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SurfGuitar101 Forums » Gear »

Permalink Fender reissue reverb unit affects tone when disengaged

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Hi all. I have a reissue Fender reverb unit and I'm quite surprised by how much it affects my tone when disengaged (compared with not having the surf reverb unit in my chain at all). At first I thought it might be because of a long cable, but I now have only a 3ft cable connecting the reverb unit to the amp, and I've set up an AB pedal so I can compare directly.

I figured out that the mixer knob makes quite a difference even when the amp is disengaged, but there's no setting where I'd say it sounds identical to no reverb unit at all. I can't quite put my finger on exactly how it sounds different, does anyone know which parts of the circuit are still being used even when the foot switch is off? Or otherwise what affect it has on the sound?

I’m surprised that no builder has made a “super 6g15 tank” that uses sidechaining or something to not affect the tone at all. I feel it’s possible but no one has done it. I have to use a bi-amp wet/dry rig so I can retain the clean tone. I never turn off the reverb and also never even heard it switched off!

I will say that on my old non-reissue tanks, when any of the three knobs are turned all the way down, the tone becomes clean. I have not A/B-ed that with bypassing the pedal though, so it's possible that while there is no reverb, the tone may still be affected. Never even thought to check.

No help to you I know. Hopefully you’ve only got a bad component, and a tech can fix it. I think those tanks are simple 5w amps so I’d think everything’s fixable. But then again I’m not a tech (yet!).

Daniel Deathtide

The foot switch shunts the reverb tank to ground when engaged. The signal from your guitar is still going through both the wet and dry side of the signal chain through the tank. When you adjust the mixer pot you can prevent the part of the signal going through the wet side from reaching the output. This is why you notice the difference when you use the foot switch. The switch is not "disengaging the amp". Fender reverb units do not a have true bypass. Here is a link to the original 1963 reverb unit service manual. In the theory of operation section there is a brief section on how the foot switch operates. Hope this helps.
https://el34world.com/charts/Schematics/files/Fender/Fender_63_reverb_manual.pdf

Last edited: Jan 27, 2020 17:36:29

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