I have played professionally, and still own, classic pre-CBS blackface Fender amps, including a 1963 Bandmaster, 1964 Vibroverb and 1965 Princeton Reverb. The Hot Rod DeVille 212 sounds better than all of them. It should, because Fender has had 48 years to learn how to improve on those classic amps. The DeVille has classic Fender tone and spring reverb, but it improves on the old amps by adding Master Volume Control versatility, much more responsive tone controls, two high quality tube overdrives, and an effects loop. With this amp, my James Burton Fender Telecaster and a few quality effects, I get sounds as good as anybody's. There's no reason to spend a lot of money for one of the boutique amps when this amp is so good and so reasonably priced.

R&BComboSideman owns this item

Owned this for over 10 years now, but just had a fresh opportunity to explore it with a new guitar with humbuckers.
Its always sounded great clean, and it has multiple layers of overdrive for variable vintage fuzzy tones, between the drive knob and the drive/more drive switching. A lot of volume for its size and rating. It always made my Strat sound like a classic rock or blues strat. Now its making my Gibson SG sound like Alex Lifeson on a ES355 or Angus Young depending on how i set it. really beautiful fuzz. Can really cut through on leads and produce a lot of chunky or crunchy rhythms.
I don`t love the reverb but it might be just because I don`t like reverb.
It was all the amp I wanted without a lot of junk I didn`t want or need.

I own several guitars but only one amp and this is it. Mine is a 1994 so I've tried different tubes and I am currently using Tung Sol for preamp and power. I get classic fender twin tones clean to crunchy with a bit more bite overall. I've considered other amps but I simply can't part with this baby. I should mention that I've done some simple mods to cut the reverb sweep for less effect and to be more fine-tunable and compressed the overall tone somewhat, but that's just personal taste.

Not the best Fender amp, there are aspects about the tone I do not like. The reverb is "floppy" the bass has to be almost off for this amp to sound "good". I have tried retubing it and getting it checked. I would not buy another. I am a an OLD Tube amp guy, maybe I should stick with vintage gear.....

As an amateur, playing for personal enjoyment, I love this amp. However, tube amps want to be turned up for the best tone and I could have definitely gone down to a smaller version of this amp since I primarily use it at home. I have let a few of my musician friends use this amp on stage and it has plenty of power and punch for great sound in a local venue. I have had it for about 4 years and continues to sound great every time I flip it on.

davidgard owns this item