Fender Tone Master Deluxe Reverb Guitar Amplifier, Blonde

Sweet Amp! Nice having the attenuation.

Our home has two guitarists and the ability to get a wide range of tones without rattling the windows is essential. We're really blown away by this amplifier, whether cranked or "quietly-cranked" with the attenuation. The reverb is *chef's kiss and though we have very little use for the tremolo, it sounds damn good.

I'm old enough to remember the 1960s. and when I play my Am Pro Strat loaded with a Seymour Duncan SSL-1 set and wired with a MojoTone solderless mixer harness through this amp, I'm back in the 60s. To me, its capture of that era's tone is absolutely perfect. The other benefits are its ease of use, the attenuator, and the firmware upgrades. I have a Mesa Boogie Mark V 25 Combo that I love, but if I want to plug-and-play, the Tone Master is my go-to amp. I have no reason to use pedals with it, but I hooked up my Snouse Black Box OD2 to the clean channel at low volume settings and the amp took to the pedal like they were made for each other.

This does not respond like a tube driven deluxe reverb. It is shrill and boomy even with the bass and treble controls turned all the way off. My biggest disappointment with it though was the XLR direct out. With any of the three settings it produced high frequency distortion when coming into my focusrite interface. I changed cables, tried padding the signal, and even tried different microphone preamps, but the high frequency distortion was present no matter what I did. Very disappointing experience.

I bought one of these and really liked the sound and the light weight. But I sent it back because, 1. Not quite enough headroom when playing with a moderately loud drummer and 2. No effects loop. I understand they want it to be as much like a classic tube Deluxe as possible, but at this price point for a solid state imposter (and a great one at that), I think they should consider adding some very useful features that wouldn’t detract from the aesthetic or the basic sound. Just a send/return and an extra notch higher on the power scaling control and it would be perfect.If you just want to play it at home, never mind, get one!

This amp sounds great and with the attenuator is sounds great at any volume.

Attenuation and tremolo best features

I'll start by saying that this amp has a beautiful clean tone. The reverb and tremolo on the vibrato channel sound amazing. However, this amp can not get dirty tones at moderate volumes. I tried using the attenuator and I threw some overdrive on, but it ended up sounding very cheap, almost toy-ish if you will. Don't even get me started about adding fuzz! It will basically either sound like a boost at low fuzz volume or trash at high fuzz volume. I feel that the attenuator feature was very misleading. You really have to crank this one.