still have it ). Edit: you answered my question on resistor composition in the video. So what about capacitors?

[@PsionicAudio]

Any good quality polyester is fine. These 600PS caps are great. They are just physically huge and make it hard to get space between components. Space is a very valuable thing in an amp. Most modern PCB designs don't sound as good as a turret/eyelet board not because of the PCB or traces vs wires but because PCBs allow the designer to place components much closer together - and so designers do. See Mesa. A good PCB layout maintains space between components. See Suhr. If you compare this amp with the 68 DR I gutted and rebuilt you'll see how much more space I have between components and stages and how much closer components are to the tube triodes used for those stages. I could get the exact same results with a high quality PCB. If I maintained the same spacing!

[@goodun2974]

@@PsionicAudio , whoever built this amp would have had a lot more room for widely spacing the components if they had put the filter caps on the exterior of the chassis, underneath a "doghouse", like Fender did. Granted, it would have cost a little more for the additional turret board and the metal doghouse cover, and taken a little longer to wire up the power supply, but Leo Fender, who was known and noted for being thrifty, felt it was important to build the the amps that way, even though it cost more.

[@PsionicAudio]

Or you can do what I do, which is bestest. ;)

[@lenmil8421]

Built like a modern day Japanese car.

[@jerryhatrick5860]

Sounds solid state to me. Lime an old. Peavey, not a bad thing but if I have a tube amp I want a tube amp tone. Today's solid state sound as good. Better than this thing.

[@goodun2974]

I never much cared for Fender optocoupler tremolo; surely there's a better way to do it while staying roughly within the general confines of a Bassman or Deluxe Reverb circuit? (3-tube Brownface Harmonic "Vibrato" being not all that practical here, sigh....)

[@leiferickson3183]

Have a look at the 6G3 deluxe schematic for clues on output stage bias modulation tremolo. not sure the swing would be there for 6L6's though, so some changes might be needed, Make sure there is still bias voltage if you do the mod though!

[@joeltunnah]

Look at a vintage Vox AC4. ECC83 oscillator modulates the cathode bias of the input EF86. Sounds great, I have one.

[@goodun2974]

@@joeltunnah , The EF86 isn't very practical for most builders and manufacturers nowadays because vintage examples are expensive and they have a tendency to be microphonic anyway. Perhaps another commoner pentode could be used? such as a 6AU6, which would require changing over to a 7-pin socket, but the tubes are cheap and readily available and you could easily buy a half dozen in order to select the quietest, for less than the cost of a single EF86. Or perhaps a 5879, frequently used as a low-noise Mic preamp in PA/microphone paging amps. Not pinout compatible with an EF86, and has lower gain (as does the 6AU6), but theoretically possible.... FWIW, I've worked on plenty of Fender amps, and lots of oddballs such as Magnatone, Danelectro/Silvertone, Valco-sourced Gretsch/Airline/Harmony/Supro etc, but I've never actually worked on or played through a Vox!

[@joeltunnah]

@@goodun2974 I was suggesting you look at the trem implementation, not trying to promote the EF86. You could adapt the circuit to another tube type. But the EF86 is currently made by 4 companies, TAD, EH, JJ, and “Tung-Sol”. Prices are the same as most other new preamp tubes.

[@goodun2974]

@@joeltunnah , I did find the early AC4 schematic with EF86; thanks for the tip. That tube unfortunately does still have a general reputation for noise and microphonics among current production tubes as well. If I was to buy any I'd probably get them from TAD since they purportedly triplecheck/select at least some of their premium tubes for low noise.....but I've got dozens of 6AU6 and a handful of 5879 tubes to play with. On the other end of the wattage spectrum, I also have a BIG Webster PA/mic-paging amp with 4 ---- count 'em, 4! ---- 5879 mic inputs, a couple-three octal tubes for the tone stack and phase invertor, and 4 6L6GC for output. That thing could be a real beast with some tweaking!

[@simonkormendy849]

The one good thing about carbon comps is that they exhibit very low inductance, which is probably why they're used in RF circuits, I read online somewhere that carbon comps actually generate a form of distortion that's supposedly pleasing to the ear.

[@joeltunnah]

Resistors don’t “generate a form of distortion”. Good grief.

[@netterstyl]

Perfect is the enemy of good...?

[@KB_Joys]

I think its always easy to go in and critique someone else's work, simply because you didn't build it. Also sometimes people end up doing things for simplicity, like not drill another hole in a chassis simply because there was already one, and didn't want to further ruin the originality, or deface it's value.

[@rob3568]

Laid out like like a service panel, not something that is meant to maintain the nuance of an audio signal. Kind of surprised its not more noisy!

[@BradsGuitarGarage]

90deg bends trigger me.

[@skeeterbuck1355]

Lyle, I'm looking forward to sending my amp to you for review and possible builder correction. Just waiting for a response to my email.

[@PsionicAudio]

Sorry, been swamped. I need to set up some auto replies. And some strict spam filters and automated sorting stuff. I need more mes.

[@skeeterbuck1355]

@@PsionicAudio I thought as much as your blizzard of videos testifies to . Great techs like yourself are always super busy. I'm just waiting my turn. 😊

[@dimitris470]

Long solid core wire is a terrible idea in applications with lots of vibration. And that includes both sound and transportation. Both for microphonics and joint strength

[@markarita3]

ERRRORRR! lmao

[@achysklic]

Lots of unsoldered joints

[@ernestschultz5065]

Anemic? It sounds like it has leukemia.

[@PsionicAudio]

I try to avoid any accusation that I'm making fun of cancer victims. But the Hapsburgs are always fair game...

[@ernestschultz5065]

@@PsionicAudio I apologize if my comment was in bad taste.

[@PsionicAudio]

Nah, all good

[@oneox958]

"kit builders dilute what people like myself do" yikes, man, that comes off as really snobby. Everyone who wants to learn has to start somewhere. You're basically saying "if you lack the skills to learn it, then learn it by not learning it and letting me do it instead" wtf?

[@PsionicAudio]

No, I'm not. But when a kit build is sold with an "amp company" logo as if was a professional product, or when "amp companies" are putting kit builds with hobbyist mistakes on the market, it's a problem.

[@ThomasD66]

Maybe he gets away with the MF resistors because of all those 90 degree bends. ;-)

[@sillysausage4549]

Too much ego. All you do is repair amps, dude