Fender 57 Custom Champ und Custom Deluxe

113
september 2016 Guitarist
review FENDER ’57 CUSTOM TWEED CHAMP & DELUXE
The Rivals
If you want to see the British take on
small Class A combos, check out Vox’s
AC4HW1 (approx. £699), the hand-
wired version of the giant-killing AC4
combo. A single EL84 punches out
around four watts of totally British
tone. Also try the 20-watt Tone King
Imperial MkII (approx. £1,999), with
two channels, reverb, tremolo and
the built-in Ironman attenuator –
one of the best you’ll hear. Another
superlative mid-sized all-valve combo
is Suhr’s Bella (approx. £1,499), which
can run at 44 or 22 watts. Finally,
PCB but built to Bad Cat’s usual
uncompromising standards, the Cub
III 15R (see p22 for review) has a
switchable valve preamp running either
an EF86 or a 12AX7 (around £1,149) .
as no cloth-covered hook-up wire, both
combos look like they just rolled off the old
Fullerton production line.
Sounds
Both amps power on with minimal
background hum and hiss. Valve-rectified
circuits take a little time for all the voltages
to stabilise and after a few minutes the
hum reduces to more than satisfactory
levels. Both are fitted with a 12AY7 in the V1
position, which improves clean headroom
at the expense of overall volume. This is
the original valve specification, but many
guitarists prefer to use the higher gain and
more commonly available 12AX7, which
will cause the amp to break up earlier,
typically well under the halfway point on
the volume control.
We tried out both amps with a variety of
single-coil and humbucking guitars and,
in simple circuits like these, the guitar
has a very strong influence on the amp’s
behaviour and the character of individual
instruments is more noticeable. Our Les
Paul, for example, produced plenty of
sustain and drive with both amps using
a 12AX7 at lower volume settings, while
a Strat fitted with regular low-ish output
single coils still managed a respectable
crunch. The microphone and instrument
inputs on the Deluxe have quite different
sounds; the instrument input has a
generous treble boost, while the mic input is
quite flat. We tried this with an archtop jazz
guitar and got an authentic bebop tone with
just a hint of growl (very Barney Kessel).
However, crank up the Deluxe with
a decent Les Paul and you’re in blues-
rock central, with a fat midrange, toothy
overdrive and harmonic-laden sustain
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GIT411.rev_fender.indd 113 04/08/2016 17:52