Better Guitar

player opinions

Name: Tim Peters
Band: Kamikaze
Model Year: 1996
Price Paid: $550
Performance
The Fender Blues DeVille has great tone, but doesn’t really have a lot a adjustment. The bass, mid, and treb. knobs don’t offer much versatility. If you don’t fall in love with the natural tube sound right away, you’ve got the wrong amp.
Performance Rating: 7
Sound Quality
If you’re not looking for a super thick distorted tone, you can overdrive channel 2 well, especially when adding a digital delay or some rat pedal fuzz. The Blues DeVille is extremely loud and tends to cut through most other guitars live.
Sound Quality Rating: 9
Construction
Unfortunately, my Blues DeVille has blown up twice in the last 6-7 years. The tubes burn out easily and the amp sounds like total crap. The clean channel will slowly start sounding not so clean, and eventually distorted. When it works it sounds great, when it breaks, it sounds horrible.
Construction Rating: 6

Name: Chuck Wilbur
Band: Dizzy Dog
Model Year: -----
Price Paid: $899
Performance
The original Blues DeVille is a two channel, tweed covered 60 watt tube combo with blue frame ten inch speakers. Channel one has a Bassman sound and channel two seems to be a hotter version of channel one. It comes stock with a standard Fender tank reverb, solid state rectifier, 6l6 power tubes, and 12ax7 preamp tubes. This amp in appearance and function and tone reproduces classic rock, retro and blues tones as better than any other amp I have played.
Performance Rating: 10
Sound Quality
With a Strat, Stevie Ray, Hendrix type tones are easy to dial up. With a 335 or a Les Paul, with a tube screamer in front of channel one, cream-era Clapton and Robbin Ford sounds are a snap. I have found the power to be more than enough for small to medium size clubs.
Sound Quality Rating: 10
Construction
The amp seems well constructed in terms of knobs, switches and plug-ins. I have gigged with this amp over 100 times in the past 3 years and am sorry to report that it has blown up twice. While the tone of this amp is incredible, it only got that way after I replaced the stock power tubes with Svetlana tubes with a fairly hard rating. I also had a tube rectifier installed to get more sag and compression. I have never found a use for channel two as it seems to midrangy for my taste. When this amp runs nothing beats it — when it dies, it dies hard!
Construction Rating: 6