1997 Fender Hot Rod Deluxe

The ubiquitous Hot Rod/Blues series is one of the most popular type of tube amp currently manufactured. They sound decent but come with a very common set of issues after about 15 years. Failing filter caps, burned power resistors and diodes, heat damage to the PCB caused by machine mounted parts placed flush to the board, open phase inverter plate resistors, and broken 1/4” jacks. These are all due to Fender cutting corners for price reduction. This amp had all of these problems as well as needing a new set of tubes.

Amp had all new 1/4" jacks installed and all new potentiometers were put in. All new MOD/CE/IC/Rubycon brand filter/bypass caps were installed with higher temperature and voltage ratings. New 470 Ohm power resistors and 16v 5W Zener diodes were installed far off the PCB to alleviate heat stress (by convection cooling) and clean up previous work which was sloppy. The two phase inverter plate resistors were replaced with 2 watt metal oxide type. Amp was cleaned and hardware tightened.

The original tubes did not test good and were all replaced: V1/V2 = JJ 12AX7S, V3 = EHX 12AX7, V4/V5 = JJ 6L6GC Matched Pair. These tubes were picked for best tone, and reliability, specifically for this circuit. The 6L6GC's Fixed Bias was set to Factory Spec of 60mVDC at the bias test point.

This type of restoration can maybe be done once in the service life of this amplifier due to the chance of breaking or destroying the fragile PCB and components inside - they are not handwired amps that can be restored and fixed for 100+ years. If you are thinking of buying one of these that is 10-20 years old know it will likely need much of this work done to expand it’s life for another similar block of time. Buyer Beware.