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Californiaman

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Surprised no-one has mentioned the 5E3 aka 59 Tweed Deluxe - ~15W, 1 x 12, 2 x 6V6, 5Y3, 12AX7

 

These have a wonderful raw tone.

 

You can buy them off the shelf - there are Fender and Victoria models to name a couple of brands, or you can buy kits from places like Weber, Mission or Ceriatone.

 

RN

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Me too, I have a Fender Frontman 25R i think its called....Money is tight and with that little amp, im able to get the tone I want in my little 800sq. ft. place, cant beat the cleans on this thing. Plus if you crank it up just right, there are some awesome overdrive in this little beast. Gotta love it!:(

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Surprised no-one has mentioned the 5E3 aka 59 Tweed Deluxe - ~15W' date=' 1 x 12, 2 x 6V6, 5Y3, 12AX7

 

These have a wonderful raw tone.

 

You can buy them off the shelf - there are Fender and Victoria models to name a couple of brands, or you can buy kits from places like Weber, Mission or Ceriatone.

 

RN

 

[/quote']

 

There's a lot of good 5E3 Fender clones on Youtube right now. Too many to choose from if you're interested.

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Surprised no-one has mentioned the 5E3 aka 59 Tweed Deluxe - ~15W' date=' 1 x 12, 2 x 6V6, 5Y3, 12AX7

 

These have a wonderful raw tone.

 

You can buy them off the shelf - there are Fender and Victoria models to name a couple of brands, or you can buy kits from places like Weber, Mission or Ceriatone.

 

RN

 

[/quote']

 

 

+1-The 5E3 is my personal favorite!! It's not as "versatile" as a lot of amps, but once it's dialed in.......

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  • 3 weeks later...

This just in from Jeff Beck in a recent Guitar Magazine feature:

 

You still get a lot of sustain on those tracks, so is that the Marshall turned way up?

 

No, it was a Fender Champ. I joked once about making an entire album with a Champ, and I just about did that this time. In a couple of places there's a 50-watt Marshall with a 4X12 speaker cabinet, and I think that's on "Lilac Wine" and "Corpus Cristy/" Thos songs were done in the studio live with a mic placed several feet away. But when we got into the overdubs I just ended up with a Champ. Mine is a 1950s model with the brown rag across the front, the tweed, you know?

 

And again later on:

"... most of the time you can get away with a couple of Champs—one clean, one distorted—and use the clean one to get more definition."

 

Oh yeah:

I can't wait till my Fender '57 Deluxe gets here next week. 12 Watts of Fenderliscious 6V6 tone.

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  • 5 weeks later...

I own them both, well kind of.

My Blues Jr. is in a larger solid pine cabinet with a 10X12 speaker set up.

It's not as boxed in sounding as a regular BJ.

And comparing it to the 5E3 is like comparing apples to oranges.

They're completely different.

I'm proud to own both of these great amps.

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My local guitar shop has a nice Fender Tweed Champ.

I'm going to take it for a test drive this coming weekend.

Looking forward to it.

I've actually been thinking about ordering one from one of the DIY stores.

They're really affordable if you do it yourself.

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I have a Ceriatone 5E3 'Tweed Deluxe' clone head. Here's a pic.

 

DSC01480.jpg?t=1282639816

 

I bought it already assembled, not directly from Ceriatone. The guy I bought it from was very oldschool, so it's loaded with all NOS tubes. Sounds awesome. I don't yet have a proper speaker and cabinet for it, so I'm currently running it through the four 10" speakers in my Peavey Classic 50, which really doesn't do it justice. I'm having a 1x12 fingerjointed pine cabinet built though, like the original 5E3s, which I will load with a Weber 12A125A speaker.

 

Clean this amp is not. It's all about the rock 'n' roll. It's pretty loud but, above 2, the volume doesn't really increase, just gets dirtier, and above about 9 it gets clean. Not the loud, clear, 'shimmery' kind of cleans that everyone talks about though. If you want that, a Princeton or something is similar is for you, and something I'd quite like to get actually, as I do like a nice clean tone as much as I like thick and dirty overdrive.

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Surprised no-one has mentioned the 5E3 aka 59 Tweed Deluxe - ~15W, 1 x 12, 2 x 6V6, 5Y3, 12AX7

 

These have a wonderful raw tone.

 

You can buy them off the shelf - there are Fender and Victoria models to name a couple of brands, or you can buy kits from places like Weber, Mission or Ceriatone.

 

RN

 

 

I built a 5E3 from a schematic/layout that Dockery Amps used to sell, a few years ago. i used hammond transformers in the build to save money, and i also "cheated" big time on the cabinet. :) I agree, it's a very nice sounding amp! Very loud and clean, and punches up nicely too. it was fun to build.

 

-Don

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Someone mentioned their Mesa Express 5:25 earlier. That is a sweet amp. Kinda high in price, and it can be very loud at 25, but it has some great tone setting options- clean, blues, crunch, burn and decent reverb. I got the 5:50 1x12 because there was a relatively small difference in price. Small amp, big sound.

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I love my Superchamp XD, I've got it running into a Ragin Cajun 10" and a Celestion 80th Anniversary G10. So it's a Superchamp XD with 2x10"

It's got some great tone, especially the 1st channel.

I'm looking to pick up a Peavey Classic 30 at some point, it seems to be a great amp, even vs the Blues Jr.

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Tell me something, do you consider a 2x12 30W all tube class A amp small? 'cause mine sure as hell has big tone :rolleyes: so dooes my 2x12 20W head+cab all tube amp [flapper]

 

My vox nightrain head is a complete letdown after playing my other amps at higher volume... and it fell in shame when compared to my solid state 15W vox pathfinder (which is a great amp IMO).

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T-God.. The first time I played the NightTrain I HAD to have it because it sounded so good. The store didn't have the matching Vox cab so it was going into some Bogner cab. I was playing a 335 into it with it cranked on various settings and I really couldn't get a bad sound out of it.

 

Every other time I've played one at another store I've been let down. I just kinda sit there scratching my head thinking "what's wrong here". I've pretty much come to the conclusion that it's the cab. I may even (eventually) replace the speaker in my ac30 now that I've heard what a difference it can make.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've been playing my Two-tone a lot lately. More so than my other two little gems (The '57 Deluxe and the Gibson GA-5).

It's essentially the same amp as a Blues Jr.

I really love this amp. Fender did it right when they took it out of its small box and put it in a larger cabinet.

Adding the 10" speaker along with the 12" was genius.

This little EL-84, 12ax7 sounds great, especially with the fat boost engaged.

 

Found these vids on Youtube this morning. Check it out.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s9BZBEUvDs

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSMul-ACwG8

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