Fender '63 Reverb Reissue

This is fairly easy to use (it only has three knobs) and the manual explains everything well. Make sure that you release the pan lever in the back and then make sure that the pan was properly released and the springs are not sticking to the foam pad in the front (yes, a sticking pan can reduce the reverb dramatically even when the lever has been released).

This is made for "over the top" dripping wet surf reverb. I'm serious. I don't play a lot of surf so I really don't turn this up much. My settings are: Dwell -3; mix - 3, tone - 3. If you turn the dwell up past 5, it gets very crazy. If you max out the dwell and mix, it sounds as if you are playing way under the ocean. This reverb produces the DEEPEST reverb with the LONGEST decay that I have ever heard out of a spring unit. Ironically, most settings are totally unusable for me because they are so dripping wet. I never turn the dwell above 3. Again, if you like that surf sound, this thing can do it. Also, it tends to warm up the sound of your amp as you turn up the mix level. Good stuff. It has to get a "10" because this unit is the benchmark for spring reverb.

It sometimes picks up the radio and it makes a hell of a racket if it gets knocked. Otherwise, it is dependable.

I was not prepared for the amount of reverb this thing kicks out. It is literally a force of nature. It is expensive. If you don't need this much 'verb, you might get a cheaper pedal, such as the EH Holy Grail. Based on my reverb usage (always on, but not surf), it is debatable whether I needed to get this. But I do love it.

this is an update from a previous review. i finally got a replacement footswitch for the unit. the type fender included with the unit. when i click the switch on, the reverb is great, all my tone comes through wonderfully, when i click it off. no reverb. the tone is all muddy and screwed up. i was curious if anyone else has this problem. email me at the address below for some help please.

This is the brown, 63' reissue reverb that was made about 1998. It's very easy to get great sounds out of it with a tweek of either the mix, tone, or dwell controls.

I'm using it primarily w/ a '91 US Strat Standard w/ Seymour Duncan vintage p/u's and a 65' Fender Deluxe (non-reverb). I use a disortion pedal in front of it and wail away at the blues. Favorite setting: Tone: 2 or 3 Mix: 7 Dwell: 2. The unit is very quiet with the mix up or down. The original Russian tubes were replaced with NOS American tubes which VASTLY improved the tone and noise floor. I sometimes use a 6K6 tube which cuts into the signal strength somewhat but gives the unit a different tone. I've also replaced the last cap in the signal chain (a 250pf ceramic cap) with a 1000pf slver mica cap, giving the reverb a bit more warmth. The coupling caps w/ Spragues which gave the reverb a little more clarity. Whatever you do, use good tubes!

Since it contains a bunch of thinnish PC boards, I wouldn't slam it around much but it hasn't failed me in 3 years.

Fender has good customer service but I haven't had to deal with them for this product.

This is a highly recommended piece. It's a good value, too - you could spend a lot more to get the same or lessor quality reverb. I would recommend replacing the components mentioned above IF you are not into surf music - otherwise, leave it alone. These mods cut the briliance of the unit.

mix dwell tone powerand footswitch. just make sure you remove the bracing bracket before you plug in switch on and go. theres a story about a boy who thought his was broken. no reverb sound coming from it. and then he learned to take off the bracing lever in back.

mosrite celebrity, fender texmex strat, ampeg v4 halfstack. it is not noisy. it is nice and quiet. this unit sounds great for all different types of reverb. from a light ambient shimmer to a fully drowned soaked wet quacking gift from the heavens.

some people complain about tapping it and having the evil crash of doom. heres an idea. use it to your advantage! even if you're not playing surf. you can improvise that into anything. chord changes. solos. okay maybe you cant but i do. this unit seems strong enough. just make sure to push the bracing lever on before moving it around as to not damage the springs

well it is fender. but i've not dealt with them. i hear they are good.

i play surf noise punk all that crap. i've not been plaing long. a few years. i have the mosrite. fender strat. ampeg v4. marshall valvestate (blegh) tons of effects pedals. electro harmonix/danelectro/proco rat/and even a boss tremolo. i love everything about this. delay and reverb are two effects i cannot live without. no matter what i'm doing there has to be some reverb. just sounds that more fluid to me. i lost the footswitch, which i think is quite important so i dont have to mess with the reverb settings between songs. i can just switch out and use the ampegs reverb for a more subtle sound. (which is quite nice as well). if lost-stolen-broken, i would cry-kill-replace. this is the only outboard reverb unit i've ever tried. and i dont care to bother with any other. thats about it. it does anything from dick dale/astroman/ventures to more subtle 60s reverb. beautifully executed.

It's pretty strait forward. Theres Mix, Dwell, and Tone. I honestly think these titles are superficial, as they both pretty much just add more reverb to varying degrees. If you have the dwell on stun, and the mix on two, you get about as much as if they were both set to 5. The tone makes a bit of difference. I tend to think of it as the "drip" knob.

The sound this thing creates is absolutely amazing, so long as it is being driven with low output single coils such as a Strat, Jazzmaster, Tele etc. You can get nice ambient sweet reverb, or blitzed out underwater surf tones (My Fave) I dont play much surf anymore, but it compliments any sixties tone as well as Grant Green style Jazz tones.
The only comlaint I would have is whenever I play any kind of humbucker set up through it, the reverb gets really tinny and gross at high reverb settings. It sounds your kicking a tin can. I used to be a digital reverb user, but I am no more, nore will I ever be.

I would say its pretty reliable. My favorite trait is that when it's shaken (or outright booted accross the stage...) it lets out a menacing crash which sound men absolutely adore (note the sarcasm folks) I once played a show with my surf band where by the end of the set I had kicked the tank to the other side of the stage. It still works fine, though I've been warned that excessive treatement of this sort can result in busted sprtings. Though I nore any of my friends have ever experienced this.

I've never had to, but they have a warrenty, and they're still in business.

For Surf music there is ABSOLUTELY NO SUBSTITUTE for this thing. This is where it started. Unfortuenately I would say that most amps have an adequete reverb design, but this does offer more tone control, and just sounds so sweet. It's not a must for other styles of music, and frankly not worth it if your not really exploiting its sound as one would with surf, or sixties style garage.

So easy to use, it has 3 knobs. This is the way to go for simplicity. I get tired of all the new stuff with a million knobs and tons of programming.

This is an amazing reverb effect. I am pretty picky about my reverb sounds, and enjoy the quality of this one. Makes anything sound better, but perhaps the most interesting thing about it is the added warmth. The 3 tubes inside really do their part, and these are just the stock ones! i cant wait to test out some of the ones they used in the vintage 63's The only complaint i have is, you have to really be careful where you set the dwell. It is hard to rid of the "boing" sound that it gives. This is cool for really twangy stuff, or surf but for what i do (guitar solos, instrumentals etc) this is weird. Also, the manual states this is best in front of the amp.True if clean is your game, w/a dist. pedal BUT, if you have a amp that does both well, or you want reverb on your gain channel, there is nothing better. This thing really livens up an effects loop. I am pleased overall. can be very subtle to all out wet.

I bought one of these that came not working. Spring reverbs are kinda risky. They seem to not hold up as well, and i always hear bad about the newer fender stuff. However, sturdy is the unit, and maybe i just got a dud the 1st time around.

Called them to make sure i was correctly pulling the metal lever in the back properly and they were helpful, although the guy kinda sounded like he thought i was idiot (which is true) but i didnt want to mess anything up! I thought the manual was gay about telling about the metal lever.

Best reverb you can get, except maybe the Lexicon stuff, but who wants to spend a week or 2 programming in reverb. Just get something simple. I have owned a Rocktron intelliverb before which i thought was crap. This kills over it. I also own a little alesis Nanoverb for my digital reverb needs, which just slimmed down to about 0% of the time because of the warm sounds of this unit.

Very simple to use, a short manual that describes the dwell, mix, tone and the lever in the back that you need to release when playing the item and tighten when moving it around.

When you get one that isn't messed up there shouldn't be much extra noise if any. Other than that the reverb sound that these put out is the BEST. If you play surf music this is what you want. Period.
Full on wet, dripping, splashing surf madness.

I had wanted one of these for years. I finally got the money to buy one, special order from Guitar Center...before it arrived I had dreams (seriously) that the thing wouldn't work properly - and guess what, I brought it home and it had no reverb just a slight buzzing sound. So I brought it back, they had to ship it back to the Fender repair shop. Fender claimed that it worked fine and that I probably just didn't know about the spring pan release lever. (which I was fully aware of). Guitar Center finally got it back, so I had to drive back again to pick it up, I tested in the Guitar Center -- It worked -- but it still was the same unit that was messed up. So now I've had it for about a month and only have played it a few times -- never moved it out of my room at all -- today Im playing it will full reverb (10, 10, 10) suddenly the reverb cuts out more than half...so the thing is messed up again and hardly sounds like it should.

Is mine reliable ? NO! Are most of them usually reliable ? I think so - but not if I own it.

Fender repair shop claimed there was absolutly nothing wrong with it, even though directly out of the box it did not work for me or the people at guitar center. They obviosly did something to make it work when It got back to guitar center again. But that didn't last long because it's already jacked up again, this time I getting a new unit and not repairing the same one.

I play surf music - this is the unit you'd want for that.
Nothing compares. If you get a unit that works this is one of the best effects ever. (Distortion, reverb & chorus) It's also fairly rare and a lot of people don't know what a real tube/spring reverb sounds like. Overall I'm giving mine a 7. In general If you have one that isn't messed up I'd give it a full 10 in all catagories.

A friend of mine purchased one of fender's 63' stand-alone reverb reissues a few months ago. I had the opportunity to play this thing out as much as I wanted (thru his sovtek mig 50 watter) before he moved home for the summer so I feel I can give a fairly good synopsis of its performance. Sure, it's easy to use- 3 knobs, one for depth, mix, and tone.

Uh huh- this is about where the review goes south. I honestly can't believe how terrible the reissues sound (and in this case I mean ALL of fender's "reissue" products). My afore mentioned friend bought this unit from a mars music chain, sound unheard. I would have been *pissed* if I would have been the buyer and all I had to show for my $300+ was that reverb. I tinker with amps whenever I can and he let me open the reverb up and tool around inside- no mods, just looking. Cheap radio-shack quality film resistors and caps everywhere, just awful. Sovtek reflector vacuum tubes do not good tones make- sorry guys. I played the unit through an Ibanez Talman telecaster knock-off and that Sovtek Mig-50 before opening it and the sound was about as good as the reverb generated by screaming into a cardboard box. I was suspicious of what I would find inside and...yup. PC circuit board design, dumpy parts, and cheap russian tubes. I think the time has come for fender to stop screwing around and MAKE GOOD EQUIPMENT!!! Sure their really old amps and reverbs fetch mad cash on the vintage market- mostly because anything made after 1970 was just plain garbage! Honestly though..time to be objective. The reverb was very shallow, even at full mix. The sound was poor and barely retained the original guitar tone (very colored sound but not a pretty color). The tone knob was the most effective control present and did its job well, trimming high frequencies like a champ. The blend worked pretty well, too. After looking at some of the posts here I felt compelled to write and let people know- please don't buy guitar equipment blind (or deaf) and don't lower your expectations of what good tone should be just because god-awful vintage reissues like this are the best thing that big guitar manufacturers can produce. This product just couldn't compete with a decent digital reverb pedal and I really am not a fan of digital effects. Bottom line- I was far from impressed.

I replaced the 6v6 sovtek tube with an old GE 6v6gta from my collection and it helped the overall sound alot. I examined the tube and the innards looked really fragile inside the envelope, enough so that I was surprised they survived the rigors of shipping without shorting out. I'd personally just gut the thing and rebuild it from the board up using quality resistors, caps, and WIRE (a good tube circuit needs point-to-point wiring not PCjunk). Throw in some NOS tubes and I think that it might stand a chance to be musical. I feel that unmodded, reliability would be a real concern, but in the week I was playing on it it never had any problems, so benefit of the doubt...

I don't believe that after-market attention is high on fender's company agenda, but it never has been. Never had to deal with them on this unit though so again...benefit of the doubt.

2 thumbs down.

Great sound. I use it for jazz w/ an ES-175, and w/ a Strat for any other popular style. I generally put the volume at 3-4 for jazz, and up from there for blues or rock. Sometimes I'll keep it low and use pedals.

Not many. It's versatile in its sound, but bells and whistles must be added by the user (pedals, etc)

I used to use it w/o backup, but it's had a few problems- maybe the capacitors need replacing? It's working good these days.

Repairmen like to work on these. I never talked to Fender about it.

I've played since the year the Beatles hit the U.S. I own lots of guitars- A '68 martin D-28S, lots of nylon-strings, a '45 Epiphone Blackstone, a nice Washburn Lyon and Healy mandolin.
I also have a '63 Vibroverb i'd probably use if this one went.

3 Knobs - Dwell, Tone, Mix. The simplicity of this unit makes it unbeatable for TRUE reverb.

I'm using a groove Tubes Soul-0 75 Watt (Super clean Channel one) with a Strat Ultra. No noise at all, and I'm a no-noise fanatic. It's usually the first thing I listen for. I also found that running it through a non-tone sucking parallel effects unit sounds even better since I can take it completely out of the loop. My guitar is then plugged DIRECTLY into the amp.

I ALSO HAD IT MODIFIED IMMEDIATELY to sound more like the original 63 Reverb Tank. Only $22.00. It makes it less harsh and adds the bass that's muddied up slightly on new shipped version. BUT THE SHIPPED VERSION IS STILL AWESOME WITHOUT THE MODIFICATION. I compared this to VERY expensive Lexicon, and Yamaha studio reverberation units and COULD NOT get this sound. No I have it and I'm thrilled.

Don't know how reliable it is - just got it a week ago. Hey it worked right out of the box. These days that's saying something.

Fender has always been good for me when I've called. In fact, I was surprised how good they were considering their size and all that.