Fender Vibroverb Reissue

[Lefty Lou]

How many of you own one of these and have modded it with great results. I'm not talkin' complete overhauls such as gutting a reissue and starting from the ground up. Mine is a 93' (I believe) that I bought before Fender stopped making the reissue. Like most here, I'm a purist and wouldn't normally go for a modern build but these little amps are the shit. Thus far I've done some simple mods with great results like: (2) new Celestion Gold 10" speakers, NOS Philips ECG 6L6GC tubes, and a couple of black plate NOS 12AX7's in V1 and V2. The sound is big and wide open, not to mention all the Fender juicyness. Not having a lot of room around the house, I had to put the Fender VVRI amp in storage for awhile (prior to the mods). I had NEVER changed the original electrolytics that were stock in the amp which makes the amp at least 20 years old. Believe it or not the electrolytics are still in great shape. The clincher was that I had installed a pair of Tung Sol 5881 tubes in the amp with no problems. This is considering that the Fender VVRI supplies around 420VDC to the plates which exceeds the 400 VDC specs for the Tung Sol 5881 tube BUT they run cool and sing like a vintage 50's Fender amp with original Tung Sol 5881's.

This is what John Templeton of The Tube Store had to say about the Tung Sol 5881 RI tubes, " The Tung-Sol 5881 may be the best option available for guitar toting tone freaks. The magic is definitely not in the name. The new T.S. 5881 has it all going on. The pair I evaluated has been seeing steady gigging use for about 8 weeks. In this case, about 20 hours a week in a 1964 Fender Bassman running flat-out. One tube has drifted about 1ma, but that's after 150+ hours of full power usage.

The tone is everything you would expect from NOS for about 1/3 of the price. These are full spectrum bottles that deliver everything from the classic, deep, "piano-like" lows to crystal clean highs. They are very tolerant with regards to biasing; allowing anything from 50% - 80% of rated plate dissipation to be dialed in at idle while still producing great tone. The construction differs slightly from the NOS in my possession but they are very close. Microphonics has not been an issue at all; no ringing, pops, ticks or squeals - unless you create them with a guitar. The overdriven tone is thick but articulate and just gets fatter the harder they are driven. Dime your amp and then use your guitar's volume and tone controls to dial in just about anything you want."