Oh Fender Hot Rods. They do indeed have too much raspy gain for most people's taste. These little hooligans of amps have DAMAGED THE HEARING OF MANY AN INNOCENT HARP PLAYER.
By the way have you ever noticed how loud these amps are on 2? But when you turn them up more they don't actually get that much louder? This is because the master volume pot on Hot Rods is linear rather than logarithmic, as they are on less delinquent amps. Some cynical people say this is so when you plug into one in the shop you say, "whoa, if it's that loud on two it must be like the four trumpets of the apocalypse on ten". And you like that, so you buy it. But then the singer starts bloody moaning, and you can't actually control the volume much, it's either on at two or off at one-and-a-half, so you say 'look it's only on two' which is a bit disingenuous isn't it?
This too can be put right - the volume control, not the singer (though to bring both channels into balance so you can channel-switch can be a bit complicated.)
Another standard Hot Rod problem is oscillation - anything from eldritch howling to motorboat phutphutting. The filter caps go. Not too hard to fix generally.
The famous fault though is an intermittent crackling and sometimes unbidden channel-swapping, caused by the fact the Fender put two very hot ceramic resistors on the circuit board to drop the voltage to the switching circuit, and they over heat and melt their own solder. High melting point solder is a good idea on these, or in extreme cases metal-cased resistors mounted direct to the chassis on flying leads from the board.
The speakers on these amps are a bit beamy. A death-ray of high frequency sound goes between the singer's legs and hits the front row in the teeth, but you can't hear a note you're playing. Get a Weber beam-blocker from www.tedweber.com - or just put a strip of gaffer right across the speaker hole. The highs all come from the centre of the cone, this spreads them around a bit.
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