hot rod deluxe

I actually get great tones out of my HRD totally stock.  I use a pedal for my OD so that might be it, but still sounds good.

I'm probably going to get flamed, but I don't understand the modding of the HRD amps.  For the price of the amp (around $600-$700 last I checked) new speaker ($100), Omega mod ($250) you are getting up to used boutique prices.  I like the HRD for clean but personally hate the OD sound.  If you find a very good stand alone gain/od unit you'd be better off than dropping an extra 300-400 bucks in mods.  IMO the best deals on the planet for real PTP handwired amps with the "magic" Fender tones are the old Blackface/early Silverface era Bassman, Bandmaster, Tremolux, and Showman heads.  Most of these can be picked up for around $500 and sound fantastic.  Rumor is that Joe used a lot of old Fender Bassman/Tremolux heads to record his new album...check the new guitarplayer issue.

So the amp came in this past Friday and I've tried it out quite a bit since then.  I really liked the amp every time I tried one out in the store so I knew what to expect when I got one for myself.  I got this amp scratch and dent and from I can tell its fine not a blimish on it ($596 musiciansFriend with free shipping)  I was happy to see that in the catolog they now list them for a crazy price to $849 in their march 2009 catalog.  So out of the bat I feel like I got a deal.  The amp sounded great clean just like everyone said, nice highs and sparkling sounds where a breeze.  The drive option was what I was expecting which isn't really a bad thing, I like the way it makes my strats sound it beefs it up more then a lot of other amps I've had.  More Drive seems to me like a slight volume boost rather then more gain.  So I've sort of been playing around with that but I really don't care to hit a bunch of buttons to change sounds, I like having one great sound come from the amp and clean it up with a volume control on the guitar.  It does that fine as well.  As for the speaker I have that I'm thinking of putting in it I'm not going to swap them out just yet.   I have a cabinet that is 4 12's that these speakers are loaded into currently.  My plan is to keep it stock for the time being and plug the cabinet up to the external speaker jack.  you can by pass the speaker in the amp by inserting a 1/4 jack going to nothing into where the stock speaker plugs up.  This was in the instruction booklet so I know I wont screw the amp up doing this.  My speakers I have are these old 60's organ speakers I got from my church I forgot the brand name but they are in very good shape for 50 year old speakers and they are 16 ohm speakers rated at 40 watts a piece.  I have 4 of them from 2 different organs that my church had.  I've had them in different amps mostly in this cab with a head and they have always sounded great.  As for my plans for the amp the idea's you've put on here are great I want to try most of them, but for now I better focus on paying off this thing before I go too crazy.  My short term plan is to swap the tubes out and have the amp biased hotter.  I've heard they biased them cold so the tubes last their longest.  Also I've heard these amps over heat easy and I am going to install a small computer fan in the back to draw the heat out of it.  Has anyone else heard these amps over heat?

Hey man nice link!  All the advice has been great thus far.  I believe my amp is the Mexico amp, its nothing special but I've always tired them out in stores and liked them and when I found this one cheap I went for it.  I'm extremly happy with what I got right now and can't wait to try things to it.