reNAD - 80's Fender Concert amp reborn

Modulus_Amps

Just delivered this today, this was a Fender Concert Combo amp, designed by Mr Rivera in the 80's, it is now a serviced Fender Concert head with custom compact 2 X12 cabinet loaded with two Celestion Alnico Cream speakers, ready for another 30 years service

Guitar shown for reference.... and extra eye candy.

timmysoft

Looks awesome! But can it djent? 

ICBM

timmysoft said:

Looks awesome! But can it djent? 

It can if you do the tone-stack mod on the lead channel...

Actually no, but it does make that channel a lot more useful with more gain, a wider tone range and less fussy to dial in.

koneguitarist

Always found the Rivera designs too bright for my tastes with a Tele, mate used to have a 4x10 one and he got a great sound. I had the deluxe and Princeton models at some stages and could not get on with them.

Kebabkid

I had one of these and they were great.

Heavy buggers, aren't they?

Enjoy your new purchase

chromatuna

Lovely and very GAS inducing

BluesyDave

Super clean looking.  Really nice rig.

Modulus_Amps

Both the previous owner and the new owner only use the normal channel, works well with pedals, I assume the OD channel was meant to be Dumble like but it does not do it for me....and no djenting possible

Was not really my taste in terms of how it is voiced, if you keep the presence down it is not very bright thanks to some high end shelving in the pre-amp, sounded much better through a 2 x 12 compared to the combo, but the recap may have helped with that too.

ICBM

Modulus_Amps said:

Both the previous owner and the new owner only use the normal channel, works well with pedals, I assume the OD channel was meant to be Dumble like but it does not do it for me…

It was meant to be 'Boogie like' (as in an early Mark Series) but even then it's not very good. The best thing to do with them is to move the tone stack from before to after the distortion - which you can do using only the existing components, and if I remember rightly even the same wire!

You need to swap the whole tone stack (from before the .0022uF cap and 100K resistor to the output of the treble control) with the .01uF cap immediately before the master volume control, and move the feed to it to the bottom end of the 82K resistor (to compensate for the insertion loss of the tone stack in the new position, which otherwise makes the channel too quiet). The lack of the insertion loss in the *old* position also increases the overall distortion substantially, which makes it much easier to get a useful range from the volume and gain controls, rather than them both needing to be most of the way up.

Modulus_Amps

I am not going to mod that one, not mine to do it too and the user is more blues based so may actually prefer it, but yes I would probably do that if I as building it from scratch or make the tonestack position switchable