FYD Deluxe Reverb Handwired Amp

The ultimate gigging amp. That's what Dan Lurie at FYD amps and I set out to build in this Deluxe in a Princeton chassis.

I said ultimate gigging and to that end we sourced a Jensen Neo speaker that is no longer manufactured. It was designed to emulate their vintage alnicos. With that in place the amp weighs 30.4lbs (a current Fender Deluxe is listed at 42lbs.) If you've carried all you gear into the back door of endless clubs you know how much easier having 10lbs less hanging off your arm really is.

The cab is slightly oversized to accommodate a 12" speaker and give it a little more room to breath. There is a full size reverb pan and we ordered four pans and chose the best sounding one (these things are mechanical and all sound a little different.) . The amp is built point to point with all high quality components including NOS Sprague capacitors from the early 60's in the tone stack. (nothing really like them)

The transformer used can run either a pair of 6v6 tubes for the traditional 22 watts or 6l6 tubes for more like 35 watts if you are looking for additional headroom. Though to tell the truth after initial testing there has been a set of JJ 6v6's in it as it's all I've ever needed.

In addition to the standard Volume, treble, middle, bass and reverb controls, there is Dan's proprietary Tweed switch and pot. The switch bypasses the tone stack, effectively taking you back 10 years in the evolution of Fender Deluxes, to the era of tweed deluxes. The knob then functions as your tone knob. It's worth saying that the knob also acts a subtle presence sort of control in blackface mode.

So you have two amps available at the flip of a switch. I found that for some guitars the tweed mode was magical (my Gibson 390) and blackface was the deal for the strat for example.

I have never known anyone to be disappointed when playing one of Dan's (FYD amps) and this one does it all in the Fender vein. I am simply not gigging at present and mostly use his 5 watt Big Verb in my home rig.