'65 Fender Deluxe Reverb (Black Face Reissue)

The Fender ’65 Deluxe Reverb is a reissue and is one of the most popular amps for recording and studio work. It works well for all types of music from blues to rock and everything in-between. It is single channel all tube amp with 22 watts of power that drives a single 12 inch Jensen. This amp was originally designed many years ago and had evolved to such a point that the ’65 model was considered one of the best years for the amp. This is a Blackfaced Fender re-issue and comes with the famous spring reverb. Its main tube complement is 6V6’s for the power amp and 12AX7’s for the preamp.

It has two channels: Normal and Vibrato. The vibrato channel has and you guessed it vibrato as well as treble, bass and reverb. The normal channel has treble and bass controls. On earlier models the Deluxe amp the tremolo and preamp inputs where shared which allowed both input controls and tremolo to be used. Fender added two 7025 tubes around ’63 which gave each input channel ( Normal and Bright) their own preamp circuit. This reissue amp no longer shares the input preamp or tremolo and the tremolo circuit now operates exclusively on the Vibrato channel. The vibrato circuit is simply a ‘photo-resistor’ that oscillates the amplitude of the guitar input signal. It basically varies the amount of the signal is sent to ground.

The tubes in the amp consist of a 5AR4 Power Rectifier tube, two 6V6 power output tubes, four 12AX7 tubes and two 12AT7 tubes. The preamp sections use 12AX7 while the 12AT7’s are used for the reverb driver and the power tube inverters/drivers. There are two input jacks per channel: 1 and 2. Input 2 is less sensitive by 6dB and is used for pre-amplified guitars. The vibrato channel gives you more treble than the normal channel. As mentioned the two channels operate in independently of one and other.

The 12 inch speaker is a Jensen C-12k which has 8-ohms and 100 watts rating. As for the frequency response of the speaker you’ll notice a pronounce peak at around 2000 Hz which is great for a good sounding speaker. The cone is made of paper while the magnet is ferrite. This is the same type of speaker used in the original amp that was ‘designed for Fender’ by Jensen. The components used on this amp are the same or better than that found on the original. The only exception seems to be in the use of a printed circuit board over the original plastic panel. Some might say that this changes the sound but I really couldn’t notice. The transformers used have the same specifications as well.

For rock and dirty blues tones the amp sounds best when cranked up between 8 and 10. You can get more gain from a preamp pedal like an Ibanez tube screamer or some other preamp. Plugging the guitar into both channels will also give you more gain. You can use a ‘Y’ cable or preferably a one in and two out DI box. This way you can drive both input preamps. The amp doesn’t have a master volume! But it’s only 22 watts and a single 12 inch which can still get very loud.

Features

• Vintage Tone of the original Deluxe Reverb
• All Tube Amp Design
• Same specs on electrical componets (resistors, caps, and transformers)
• Same cosmetics with Black Faced Front panel
• Single 12 inch CK-12 Jensen speaker
• 22 Watts of Power
• Two 6V6GT power tubes
• Great Tube Tone for all types of music