Fender Hot Rod Deluxe

[thekiwidisciple]

What are our thoughts on these amps? I played one up at Allan's Music in the City the other day, I was playing just a MIM Strat off the shelf. It sounded great and I was kinda almost pretty much IN LOVE! Had the slightest touch of drive happening, a ton of reverb and was using the Neck pickup.

I saw one on ebay, not too far from my house, he used it for playing a harp and says he's never played it above 2 in the year that he's owned it. He's agreed to take the auction down and to hold it for a month or so until I can come up with the $1000AUD he's asking (they retail here for $1599). :bravo:

[Jimi75]

I think there's a reason why the HRDlx is the best selling amph in the world. First of all this amph sounds really good, not only does it have the typical Fender crispness, but it also delivers a good sounding overdrive. Plus this amph is really roadworthy and loud enough to cut through a medium loud playing band.

You played it, you loved it, so why shouldn't you buy it. It's always the best thing that can happen when you exactly know what you need and what you want. I think 1000 AUD is okay for a used one cosidering the retail price in Australia. But make sure that it is technically okay.

[mrmudcat]

I like my HRD!! It went from church on sunday(clean channel),to some dirty blues last night on the yellow channel.......mine does have a vin 30 as the stock speaker!!!:D

[thekiwidisciple]

Nice. What should I be checking for when I go to check it out? I don't know bugger all about valve amps, other than I love this one!

[Jimi75]

Nice. What should I be checking for when I go to check it out? I don't know bugger all about valve amps, other than I love this one!

Very important to give the amph at least 10 minutes to warm up. If you play it "cold" it could fizzle. You should be able to dime it once.

[jim p]

For what it is worth Fender is nice enough to have there schematics on the web and the basic layout of the fender and the discontinued Crate V50 are similar. So if there is a Crate V50 around that you can check out it would be worth it on the low budget side of things. The biggest fear if you surf through things here is the amp died on a regular poster on this site and the switching power supply failed then Crate replaced his amp with there V18. Crate told him the output tubes were the cause of the failure I am not so sure that is true. My son has one that he has not used much that I did modify by increasing the value of the series resistor for the screen supply and lowered the fuse value in the amp so the fuse should pop before major problems. I have also changed out the stock reverb tank to a long tank and changed the op amp used for the tank driver. Then I increased the gain of the reverb recovery op amp and upped values in the voltage divider used to sum in the reverb to the clean signal to be more like an all tube amplifier.

[mrmudcat]

There are several unofficial websites for the HRD....google them!!

I did replace the tubes and my limited emerald does have the vin 30..as stock.....I also have a 1x12 cab with a reverend alltone 12-50 that really expands the sound hooked up with the hrd.Some like the dist.channels some hate it!!!I like it clean but can also use the yellow channel for some nice sounds.Red channel is not really great to me:whatever: I do believe the speakers make it a better amp. One thing is the dreaded plastic input which can use to be replaced and the linear v pots could be replaced with audio tapers in my opinion. Tung can most likely offer better advice!!!:beer:


I have heard/ read some stupid comments like a paula sounds like crap with these and it is mostly for single coil pups...............B.S. nuff said:dude:

[Robert]

Very nice amp, and the best thing to make it better is to swap the stock speaker.

[Spudman]

I've been using mine stock for years and like it. I usually only use the clean channel and use pedals for dirt. It performs well this way. I have had to fix the input jacks on friends HRDXs so they are a weak spot. Just be sure to take the strain off the jack by wrapping the cable through the handle or something. I haven't replaced the stock speaker yet with anything. That would be my first upgrade as it does get a bit flabby at higher volumes.

[deeaa]

I played a HRD for a while; I liked the DeVille more though. Since then I haven't touched Fender amps though. They used to be so cheap in the 90's everybody and their dog used one - they were all I could afford too.

A HRD is a nice enough amp; it sounds very tubey and has a big saturated overdrive. DeVille is the same amp sans the ultra-od channel.

But what can I say - I hate open back amps and I like more of a defined, crunchy drive than very tubey saturated warmth....swapped the DeVille to a JMP-1 preamp/120W SS poweramp/marshall 4x10" rig and was much happier.

Of Fender's amps the one closest to my sound preference ever was the red-knob Twin - it had this half-power setting too and it was real nice, more marshally in the OD department than most Fenders.

[M29]

I had a HRDx and it was a nice amph. I have since sold it back when money was even harder to come by.
I have often wondered how an alnico speaker would sound in it. Would like to try it sometime. I bet it would sound great. I haven't heard of anyone trying that before. A nice amph indeed.

M

[Lev]

I love my HRDlx, like Spud I only use it clean and use FX for a dirtier sound. By the way it does take FX very well. There's a huge amount of clean headroom so you can cut through in pretty much any gig situation.