Fender Hot Rod Deluxe Ltd Edition Surf Green 40w Combo

by Gig Stig

I had been looking forward to trying the Hot Rod Deluxe as generally in the past I have been a fan of Fender amplifiers. However if I’m honest I have to say that compared to other Fender’s that I’ve tried this one doesn’t quite reach up to the expectations I had.

The type of distortion produced by the drive channel had too much top end for my personal taste and even when I modified the EQ this did little to help. Sure, the amp was beautifully warm and clean on the normal channel but the drive channels were too “fizzy” for me.

After chatting with some of my electrical engineering colleagues it transpired that the unpleasant distortion could be caused by loose valves and on further inspection it did seem that the valves were housed rather precariously and are not chassis mounted but plug into a circuit board. Aside from this the power valves are mounted very close to the speaker so the vibration and resonance from their close proximity could have a direct bearing on their performance and even cause valve failure.

I’m a little puzzled therefore that the clever chaps at Fender didn’t figure out that this may happen when designing this amp? However a little bird informs me that the Fender Re-issue Blues Deluxe combo successfully resolves the electronic design issues found in the Hot Rod Deluxe, so maybe someone at Fender had a light bulb moment and saw the error of their ways …