Scott Henderson Discussion

[Kindly Killer]

Hey Scott! I love your music and you've helped me on this board with gear stuff before. I was poking around here today and saw that you are using a Hot Rod Deluxe and I thought I'd try to return some goodwill with a tip on a really easy, reversible mod that makes that amp perfect IMO (HRD is my daily driver).

It's super easy to make it more '60's sounding - more Blackface. It takes 5x longer to remove all the screws, drain the caps, and pull out the board than to do the actual mod.

The tonestack becomes a lot more similar to TMB Blackface amps if you solder a jumper between the wiper and lug #3 on the mid pot - just right on the pot - there's plenty of room on the board.

If you look at a HRD and e.g. a Twin, you can see that that is the major difference between the old tonestack and the new.

The other thing the old ones had that is real characteristic is the treble bypass cap on the volume pot (clean channel volume). I know treble bleed sounds real wonky and wrong in a guitar, but it really seems to give it that vibe if you do it on the amp. Just solder a ceramic cap across 2 & 3 of the volume pot. The Twin schemo I linked to says 120pF, but I used 100pF and after trying that I never opened up the amp again.

And obviously I installed a nice speaker and nice tubes. Oh yeah and those huge Peavey rubber feet (couples it with the floor better when it's tilted back).

[Scott Henderson]

Thanks for the info! I sent your letter to John Suhr - he'll know better than me if it's something I'd like. He already modded the clean channel by giving it a bit more gain, so he'll read about your mod and maybe he'll want to do it. Thanks again!