Fender hot rod deville something wrong

[woj74]

Hi

I just received a used Fender Hot Rod Deville 410 i bought on ebay in USA. That auction http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&hash=item19c0a00313&item=110605894419&nma=true&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&rt=nc&si=CWvvZRI2LxR1dtK%252BnFH2NuhQ7X8%253D#ht_848wt_1140

What I noticed is that amp has no "more drive" mode what was described i the auction and I've never seen a hot rod without that.
What is more suspicious is the label QA says HK which stands for assembly November 1997 according to Fender coding while PCB is dated 2004.

Did the seller fool me and sold me an old case with replaced Mexico inner part or any other idea what happened?
I need to know before claiming. Thanks for your suggestions.

 

[AutoBat]

looks like they copy pasta'd the description of the Hot Rod Deville 410 III from the Fender webpage, where that one is clearly older.
I google image searched the Deville 410 and found others with control plates without "More Drive" buttons.

I'd contact your seller asap if you haven't already.
It's a great price even if it's the older version, it's just no fun to not get exactly what you were expecting.

 

[Cagey]

What Autobat said. Also, the date on the PCBoard is the copyright date for the pc artwork and component label silkscreen, not the date of manufacture. Although, if the amp is a '97, it shouldn't have a newer board in it. To be fair, the ad says he bought it two years previously, but it doesn't say he bought it new, so you may have made an assumption about it's pedigree.

 

[woj74]

Surely copy pasted description. I don't suffer because of having no "more drive mode" but the reason i bought the hot rod was to compare it 1:1 with my Blues deville and decide to sell one of them.
The hot rod is way brighter than the Blues but both are cool. I'm afraid if decided to sell the Hot Rod buyers will give up because of lack of "more drive" and non-original PCB. I will contact the seller but before that i need to have clear evidence the amp has been modified and does not match what was in the auction.
Besides, footswitch is MiM and channel switch doesn't work in it.

Like blonde and black girls, can't help  :icon_biggrin:

 

[jackthehack]

The "Drive" mode on this series of amps sounds like dogshit; I would never use it myself, tried it for about a total of 15 minutes on my BluesDeluxe, you're not missing a thing.

 

[woj74]

Ok, advantages/disadvatages of having that "more drive" mode is one thing but i'm investigating what amp it is. What i think the PCB or even the whole chasis has been replaced by some reason. I hope any of you can help me investigate what i got.

 

[jackthehack]

Based on the controls on the eBay auction, it looks like the guts of that are from a Blues DeVille; can't read all the labeling from the eBay pictures, but if all the controls/inputs are duplicates of your Blues Deville, that's probably what it is.

Page 6 on the Hot Rod DeVille manual: http://support.fender.com/manuals/guitar_amplifiers/Hot_Rod_DeVille_manual.pdf will show you what the controls SHOULD look like.

Like I said, in my sordid opinion, the Drive channel on the Blues DeLuxe bites and the "More Drive" channel on any Fender amp so equipped bites even worse.

I use the clean channel ONLY and use one of these for "Drive/Mo' Drive": http://www.xotic.us/effects/bb_plus/ works much mo better....

 

[AutoBat]

here's a couple control pics i found from searching Hot Rod Deville 410 on google images.  dunno which generation these are though:

 

[ocguy106]

The "Drive" mode on this series of amps sounds like dogshite; I would never use it myself, tried it for about a total of 15 minutes on my BluesDeluxe, you're not missing a thing.

+100

 

[woj74]

AutoBat - the one i got is different from the pictures. The knobs description is inverted (as in blues deville) so that you can read it from behind the amp and there is no "more drive" mode switch as in the pictures you show. Not talking about more drive addiction but that makes me think the amp i got is kind a strange mixture of i don't know what.

 

[AutoBat]

I know the mid 90's Blues Juniors knobs & text read from the back of the amp.  NFI if they changed it somewhere down the line for all models

 

[woj74]

Any idea where to investigate? Fender support? Other Fender amps specialized forums?

 

[dmacnevin]

Hey, I'm new to this forum, but not so new when it comes to gear... I own an early tweed Blues Deville that I bought used in the mid 90's (according to this site, mine is a 1994 because of the "E" in the QA plate on the amplifier chassis)

http://superiormusic.org/page195.htm

I checked out the E-Bay pictures, and the controls for the amp look identical to mine, with simply a channel select and a brightness switch with the writing viewed from the back of the amp and not the front. I played a large rink gig once as an opening act and the headliner wanted to use our stage gear. Not wanting a stranger to use my amp, I rented a hot rod Deville (2X12) to use instead. I couldn't get a sound at all, and ended up getting some of my guitar fed back through the monitors in order to hear it. The next day, I compared my Deville to the Hotrod and there was no comparison tone or volume wise... the old tweed amp rocked that poor hot rod. I even told the music store when I returned it, that I thought there was something wrong with the amp because of the difference. I've had to do some repair work to my amp in the past, but it's been on the road a lot, has been beat up, but it will still scream for me. Played a double header with another band a few weeks back, the guitar player was using a Marshal stack and couldn't believe how loud my amp was and the tone I was getting from it at that volume... If the amp you bought has the older "Made in USA" circuit board from a 93 - 96 Blues Deville, then I wouldn't sell it if I were you. The only thing I've ever done to mine was replaced the speakers with Celestion Vintage 30's (2X12) and changed the tubes...

One other fix I did with mine, was removed the small ribbon cables that connect the 12AX7 tubes to the main board... they are brittle and break off at the solder joints from the vibration... I was playing one night and she lit up like a Christmas tree... the ribbon cables had broke off and were shorting out. Nothing blew... but I had to cut all of those off and run individual wires from each contact... There's also some resistors in the early models that were known for heating up and coming dislodged from the solder joints... mine have been replaced by a local tube amp guy, because they are known for causing issues... other than that, she's golden and I wouldn't sell it for the world!

 

[woj74]

If the amp you bought has the older "Made in USA" circuit board from a 93 - 96 Blues Deville, then I wouldn't sell it if I were you.

Hi
As in the pic some posts above i also own the '94 tweed Blues Deville. It rocks that's right but sometime ago a had a chance to play a Hot rod and it surprised me by how good it sounded. That's why i decided to buy one and compare side by side and let one be mine and the other go.
I can hear a huge difference between them although both sound good. The hot rod is way brigher. Blues deville on bright mode is a bit darker than Hot rod on normal mode.
Anyway i let it check at my local amp tech. I will get it back in a couple of day. Hope he will check it and investigate what amp it is as it seems like it's a mexican 2004 chasis in a '97 US cab.
We'll see.

 

[MN_JDTele]

Not sure what amp you've got, but I too owned both a blues and hotrud deville.  Sold the blues deville last year.  But I used to run them both on stage.  best of both worlds!!