gringopig's guitars
Rift Amps Limited Edition 5E3
1 of 5 Fender Tweed Deluxe 5E3 circuit amps produced by Chris at Rift Amps and a Tweed amp finally that probably won't blow up like my ill-fated Lazy J20 did.
This is a hand wired recreation of a 1957 circuit that Fender produced in the late '50's and inadvertently helped to form Rock™ due to it's inability to handle the input levels of the new Humbucker equipped Gibson which hit the market in this year.
This amp is quite a simple beast but strangely complex too. It has 2 channels: Bright and Normal, 2 volume controls for the channels and one global Tone control plus high and low sensitivity inputs for each channel but there is something interesting going on with the interactivity of the channels.
With the guitar plugged into the Bright channel and the Normal channel turned down, all is as it seems.
You turn the volume up. It suddenly gets loud then from 2-5 it gets slightly louder then stops and gets progressively more distorted and saturated until it gets really really saggy and sounds like it's going to blow up. So far so good.
The Tone control seems to do what it is meant to also. except it also affects gain as the high frequencies become more prominent.
However, then you notice that the unused channel that has no instrument plugged into it affects the active channel! You turn the Normal channel up and the sound gets thicker as you turn up the unused volume and then at about 10-12 it calms the active channel down and it cleans up again.
Huh. That's odd. Very useful though.
It's a sweet spot at the top of the volume where you can get a cleaner sound at both extremes of the active channel's volume control.
have a look at the circuit:
Click to magnify
You can see that at the grid of V2a, the mixed outputs from the first stage have no isolation and this is why the first pre-amp stage which forms half of the phase splitter triode valve sees different signals depending on where the 3 knobs are set. The lack of negative feedback at the secondary of the output transformer just adds to the wild gnarliness. Fender used this feedback look to help the newer brown and blackface amps to sound more control and polite in the early '60's.
It certainly adds a lot for a simple amp. It basically has very low headroom for a Gibson. A fender with single coils fairs better and you could imagine some jazz guy using these with single coils or a country player with a Telecaster without much issue. However, if you just bought a nice new Gibson Les Paul in 1958 then welcome to the world of Rock!
It will growl and sag and generally hang out in bars until the wee hours. A surly beast.
The numbers of these amps that survive is testament to the simplicity and inherent quality of Fender's amplifiers during this time and the Tweed tolex looks cool.
Many thanks to Chris at Rift Amps for this amp. You can see some pictures below of the build quality.
Click on gallery for larger version
It's certainly a recognisable sound. You have heard this amp all over the place. Neil Young is known for pushing his Tweed Deluxe to the edge and beyond but this amp has been on so many records.
It has a characteristic midrange. Partly the circuit, partly the cabinet, it fills space like nothing else and it's loud!
I am using a Fryette Power Station PS2a which really is essential in using this amp at home and allows a spring reverb from the Strymon Flint to be put into the post amp FX loop.
I bought it especially for this amp as I knew it wouldn't react well to reverb going into the front end and it doesn't at all.
Listen to the demo below. I go through the interactive controls and then do a couple of playthroughs with my Les Paul to let you hear what this great amp sounds like...
