ToneQuest Report: September 2024 – Vol. 25, No. 11

What's Inside This Issue:

Deluxe Rebirth – Interview With Bryan Sours Of Soursound Audio Works – As we have written many times here, what Leo created in the early ‘60s is the bar for us personally. With a good black panel amp, you can do most anything. No, not everything, but you can paint absolute heartbreaking beauty of all kinds. If we had to own only one amp? A vintage Deluxe Reverb, hands down. It’s the sweetest of the sweet. There is a reason why it sits atop the list for great players. Each of them has their own handcrafted vibes, while hailing from the same California terra firma. We always wanted a third and found one that had been broken apart and needed love, and along the way, took a timeless and cosmic ride with Bryan Sours of Soursound Audio Works and Terry Dobbs a.k.a. Mr. Valco.  ̶ Riverhorse

Renewable & Incomparable Beauty – The Deluxe Reverb – When we see or find a piece of gear we know is special, or at the very least, creatively inspiring, we flat out go for it. A vintage out-of-the-cabinet chassis from 1965 popped up on Reverb, which never happens. We had Terry Dobbs, a.k.a Mr. Valco, look at it with us, and he agreed it was game on. We pulled the trigger within all three minutes of it showing up on Reverb, and we got to work. We wanted this vintage Deluxe Reverb to have some options for whatever gig we found with it. Valco got it dialed in, was thrilled, and could not stop playing it. With everything stock, we can get Gilmour Pink Floyd tones for days.  ̶ Riverhorse

New Life For Vintage Deluxe Reverb Amps – Terry Dobbs a.k.a. Mr. Valco – Riverhorse quickly worked out a deal. He had contacted Bryan Sours at Soursound about his offerings for a vintage ’60s Deluxe Reverb. With a good original ’60s output transformer I had in stock; it would be interesting to compare both output transformers. The Soursound power transformer voltages are spot on, not an overvoltage secondary like many Fender replacement aftermarket “vintage style” transformers. This Deluxe Reverb is the best-sounding one I’ve had in my shop in all 50 years I’ve worked on them. After playing the Rebirth Deluxe Reverb, I felt the need to kick some tires and found a very nice example from the last of the golden era of great Deluxe Reverbs…got her up to spec like Riverhorse’s amp and have plans for another Deluxe Reverb that needs love. The Deluxe life is indeed, DEE-LUXE!  ̶ Mr. Valco

Dana Sutcliffe ̶ Looking For The Scoop – Dana Sound Research, Inc. – A flashback to late 1980s and 1990s guitardom, the Alvarez Dana Scoop remains a memorable curiosity, a solidbody with a severe cutout behind the fingerboard to improve sonics. The mastermind behind the Scoop was Dana Sutcliffe, an industry veteran with ties to Alvarez, Ampeg, Westone, and Crate. For the past 20 years, Dana has run Dana Sound Research, Inc. (DSR), a boutique shop where he and his team repair stringed instruments and take on some of the most challenging vintage restorations you can possibly imagine. Recently, TQR visited Dana in his northern Delaware shop for dare we say, the scoop.  ̶ Pete Prown

Thick As A Brick – Ibanez In The Late ’70s – Do we actually choose the guitars we collect? Or, do they choose us? Perhaps it’s the latter. As a teen, I picked up a free Ibanez catalog and instantly became obsessed with their eye-catching imports, built in Fuji-Gen factory, Matsumoto, Japan. Ibanez’s early original designs were an evolution upon Gibson archetypes, back when the American icon was at its creative nadir. My fascination grew to the point that in my adult years, I began collecting specific models from the 1978 Catalog. If you have the opportunity to spank one of these pre-shred Ibanezes of the ’70s grab it. They are wonderous throwbacks to a time when Japan was giving U.S. guitar manufacturers a run for their money ̶ and solidified the growing import-guitar industry. You’ll notice the fine build, attention to detail, and once-in-a-lifetime designs that can still
catch a guitar player’s eye  ̶ Pete Prown