Can you play a deluxe reverb at home?

Argument 1: These amps are too loud for home use.

• They’re only loud if you turn them up. So don’t turn it up so loud. Mine actually sounds really good at 2.5 to 3 and if you want some dirt just use pedals.

Argument 2: these amps sound amazing when you turn them up and push the power tubes. If you only play at home you’ll hardly ever get to experience this.

• Wrong again! Just use a good attenuator and this problem is solved. An attenuator, sometimes referred to as a load box, is connected between your amp and your speaker and it absorbs some of the volume while preserving your tone. So you can use it to take the edge off your cranked tone, or even to hear your amp cranked at whisper volume. I recommend the Toneking Ironman ii mini. At $400 it’s not cheap, but it’s very simple to use, has a wide range of volume, and to my ear sounds fantastic. Some claim that an attenuator “sucks the tone” of your amp, but in my experience it sounds great and allows me to experience the full range of the amp without blowing the windows out of the room. An added bonus is how much better your drive pedals sound when they’re actually pushing your tubes into overdrive.

Argument 3: Get the tonemaster series instead, they sound great and have built in attenuation.

• Yes, they sound great, cost less, weigh less, and have some cool features. But when I did a back to back comparison the tube amp just had the magic, that subtle “it factor” that my ears couldn’t deny. I really wanted to like the tonemaster and save myself some cash, but I knew if I bought it instead I’d always wish I had gotten the real thing.

Argument 4: If you have to have that real tube blackface fender sound for playing at home you should get a Princeton.

• Don’t get me wrong, the Princeton is a fantastic amp and I wouldn’t mind having one. But when I was trying to choose between the Deluxe and the Princeton, the Deluxe just had the sound I wanted. Maybe it’s the bigger cabinet or the 12 inch speaker, I don’t know, but it just sounded better to me and I had to have it. And the reality is the Princeton is a pretty loud amp as well.

Bonus tip: switch out the speaker!

• I installed in mine a 12” Tone Tubby Key West. 2 reasons: it’s an alnico magnet speaker and I wanted that sound, AND it’s sensitivity is rated at 93 vs the stock speaker’s 99, which is not a massive difference but it means you can get some breakup at slightly lower volumes. And as an added bonus it made the amp about 4 lbs lighter.