5E3 Tweed Deluxe - a Review and a Guide

[mahtone]

For a while now I’ve been meaning to post a review of the Ceriatone 5E3 Tweed Deluxe kit that I built in late 2007, along with some tips for getting good tone out of it that might not be so obvious.

I’ve seen a few cases where people have been considering getting something like this where a more detailed post would have been handy to point them at. There are also some subtlties to the amp that you just wouldn't spot in an everyday tyre-kick at a music shop, so I thought I'd chuck a few of them out there into the collective body of knowledge that this forum represents!

So first up: some history! Yus!

The 5E3 amp was produced as a 1x12 combo from 1955-1960. It’s often called a Narrow Panel Deluxe. It’s sold again today as the 57 Deluxe Reissue. ‘Tweed’ obviously refers to the lacquered tweed covering used on the cab, and refers to amps produced from about 48 to 59, although it continued on some models up to 64.

I got the kit in a head form, so it comes with two speaker outs and an impedance selector for 4 or 8 ohms and the tubes are mounted for a head cab config, i.e. upward when the chassis sits flat. I think current models ship with 4, 8 and 16 ohms. Pretty handy feature, this.

I’m not going to talk much about Ceriatone itself, other than that they were good to deal with, reasonably priced and excellent quality. There are plenty of other threads on these guys.

My build was less than perfect, and so it hums a wee bit. I’m sure there’s a dry joint in there somewhere that I’ve missed. It can be made totally silent, I just haven’t quite managed it. It’s not an issue at gigging volumes anyway, and a lot of it might be to do with the power supply at my house.

Enough about the supply and build! Onto the features and the playing!

Features:
It’s 15 watts and was originally intended to keep up with a drummer and bass and that’s about it. It’s plenty loud (almost too loud) enough for home usage, and I’d say a lot of live usage too. I’ve found it’s fine most of the time. If you’re miced it’s sweet, especially if you have foldback. Dialling it right up for when you are not miced, however, removes a lot of the better tone options I talk about lower down though, so anyone who gigs in a moderately loud group should give this thing a real try at volume to see if it’ll work for you.

More specs available at the Fender Amp Field Guide: http://www.thevintagesound.com/ffg/ under the Deluxe / Narrow Panel

The amp has 2 independent channels (non-switchable), with four inputs. One channel is a ‘bright’ channel, the other one is normal voicing. Each channel has a high and low input, so if you want a lower volume, darker sound you use the low input. Brighter and louder, use the high input.

For controls there are three knobs, and three only. These are: Volume on each channel, and a ‘Tone’ knob. All are numbered 1 – 12. Volume starts quiet and goes to fairly loud by 1 – 2 and is breaking up around 2 - 3 on both channels depending on high or low input. It doesn’t get much louder past 4-5, just dirtier.

The tone knob is part gain control, part tone control. Turning from 0 – 12 the amp goes from (comparatively) clean to dirty, with an increase in sharpness. Below three it’s fat and clean, up past 7-8 it’s compressed and crunchy.

These three knobs seem quite simple to operate, but there is some interaction between them that is not so obvious that I’ll talk about later.

Tone – what it does and how to get it:
The 5E3, to my ears, is a great sounding amp. You can get some great warm singing tones out of it right up to some fairly aggressive gritty stuff. It has to be said, however, that this amp is pretty much a one trick pony. It does tweed tone, brilliantly, and that’s it. It’s very full with lots of mids and that fendery shimmer at the top end. You can vary it a bit, but it’s tweed through and through. There’s no effects loop, no TMB, and no clean headroom whatsoever. Varying the tone is pretty much down to the guitar, its volume and tone knobs, and the three knobs on the amp itself.

Ok, with that in mind, there are a few tricks to the amp’s controls. Beyond the basics of ‘volume makes the channel louder and grittier’ and ‘tone makes the channel sharper and grittier’ there is some interplay between the two volume knobs. If you are plugged into one channel, varying the volume on the other channel acts a bit like a contour control. It’s subtle and a bit difficult to describe, but it seems to me to behave a bit like a mid-boost as you turn it up. Turning it up also brings an increase in gain, maxing out around 10 and then dropping away.

My preference is setting the tone somewhere between 4 and 7, setting the volume where I want it and playing with the other channel volume a little until I like it. On the normal voiced channel I generally leave the other volume at or near zero as there’s plenty of mids in this amp. On the bright channel I have it up a bit more. As the two channels use different tubes (12AX7 and 12AY7) the effect is a bit different on each side so there’s lots of fun to be had experimenting. If I want to play a bit cleaner and fatter, I’ll set the tone about 2-3 and boost the volumes accordingly.

Jumpering the two channels together with a patch cable is also commonly done with this amp. I quite like the jumpered tone. It’s full and bright. You have some jumpering options, but you need to use both the high and low inputs of one channel, which defaults it to the high input. Your choice is then to jumper to the high or low of the other. I generally go to the high as I like the brighter voicing you get on the high inputs. There is still some tone interplay between the two volume knobs, but it’s now about blending the volumes more than anything else.

How to play into it for best effect
Ok, assuming you have it set up the way you like it, I’ve found a few things with this amp. This amp will keep you honest, no doubt about it. Every click and squeek goes through it and is clearly audible. This is as much a strength as a weakness as it can be very expressive. Bottom line is that if you play regularly through this sort of amp your fretting is going to improve a lot from sheer necessity.

The main thing to bear in mind with playing into this amp is that it responds to dynamics really well. Play softly and it is clean and sweet, hit it harder and it crunches up nicely. What I love about tweed overdrive is that it never gets mushy or fizzy. You can hear every note all the time. Roll the guitar volume off a bit, dial up the amp volume until it’s useable and then roll the guitar volume back up when you want it to crunch up. Or just hit it harder. The higher the tone is set the more compression there’ll be and therefore the less volume difference there is when you do this.

There’s a youtube video of Shane Nicholas demonstrating exactly this at NAMM 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GuSu5LBgag that gives a handy idea of how that works. That doesn’t sound quite like mine, but I put that down to different speaker, cab and PC speakers. Possibly also a slightly different circuit. Mine sounds fuller in the bass, and plus I think he’s on the bright channel. For the record I’m using a fender extension cab with a Celestion Hot 100. Way more wattage than I’ll ever need in that speaker. I’ve been meaning to try a greenback or blue with it to see what it does to it.

I like to set it up so the dynamic response is done entirely with the pick and fingers, so I set the volume to around 4 or so with the tone around 5. This gives me a bit of grit during normal playing, and then on the notes I’m accenting it crunches very satisfyingly. Awesome.

I have found that guitars with humbuckers tend to sound gainy with this amp. Especially anything hotter than vintage. It just seems to push the inputs a bit too hard for my liking. I’ve generally "past participle of get" around this by rolling the volume off a bit and this seems to drop the mids a bit and generally clean it up. Some humbucker guitars have been positively muddy at full volume, even with their tone knob on 10. Generally it loves single coils. Even the Texas Specials I had in my strat didn’t push it too hard.

The amp has a tendency to honk with the volume up at gigging volumes if you’re playing hard. I think that’s been mainly when I’ve just wanted it to be louder than its 15watts would let it go.

I’ve had mixed results with pedals. Putting pedals in front removes a lot of that great dynamic response that it has, and the overdrive pedals I’ve tried seem to muddy it up a bit. This could probably be fixed by placing an eq directly in front of the amp, but you’d still probably lose the dynamics. One thing I have heard tried is plugging into the amp, and running out of the same channel’s other input, through a pedal chain, and into the other channel. This allows blending of the guitar’s signal with the effects chain. I’m not sure it eliminates any of the problems above though. Plus there’re a number of options of A/B switching the inputs.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is basically my experience of this amp in a nutshell. There are plenty of youtube demos of it out there if you want to get a better idea of what it sounds like. I’ll happily take questions as well. Hopefully you’ll have found this post informative and enjoyable!

I may add to this as well from time to time...

[calling card]

Hey thanks for the low-down of the Ceriatone Tweed, is it 6L6 or 6V6 tube?, excuse my ignorance - even at the age of 45 musically I still feel like I fell in the last rainshow. I've been very Fender Tweed curious lately having only known type EL84 breed amps.

[mahtone]

Hey thanks for the low-down of the Ceriatone Tweed, is it 6L6 or 6V6 tube?, excuse my ignorance - even at the age of 45 musically I still feel like I fell in the last rainshow. I've been very Fender Tweed curious lately having only known type EL84 breed amps.

It's a 6V6 amp. I think that 6L6s like to run with more voltage than the 6V6 so I'm not sure they're often used in lower wattage tweeds. Tweed Bassman would be a good example of a 6L6 amp. Rectifier is a 5Y3GT.

The layout looks like this: http://ceriatone.com/images/layoutPic/f ... iatone.jpg

[Hot_Grits]

Great review!

-though I have to admit I don't tend to think of the 5E3 as a 'keep you honest' sort of an amp. Perhaps in the sense that there's not super high gain or reverb to be had, but that's about it. I find the overall voicing and feel of a 5E3 to be quite compressed, relaxed and forgiving. In fact: too forgiving at times. There's a solo on the new Defendants album where my cranked Vic is sagging so much that it is audibly struggling to push out the notes I'm playing. Which is kind of cool to me, but I imagine that would be many players' concept of a faulty amp.

Anyways, some more waffle and pointers about the 5E3:

-My experience with the 5E3 circuit is limited to playing the Victoria clone, the Mission amps kit, a couple of homebrews and of course my owning the Victoria Double Deluxe (5E3 with 4xJJ6V6, tweed twin transformer and 2x12 format). In my opinion when done right (and that is an art) the 5E3 is one of the all-time classic amp tones. Very much the thick tweed thing but unique even among tweed circuits.

I wound up buying my Double Deluxe after playing the Victoria 5E3 at Mojosound back when they had four Victorias on the shop floor. Of the roughly 12 high end amps I played at Mojo that day the Vics impressed me most, and the little 5E3 stood out as one of the very best amps I'd ever played. So Marc told me to cart it off to soundcheck at Bodega. It sounded great, but was way too small in terms of wattage, headroom and dimension. I found myself staring right at the speaker to hear it over the other 10 bandmembers onstage that day. So I ordered the double version, which is a much more giggable amp. Having said that, it still isn't a high headroom amp, but I tend to think that if you're looking into an amp like a 5E3 you're probably more into a slightly gritty tone and using dynamics rather than that binary really clean/really distorted thing that you'd get from a modern channel switcher.

Even then, there are some tricks you can apply to get more mileage out of a 5E3. Occasionally I'll find myself without adequate (or any) monitoring at a gig, and what I do is set my Catalinbread Silver Kiss to clean boost, with gain on 0 and volume over half, then use the SK's three band eq to cut bass and mids. The cutting of the bass in particular helps thin out the tone and keep headroom. Essentially it's much like 'blackfacing' the amp: reducing mids to gain cleans. Works very well, as there's plenty of mids and bottom to the 5E3 sound to subtract. For those without an SK (ie most of you) I'd imagine any od with good clean boost abilities and the ability to cut bass and mids will do. I imagine eq pedals would work a treat too.

Speakers play an important part in getting the most out of the 5E3, too. To me it only sounds right with an alnico jensen-style speaker. Part of that is getting some speaker overdrive into the equation. Of the celestions I'm not sure I'd recommend a greenback to be honest. The G12H30 is pretty decent, but still quite a character change. The nicest of all the celestions with a 5E3 (and a common mod) is the alnico blue. Interestingly the G12T75 sounds quite nice with the 5E3, as the to end sizzle and mid scoop of that speaker fits the mid-heavy voicing of the 5E3.

Finally, if you're into the concept of the 'double' 5E3 as a gigging alternative Victoria isn't the only option. I beleive Weber do a double 5E3 kit, though Unique built one and said it sounded quite different to my Vic. For those interested in a kit build I suggest you contact Bruce at Mission amps (the Weber kit's designer) and ask him to make up a double 5E3 kit, as I'm sure he will. Bruce's standard Mission 5E3 kit is also my recommendation for a homebrew kit. He built his kit after listening extensively to two of his brothers' vintage 5E3s and it is VERY close to the Vics, which are the best 5E3s I've heard sofar.

[AmpShop]

Nice in-depth write-up Mahtone!

You've done a really good job of describing the 5E3's idiosyncrasies (this is a circuit with many) such as the tone control adding gain, volume controls interacting etc.

A headroom amp it ain't, but it's easy to see why it's such a well-loved circuit - thicky, juicy and very reactive.

I tend to agree with Hot_Grits and say that I do find it very forgiving, in terms of response and dynamics - it's very thick and spongy, and not particularly "fast" ... but yes, it's also very detailed and thus all extraneous noises, string squeak etc come through. I'd suggest a lot of that has to do with the fact it has no negative feedback - amps without NFB tend to have more of that "detail".

Interestingly, the way your amp hums - some of that will be to do with the fact that it has no NFB - if you were to install NFB, I bet the idle hum would be reduced. There's some other tricks to reduce hum too. If you ever want to spend a couple of hours messing around/experimenting with the chassis, feel free to bring it out to my workshop - I have an abundance of components and would be happy to take the time to try things out.

I built a 5E3 recently onto a project chassis I have here. Wired it true point to point (no circuit board of any kind) and it turned out fantastic (or at least I think so). I quite like it with a plug-in solid state rectifier module - the amp itself is spongy enough regardless of rectifier type, but the solid state rectifier does add a tad more punch. Of course I've since messed with the chassis again to the degree where it's no longer a 5E3 and is currently a bit of a frankenstein that I'm having some fun results with.

[AmpShop]

Hey thanks for the low-down of the Ceriatone Tweed, is it 6L6 or 6V6 tube?, excuse my ignorance - even at the age of 45 musically I still feel like I fell in the last rainshow. I've been very Fender Tweed curious lately having only known type EL84 breed amps.

If that curiosity is nagging, you'd better satisfy it

I can offer really good prices on the Mojotone 5E3 kits - quality transformers (Heyboer), quality components, excellent cabinet work and a good selection of speakers. I can supply it in kit form, or assembled, tested and ready to go.

[calling card]

Yeah I feel the 5E3 trail is somewhere I have to go... travel the river of time & tone back to the source.

[blackstratblues]

Larry Carlton talks about his Stely Dan rig: 335 and Tweed Deluxe:
http://www.mr335.tv/?channel=steely&vid ... /steelyrig

[AmpShop]

Yeah I feel the 5E3 trail is somewhere I have to go... travel the river of time & tone back to the source.

Playing a 5E3 will definitely take your far down that river!

It's such a mad little amp! As my appreciation for the technical side of things grows, the madness of the 5E3 becomes more apparent. If Fender were trying to design louder, cleaner amps, they really missed the mark with the 5E3 ... thankfully.

We do of course have the benefit of hindsight, but when you look at the schematic, I can't see for the life of my how they thought that it'd be a clean amp. None of the Tweeds had that much in the way of clean headroom, but even by those standards, the 5E3 has some unusual quirks that guarantee a) it'll never have much in the way of clean headroom and b) it'll be an amazing overdrive amp! I strongly suspect that someone at Fender actually knew that distortion is good (despite their marketing hyperbole about distortion-free amplification) and that the 5E3 was their pet project.

[Hot_Grits]

Yeah I feel the 5E3 trail is somewhere I have to go... travel the river of time & tone back to the source.

I dunno if you heard Darcy playing my Vic at the gearfestering we were both at but he really got it to sound '50s'. It was very cool to hear someone play something authentic from the era the 5E3 was designed.

Didn't Rory have a thing for tweeds?

[Hot_Grits]

Larry Carlton talks about his Stely Dan rig: 335 and Tweed Deluxe:
http://www.mr335.tv/?channel=steely&vid ... /steelyrig

That's what I'm talking about! dumble schmumble!

[calling card]

Have listen to BBC Sessions disc 1, you'll hear something squawking it's guts out - most probably a tweed (he had several types) boosted with the 'Hawk'.

I found this piece from an interview which outlines the gear and in Rory's own words:

"RORY: I used the Vox AC-30 for years and years, and I used to use a Rangemaster treble booster on it, which was great. I still have one at home. Very primitive, but I used to use the normal input in the Vox, which was not known as the brilliance input. It wouldn't be bright enough; therefore I used the Rangemaster. Then I went to a Fender Twin, a Tweed Twin, and I had a Deluxe which I bought for the studio. Then I had a Fender Bassman linked with the Twin for a long time. I used to use these boosters made by DiMarzio. They were treble boosters with kind of a graphic on them. Then I moved to Ampeg VT-22 linked with VT-44. Then I moved to Marshall 50 watt combo, and then I had two combos. Presently, in England. I was using a 50 watt Marshall with an AC-30 amp, and then an optional 4x12 Marshall which I use for big halls. This American tour, I'm using a Fender Twin Tweed, ‘55 model, with the Marshall 50 watt linked together, and a third one just for extra volume if needed.
VIVIAN: If they're linked together, which one do you mike? Or do you mike both?
RORY: You mike them all, but you let the sound man know that the Fender’s more for tone character, rather than volume and the Marshall’s for the direct. It's a schizophrenic setup. I’d rather just use one amp. There was a time when one Vox would do me, or one Fender, but our volumes crept up, like all the bands. A lot of it's insecurity, too, with amplifiers blowing up on you in the past. You're always needing a spare amp nearby"
___________________________________

I'm casting my dodgy memory back & remember Darcy trialing the Gibson 335 thru your Vic but you guys really got things cooking as I was leaving later on, there indeed were some good noise coming out of the Da Capo building. Your Double Deluxe struck me as quite a powerful unit & would go into loud territory before the valves started to sweat much.
LOL! when I got home & reinstated my rig & played it again I thought "huh it seems to have lost power" but no I'd become way volume tolerant after the TronFest!

Ok guys start building that Mojotone 5E3 - you know I'll buy it.

[AmpShop]

Ok guys start building that Mojotone 5E3 - you know I'll buy it.

Aye aye cap'n!

[Hot_Grits]

Have listen to BBC Sessions disc 1, you'll hear something squawking it's guts out - most probably a tweed (he had several types) boosted with the 'Hawk'.

I found this piece from an interview which outlines the gear and in Rory's own words:

"RORY: I used the Vox AC-30 for years and years, and I used to use a Rangemaster treble booster on it, which was great. I still have one at home. Very primitive, but I used to use the normal input in the Vox, which was not known as the brilliance input. It wouldn't be bright enough; therefore I used the Rangemaster. Then I went to a Fender Twin, a Tweed Twin, and I had a Deluxe which I bought for the studio. Then I had a Fender Bassman linked with the Twin for a long time. I used to use these boosters made by DiMarzio. They were treble boosters with kind of a graphic on them. Then I moved to Ampeg VT-22 linked with VT-44. Then I moved to Marshall 50 watt combo, and then I had two combos. Presently, in England. I was using a 50 watt Marshall with an AC-30 amp, and then an optional 4x12 Marshall which I use for big halls. This American tour, I'm using a Fender Twin Tweed, ‘55 model, with the Marshall 50 watt linked together, and a third one just for extra volume if needed.
VIVIAN: If they're linked together, which one do you mike? Or do you mike both?
RORY: You mike them all, but you let the sound man know that the Fender’s more for tone character, rather than volume and the Marshall’s for the direct. It's a schizophrenic setup. I’d rather just use one amp. There was a time when one Vox would do me, or one Fender, but our volumes crept up, like all the bands. A lot of it's insecurity, too, with amplifiers blowing up on you in the past. You're always needing a spare amp nearby"
___________________________________

I'm casting my dodgy memory back & remember Darcy trialing the Gibson 335 thru your Vic but you guys really got things cooking as I was leaving later on, there indeed were some good noise coming out of the Da Capo building. Your Double Deluxe struck me as quite a powerful unit & would go into loud territory before the valves started to sweat much.
LOL! when I got home & reinstated my rig & played it again I thought "huh it seems to have lost power" but no I'd become way volume tolerant after the TronFest!

Ok guys start building that Mojotone 5E3 - you know I'll buy it.

I remember that interview with Viv Campbell and Rory. Guitar for the practising musician always had those cool 'two pros chat together' pieces...

[AmpShop]

I remember that interview with Viv Campbell and Rory. Guitar for the practising musician always had those cool 'two pros chat together' pieces...

Another surprsingly good one was EVH being interviewed by Billy Corgan ... I have that issue somewhere.

Also had a cool one with Dave Grohl interviewing Thurston Moore, but I lost that one years ago.