My favorite guitar amp
Few pieces of gear are as fun to play and as inspiring as a Fender Deluxe. I'm talking about the mid-50s Fender 5E3 circuit known to many as the "Tweed." If you count modeling equipment like the Kemper Profiler, I've owned seven Deluxes in my 16 years as a guitarist. After every gear adventure, every time I go try something new, I return to the Deluxe.
It's the most classic amp on Earth, the most gigged amp in history, and hands down the most recorded amp of all time. You can crank it and put a treble boost in front of it for classic rock tones, a la Led Zeppelin. John Fogerty and Neil Young used them, too.
The Deluxe isn't just a classic rock amp though, you can roll it back for round, fat, Wes Montgomery style jazz tones. Montgomery used a lot of large clean amps like the Super, but you'll get something similar from the Deluxe at low volumes. Also, the Deluxe was the house amp at the Blue Note. It's what you hear on many Grant Green and Kenny Burrell records.
You can also get smokey blues sounds out of it. On the blues side of things, Rory Gallagher and Jimmy Vaughn both famously used Deluxes. On what may be the smokiest, bluesiest rock solo of all time—the solo in "Hotel California"—Don Felder used a Fender Tweed Deluxe.
The Deluxe is also perfect for beautifully harmonic overtones and clean chordal rhythms. The Deluxe has been the amp of choice for the legendary Elvis Costello and for Mike Campbell (one of my all-time favorite guitarists). John Lennon played through Fender exclusively after leaving the UK, with the Tweed Deluxe being a clear favorite.
U2's the Edge used to have three onstage next to his AC30s, but lately, he can be seen rocking Axe-FX into a single Deluxe, the amp that went on to inspire his signature with Fender. You can follow the Edge and replace the speaker in it, making it a killer clean platform for guitar pedals.
Lastly, early on in his career, Larry Carlton garnered favor with producers thanks to the Deluxe, saying in an interview that they would ask him to "bring that little amp along." Carlton's tones with Steely Dan are nothing short of iconic today.
At under 30 pounds, the Tweed Deluxe is light and easy to carry around. It's easy to gig with, take it from someone who used to carry a Deluxe out every day of the week. But at 12-ish watts, it's got enough power to play on really any stage. You can mic it up on a big stage, or hide it backstage and crank it, but it can also play coffee shops and living rooms.
With a second input for a harmonica mic or the ability to channel jump, it's the most feature-packed minimalist amp out there!
I mentioned before that if you count digital modelers (my Kemper), I've owned seven Deluxes. I was inspired to save up and buy my first Deluxe after hearing the tones Mike Cosper of Sojourn Church was getting out of his Victoria Amps 20112. I attended Sojourn Church in my last year in Louisville and played with them, but never got to share the stage with Mike.
Mike was my hero because he shirked the traditional, drunk-on-dotted-eighth, "Transparent Timeline Top Boost" tones that every other church guitar player goes for. He played through just an old tape delay and cranked amp each Sunday and it was fabulous.
I had a blackface Deluxe Reverb starting out. My first Tweed Deluxe was a Tyler Amps 20/20. That was the amp that got me hooked on Deluxe tones. After that, I went for a Jackson Ampworks McFly. It's a blend of 50s and 60s Deluxe preamps on a platform that pushes up to 70 watts.
But the Jackson was heavy and carrying around a head and cab is a drag. I seldom left the 50s channel and never used all that power. So I sold it. After that I rocked just a plain ol' Fender Custom Shop '57 Deluxe. It was sweet.
Though Deluxes are definitely my favorite amp ever made, I don't have one right now. I've got a Matchless Spitfire. Like the Deluxe, it's two-input, three-knob, simple amp—and it bridges the gap between Fender and Vox tones, to me—but that's where the similarities end.
The Spitfire is an amp all its own. It's controls are as reactive with each other as the Deluxe's, but the Spitfire is EL84 based, whereas the Deluxe is 6V6. That means that the Spitfire has higher clean headroom, whereas the Deluxe gets pretty massively distorted mid-way on the dial.
It's not at all a bad thing to let rip—in fact it's best—but I'm mostly playing in churches, so I've got to keep my distortion to a minimum. The Spitfire is chimier but not that bright and brittle chime of an AC15 or its cousin the Matchless Lightning.
I like the Spitfire for its forward midrange and its ability to change character with the use of pedals. With pedals, But sometimes I want it to just be itself, and when I crank it it has a wonderfully rich tube grit and a presence like no other.
All-in-all, if I only had about $300-$1000 to spend, I'd find a 5E3 Deluxe. On a $1500 budget I adore the Spitfire. Above $1500 I'm all about those real, vintage narrow-panel Deluxes. I'd take a 1955-1960 Deluxe, beat-to-hell, over anything out there. Hands down.
My love for the Deluxe and the Spitfire lies in their simplicity above all else. I don't want to futz or wrestle with an amp. I don't want to spend a mint trying to maintain it. I don't want to carry around a 70 pound amp, or cabs and cases.
Simple amps are best for me! I show up at church on Sunday morning with a Mono backpack holding two guitars and a Nano pedalboard, with my Spitfire in one hand and Dunkin' coffee in the other. The sweet life!
If I had to make a case for simple amps, I'd say that the fewer components you have inside of your amp, the fewer things there are to break down and fail. And a shorter signal path means slightly less signal loss. Simple amps do one thing well, while swiss-army-knife amps try to take on too much—they end up doing many things passably.
As a major Mike Campbell fan, a fan of simple gear and simple tones, and a music lover, I don't think I can endorse the Fender 5E3 Tweed Deluxe more highly. If you're looking for a versatile, light, rich, complex clean amp that can be driven hard at moderate volumes and records super well, look no further than the timeless Fender Deluxe.