I was visiting my amp tech guy to have him take a look an amp I put together and noticed he had 7 amps to repair/service 5 were fender hrd's in the line to be repaired. I inquired about that and he told me 4 are broken and one to be modded (vol control mod). He said he was probably going to end up doing the vol mod on the others too depending on the customer of course. He said he sees quite a few HRD's in for minor stuff repair wise (but still broken) but not grossly out of purportion to the number of amps in general. We have lots of HRD's floating around here in my town. It seems to me from his further comments that the HRD's do not to seem as durable as some other common modern stuff. take all that with a grain of salt, it just struck me as weird to see a row of HRD's lined up.
How come Craigslist has a bunch of Fender Hot Rod Deluxes for sale?
- Thread starter CoolCat
- Start date
Weird, isn't it? I mean . . . if an amp is a total dog, most people either hear that when they buy or get wind via word of mouth. So, someone's buying the HRD's, figured they're okay when they check them out, deciding they either don't like them or have had them in for repair, and then putting them up for sale to bail on the investment.
Like I said before, my guess is that they're good amps, but not really good. I think people either have serious second thoughts once they buy, or go down the repair road and figure they've got lemons.
Suds . . .
CoolCat
Well-known member
its a good input. i wonder if the repairs are simple and cheap? maybe a broken HRD on CL, is a DIY great deal?
Lt. Bob
Spread the Daf!
it's almost always fractured solder joints where the ribbon connectors run from the preamp board to the power section. There's three 6 conductors and one 2 conductor I think. Might have been three 8 conductors.
Anyway, they're stiff and vibrate and there's enough weight there to vibrate until it fractures the joints ... especially if you gig a lot and throw it in the truck and bounce it down the hywy.
I talked someone here at HR thru the repair a few months back and they said it fixed it.
It's a bit of a pain because to reheat the joints which is how you fix it, you have to remove all knobs and jack and pot nuts and then drop the preamp board out so you can get to the joints.
Other than that .... it's a simple repair.
After the 3rd time I had to do it in around 2 years I replaced all the ribbon connectors with single wires.
And then I had to fool around with routing because if you didn't line the wires up in the same spots they were in as part of the ribbon connector, it hummed. But I finally got it and haven't had to fix it again.
nato101010
New member
I also found they didn't take to well to multi effects pedals. But they are a OK for a one trick pony kinda deal. I found they went nicely with a hollow body gretsch.