Posted on Jun 27 2013 01:36 PM
Ivan, over the years I've had three Deluxe Reverbs with four different speakers, including a Greenback. Here are my observations regarding tone and headroom, FWIW
All these amps have (or had) upgraded, quality tubes.
'68 Silverface with Celestion G12M (British, not MIC)
Beautiful, creamy sound. Perfect for recording. Some breakup as the volume increases, though. But it is good-sounding breakup.
Deluxe Reverb Reissue with Tone Tubby 40/40 hempcone
Very loud, lots of clean headroom but in this application, it was very harsh and brittle sounding. I sold this speaker and replaced it with the following:
Deluxe Reverb Reissue with Electro-Voice EVM12L
This is the one you want if you are looking for minimum breakup at louder volumes. This was the loudest, cleanest Deluxe Reverb I've ever played through. The downside is that the The amp weighed nearly as much as a Twin Reverb because of the huge E-V magnet. MUCH, MUCH better tone than the Tone Tubby but not as "sweet" sounding as this one:
1965 Deluxe Reverb (not a reissue) with Weber California Alnico
For me, this is "The One". Sounds much like a D-130F but it's not as ice-picky as the JBL. It has almost as much clean headroom as the E-V but not quite. However, in the Deluxe Reverb I really prefer the smoother tone of the Weber over the E-V, the latter of which is one of my favorite speakers...The monster EVM-L's are probably happier in the more powerful 40-100 watt Fenders. The AlNiCo Cali in this 20W amp is nearly as musical as the DRRI with the Greenback but with way, way more headroom.
Note that a ceramic Cali does have a more aggressive, "sharper" tone than the smoother AlNiCo version.
—
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(aka WoodyJ)
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Last edited: Jun 28, 2013 13:14:30
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