How to Play your Deluxe Reverb Quietly at Home - and Sound Good! 

Nope, it cut the high ends of tthe amp ;-)

Awesome idea! ✌️🤪🎸🎶🎵🎶🎵

Where are the next steps, please? I've been waiting over 2 years now and had to move 4 times.

This!

Make your neighbours wear earplugs.

me too..Im planning on getting a dr or a princeton and a volume pedal would really help

@@sooparticular yeah expression pedals are my next endeavor as well! Hope you find a great fit 🤘

Keep in mind he has a special attenuating speaker that is no longer being made. A volume pedal alone is going to just kill your amp tone. Believe me, DRRIs are far too loud for apartments

@Coma White those things are pretty awesome for their price. Sure you lose so much tone but in a situation where you can't be loud, it's hard to beat for a hundred bucks. Mine died after about a year but it was worth it. Just be careful not to use for too long at any given time because they can do big damage to your circuit board with all the heat being generated at pushing the amp for long sessions. It's not really the attenuator doing the damage directly, but the more volume you have going on with the amp the hotter it's gonna get inside. I used a bugera with my marshall for 6 months in an apartment and had to change tubes twice in that time, which started to get expensive so I just eventually got an active attenuator. A friend of mine recommended wiring a powerful PC fan and It really helped to keep the board and tubes a little cooler. Definitely recommend some kind of cooling mechanism if you don't already do that.

@@LeviBulger Very good point here.

That’s what I did with my twin reverb. Everyone says they are to loud ( and they certainly can be lol) but I just kept it turned down and it did fine. Used to play it at night with family in bed. I couldn’t turn it up past 2 but for clean classic country it sounded fine. If I wanted some drive I just cranked the tube screamer up and kept the twin turned down

@@JohnnyRebKy we’re in the same page 👍🏻

Is your goal to play amplified at a lower volume than a acoustic guitar?

I have an acoustic as well but its a different thing. I also have other smaller so-called "bedroom" amps - a Vox AC4 and a Spark mini, but I think the larger speaker and headroom of the Deluxe just gives a bigger, punchier, more satisfying experience, even when run really quiet.

Omg I love the 5F6!! So good, right?

Yep! There's a resistor on the input jack for input 2! It's conceptually the same as having a volume pedal right in front of the amp permanently set on ~5-7. Like you say, without a buffer that will interact with your pickups. With one it should mostly just drop the volume.

The input impedance is set differently. #1 is set to give it a peaked mids sound, and #2 gives more of a scooped mid sound.

I've never tried the standalone unit, but I've used the built in one on several Tone King amps - Falcon Grande, Sky King. First off, Mark Bartel (the founder of Tone King and designer of all their amps) is a mad genius. He's one of the few amp designers out there with both an opinionated ear and the technical chops to go after the sounds he wants without purely rehashing or recombining classic designs. If you aren't already following him and his new company Bartel Amps on Facebook, you should check him out just to see how meticulous he is in every single aspect of amp design. His new amps are incredible, but justifiably expensive given the quality work he's doing custom building so many parts mostly by himself. As far as the Iron Man goes, I think it sounds really great as a way to drive the amps into breakup at low volumes, and it was pretty innovative at the time it was released for introducing Fletcher-Munson curves to increase the highs and lows as you reduce the volume to keep the perceived eq the same. Personally, I still think it introduces a little wooly-ness that's most noticeable if you use it when the amp is mostly clean. Don't listen to me though! If you're using it and it sounds great to you and feels great to play, that's the important part! No one ever went to see a band play or listen to a record and said, "Man, that sounded great, but I wish the guitar didn't have an attenuator on it!" Will be interested to hear your thoughts if you try the post-buffer volume pedal approach on what the differences are!

I’m considering a 65 Princeton Reverb RI and I was looking for Prince and Nile Rodgers tones. Sounds like it will check those boxes. Thanks!

At the end of your pedal board unless you want it to modify the signal into any pedals - the important part is that it go after a buffer or drive pedal. Hope that helps!

It was in the digital display unit you see by the pedal board - on the floor probably a meter or so in front of the amp and just off to the side. I think you're right that it would be different off axis at ear level, and honestly it was a super cheap internet purchase - no idea how calibrated it is other than giving a good relative sense of the volumes in the video

It is just my standard 65 DRRI apart from the speaker! I've had it since 2007 or so. I've tried the built-in attenuator on some tone king amps, and it's great for really cranking them into distortion, but IMO it gives a pretty different character to the sound - not necessarily bad, but not what I like for cleaner sounds, or even edge-of-breakup.

You should be able to get it whisper quiet with just volume pedal after a buffer! The speaker trick is really just if you want to tame the volume and the treble and get the amp cooking enough to overdrive at a slightly lower (but still pretty darn loud) volume.

As long as your drive is on, it should have the same effect! (ie, when the drive is on, it should reduce volume with minimal impact on your tone, but when the drive is off, it will act more or less like the volume knob on your guitar and may roll off more treble than bass)

Standard Princeton Reverb amps do not have a bright cap, which is one of the things that makes DR sound strange at very low volumes, making a lot of this less necessary. That said, if you are trying to adjust volume at very low settings, it can be a bit easier to use a volume pedal

@@adjustablebias Thanks! I look forward to trying it out. Very appreciated!

No effects loop on these amps, but if there were, that'd be a good way to achieve something like a master volume!

100% agree with the NOS tube comment....just changed the tube on my amp ....omg great upgrade

Agreed on the tubes front - especially if you drive your amp into breakup (I find it matters less if you keep it clean) and it doesn't necessarily have to be NOS, although tubes that are both good sounding and reliable are getting ever harder to find (maybe impossible at this point...). In the Deluxe Reverb, I'm currently running the original reissue Mullards, which I think were from the early 00's, and which they stopped making at some point (the current reissue Mullards are different), I think due to difficulties with reliability. I also find it tends to have a different impact depending on the amp. Any master volume amp, like a Blues Jr for example, will sound very different with a different 12ax7 in the first position given that you're often relying primarily on preamp distortion unless the volume is pretty loud.

Get the ‘64 Custom Deluxe! I did and got rid of my DRRI. Having reverb and tremolo in both channels is great, and the overall tone quality is heavenly! You’ll not regret it.

@@lmgtexas I will when they get shipped over to Australia. Always on backorder here.

Are you sure you took out a power tube? I don't think your amp would function (and indeed it might blow something up). Maybe you took out the V1 preamp tube from the normal channel which will gain up the V2 powering the effects channel? You can take 2 power tubes out of some amps with 4 power tubes, but with a class AB amp where you need one tube pushing while the other pulls, I don't think you can get by with an odd # of tubes

@@adjustablebias Yes, I'm sure. My '68 custom reverb is a little different than the standard reissue, but basically the same, I took out 1 6V6 power tube tube, the one right next to the 5AR4 rectifier tube, though I don't think it matters which one is taken out. I have played it that way for years, without any issues and it sounds fantastic. Though there seems to be some general debate, whether this is possible or not. My tremolo does not work right now, but I think it may be a broken foot switch.

EDIT: No offense to this person, it's the people who are suggesting these silly mods that are off base. Geez, this is a hilarious situation...the blind leading the blind. First of all its possible to run you amp in this manner but completely ridiculous. It always boils down to using the right gear, drastic measures like you are doing means this amp is not right for your home use. Here is some technical information: 1) Class AB (push pull) power amps like the deluxe utilize two out of phase signals to drive the speaker (coupled by the output transformer). This is a balanced system that requires one power tube on each side of the transformer primary. 2) If you remove one power tube thus unbalancing the transformer primary the sound and function will suffer...reduced power and distortion and hum! 3) Why does the amp still function? This is because of the class of operation AB, which mean class A plus class B. 4) Class A = tube operating 100% of the cycle, Class B = 50%, Class AB = more than 50% less than 100%....Soo at very low signal levels (volume) the tubes are operating in Class A and this small area is where both tubes are working 100% and where you can have an unbalanced system still amplify somewhat cleanly. Note this is a very small margin at low low signal levels. Now when the signal level increases the tubes go into Class AB and start trading off the work...with only one tube installed now this tube is driven into near Class B and will become extremely asymmetrical...this results in huge amounts of distortion and harmonic content and also HUM! 5) A final note, it takes 6db reduction to equal a perceived loudness reduction of 1/2. So people who are pulling power tubes from there amp in hopes to achieve some great reduction in volume are not experiencing what they think they are...mostly the difference that will be heard is the chance in impedance, voltage, feedback and interaction with the speaker(s).

@@nikkisimpson1835 No offense taken. But it's not exactly a mod, just an experiment in attenuation, that is easily reversible. And I was not really suggesting it, so much as reporting my experience.The truth is my Deluxe actually sounded good with one tube. Though the Deluxe sounds great with two tubes, of course, I pulled the second tube, not so much for lower volume, but increased distortion and better tone at lower volumes. The sound I got was very musical, not really any more noisy than usual. This being said, you are right that a different amp is better suited to what I was using it for. I mostly play a tweed Champ, with and without a Tumulus pedal, which sounds great at the ridiculously low volumes at which I am forced to play it. The Champ is also much nicer to carry around.

@@danschoenharl3856 Understand. I meant the people on the internet suggesting these actions. And of course its a Mod...the design has been modified, right?! The distortion is full of second order harmonics, you can achieve this effect with many pedal options...or better yet get a single ended class A designed amp which produce the harmonics you like and you only need one power tube! It's your amp to do as you will, I just don't want people to be misled with this crude action of attenuation. You should try a tweed style Champ or Princeton (same as champ plus a tone control)...these circuits are perfect for what you a describing...connect it to a 12" speaker and add an outboard reverb and you are set!

The HRD with EQ at noon generally has more mids than a typical black panel Fender, so you might look for slightly scooped pedals like a Boss Blues Driver, or the Keeley versions of it compared to mid hump options like Tube Screamers. In terms of designers who target one, I think Wampler might?

Keeping the buffer at the front to drive signal through those pedals without losing highs makes sense, and sticking a volume pedal at the end should still work. Just make sure any germanium fuzzes or treble boosters go in front of the buffer (or at least try them that way so you can hear the difference).

@@adjustablebias Thank you!

Yes! A boss pedal left off works great!