Hot Rod Deluxe better platform then DRRI for dirt pedals and classic rock?

Yeah, I think the HRDX is the better way to go. Personally I think the HRDX is way underrated and the DRRI is way overrated. Our singer uses a Hot Rod Deville w/ the Fromel mods and it really sounds great.

 

Before you go and buy a different amp, I would try a different speaker. Maybe something like a Celestion Greenback, which has a midrange 'hump' to it. This will make the scooped mid thing less noticeable. I have a DRRI and a friend that has a Hot Rod Deville and they sound pretty similar, so swapping amps isn't going to make a big difference, but the speaker will.

However, if I was playing classic hard rock, I would go with a marshall-type amp. You might want to look into the Avatar 18 watt amp. They have a full and thick clean tone that sounds great and the overdrive on these things is much better than a pedal. It takes about 5 seconds before you go "wow, that's how overdrive and distortion is supposed to sound!" Pedals just don't compare. I know everybody says "marshall for dirt", but there really is a reason for this. If you never have played a low-wattage, Marshall tube amp, try it and you will see...

 

I think the stock speaker (Jensen C12-K) in the DRRI is actually quite midrange heavy and sounds fine with overdrive once it's fully broken in, it's just that the amp itself generally sounds kind of hard and unforgiving at lower volumes. In my experience it doesn't really sound good until it starts to break up a bit. The Hot Rod series of amps seem to have a hotter preamp circuit that saturates more quickly at lower volumes. As a consequence, they seem to take overdrive pedals better.

-Aaron

 

DRRI is tone stack so the mids are scooped if you crank the treble and bass...but turn down the treble and bass to 9 oclock or less and there are plenty of mids...problem is its too much LOW mids and not enough high mids...

I have a DRRI and a HRDX...I use pedals for 100% of my dirt and play humbucker guitars 99% of the time (les paul, 335 style, sg)...I play classic rock, hard rock...I rarely use the DRRI anymore...I can get the HRDX to sound better without any pedals than I can the drri...mostly because the hrdx has a mid pot...

The drri is useless for rock unless you have an eq pedal or 2 imo

 

I use a HRD for cover band duty with pedals for dirt. It's a great starting point amp that you can color-to-taste with various pedals. I've used a bunch of other stuff and nothing seems to work quite as well. Ymmv of course.

 

I think the HRD is the better choice for your application.

 

At one point I bought an HRD to go the pedal route
....tried a Rat pedal and REALLY...did not care for it at all.

That is the only pedal I tried.....so.....

The amp just seemed so.......loud / clean......if that makes sense, that the pedal
did not seem to dirty it up enough.......for me anyway.

Maybe stacked distortion pedals work better?

 

The Rat is really not a good pedal for that amp. It seems like most pedals I've demoed in stores using that amp sound really good. It loves anything tube screamer related, the Ocd, the Blue Collar, most anything I've thrown at one at a store-I don't own one though. A Rat is pretty particular about amps imo. A super clean Fender is not going to sound good with that nasally Rat tone.

 

You can always add a mid pot on the DRRI. The polarity switch by the power cord is not used, you could put the mid pot there. I found with the DRRI I used to have that the bright cap on the vibrato channel really made the DRRI picky about dirt pedals, since you are using the normal channel, not need to worry about this.

As for the DRRI versus HRD, I prefer the DRRI, but as far as taking pedals I think the HRD wins in that respect.

 

I did the HRD and dirt pedal route too. I tried alot of different pedals and could not get a good dirty sound for the type of music we play. (90's to current rock). I would look to a Marshall esque amp.

 

I recently bought a brand new Hot Rod Deluxe III and its a fantastic amp and take pedals really well!! Don't get me wrong, the Deluxe Reverb is an amazing amp, in fact, its my all time favorite amp, but its just not as versatile as a HRD...unless you mod it like crazy. The new HRDs actually have a decent overdrive channel too, but I still tend to use my OD pedals. Its great having the option of an effects loop and the eq section is way more useable. If you need versatility go with the Hot Rod Deluxe.

 

i have a HRDlx that sounds pretty great. I put a vintage 30, a mitchell donut ( theres a thread here on this) and retubed cranking the bias up a bit. I only use the clean channel and for dirt i use either a Brownie, a CM Plexitone, or a FD2 (fm version). I have a bunch of others too but those seem get me from cream to scream...ive done gigs with just a brownie, tuner , and flashback delay and have been really happy just riding the volume on the guitar.

 

for a ridiculously great tone, sometimes ill bring a weber mini mass and crank the volume upto about 7 or 8 with a les paul and the fulldrive and it sounds boutique! Like early ZZ Top. Nobody can believe that its a HRDlx.

 

Yep, or dump one of these little guys in the power amp input thing:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Fender-Tube...&otn=2&po=LVI&ps=63&clkid=5984736164263414512

 

Did you try a Rat pedal.....?....ha.

I think Drmojoxl has it right....IMO....based on trying the Rat myself,
and he said he tried all kinds of dirt with no luck.


Everyone else is saying that it takes pedals well...??

I am confused......and seriously, I am not trying to be a smart a$$.


So.............based on my own experience with trying just the Rat -
the original White face with the M308 chip - I am sticking to my opinion.

 

Have a tech go into the normal channel on your DRRI and put in a higher value mids resistor on the bass pot, somewhere between 10K-25K, and also clip the bright cap on the normal channel. get yourself a good a/b switch and use the vibrato channel for cleans and the normal channel for your drive pedals. A good tech should be able to do this for ~$50.

 

I am using a Turbo Tube Screamer in front of my HRDX. I have a 12 AX7M in the V-1, a 12AT7 in the V-2. The amp was factory equipped with a Celestion G12 Vintage speaker. Great Classic Rock tones come from that setup.

 

I use a Full-Drive II and an OCD. Both sound great.

Not sure a RAT is really the best choice to put in front of an HRD, as others have suggested.

 

I have both

unfortunately, the drummer makes the decision