This is the history of my restoration of a Fender 1964 Deluxe Reverb guitar amplifier. According to many musicians and techs this amp is the "holy grail" of amplifiers. Its tonal characteristics and response place it in the top 10 of amps which were the model for many to follow.
Being the owner of 4 vintage 60s "blackfaced" amps, at the time, and having owned a 1978 Deluxe Reverb which I modded to sound "blackfaced", well, when I saw this on Ebay, it was exactly what I wanted for my small room or church gigs and recording. However, I knew it needed some restoration. I have recently begun restoring and tweaking vintage tube amps for my own use. I've been playing guitar since 1965 and have owned Fender (also Vox, Marshall, Ampeg, Crate, and Peavey) amplifiers for bass or guitar since then.
When purchasing a vintage amp of any kind - the first thing that has to be done before you use it regularly is to replace the filter capacitors(caps) and the bias cap. These are electrolytic and go way off value, leak, or even explode with age. All of the authors I have read on the subject agree here - don't fool around - vintage amps are expensive (because they sound so good and are so tough to kill) and you wouldn't want your investment going up in smoke because you took a shortcut in not recapping the amp. The other important change often overlooked is to convert the 2 wire (or pronged) AC power cord to a 3 wire earth grounded power cord. To do this properly, remove the .047 cap to ground, and all connections on the courtesy plug and the polarity (suicide) switch and put the new incoming hot (black) lead on the backside of the fuse socket then connect the fuse socket side lead to the on/off switch, the other side of the on/off goes to the power tranny (match wire colors if possible). The incoming neutral (white) to the other transformer leg, and the green (earth) to a lug on the transformer mount thats connected to the chassis. This simple change could save your life! There is nothing like a good solid earth ground to prevent stray voltages and inductance on your guitar - especially while you are holding it.
In my case the recap and power cord conversion were just the beginning, It was my intention to restore the amp, keeping as much of the internal components original as I could and replacing the others with the best parts available. Hardware, grill cloth, and tolex were to be replaced as they were in questionable shape. The faceplate would remain as is but cleaned up. The next pages are a history and pictorial account of this work.
EtxMusic Before the Restore Chassis Scrub Circuit Repairs Cabinet PostScript
© Copyright Steve Dube 2008