Review : Fender Tone Master Super Reverb Amp

Let’s get the first impressions out of the way right up front. I like this amp. It sounds like a real Super Reverb. It looks like a real Super Reverb. If you are looking for an amp that looks like a Super Reverb and sounds like a Super Reverb, but does not have the weight or the cost of a Super Reverb, this may be the amp that you’ve been looking for.

Introduction

The Fender Tone Master family of amps are modelling amplifiers. Unlike other modellers, they only model one amplifier and in this case this amplifier models a Fender Super Reverb from the Sixties. Getting information about it is a challenge because as usual, Fender’s website sucks and blows at the same time, because when you click on the Tone Master Super Reverb, you get an oops error. This happens more often than not with Fender’s site. Fortunately I have come to expect this and have figured out the secret squirrel technique to actually get to a page that works.

Fender says it is based on a mid sixties blackface 4x10. Since I do not actually own a mid sixties blackface 4x10, my only source of comparison were other modellers, specifically a Kemper Stage and a Neural Quad Cortex. I like the tone of Super Reverbs and spent a lot of time hunting down good amp sims for both. My dry amp in my wet-dry-wet rig is a ‘59 Bassman Vintage Reissue, so I can safely say that I get and hear the difference you get from a Fender amplifier circuit into a 4x10 open back enclosure.

In fact, I am a lot less concerned about how exact the sound of the Tone Master is in direct comparison with say a 1964 Super Reverb, because I am not going to be in the position of playing them side by side. I am much more concerned about getting that bright, clean Fender amp tone through a nice 4x10 speaker set up. Thus if you are looking for a side by side comparo, I cannot help you and would direct you to the excellent video by Andy Martin on Reverb that does just that. He couldn’t hear a difference and after watching the video with the sound going through my hifi system, I could not hear a difference either.

First Look

While I do not own a Super Reverb, I have played through them and carted them about, albeit when I was a younger person. While my memory for tone is no better than most folks (human memory for tone is pretty lousy), my back and shoulders remember stairs and amplifiers pretty well and the first thing that I noticed about the Tone Master Super Reverb is that at 35 pounds, it’s incredibly lightweight compared to the original. In the other Tone Masters, Fender used Neodymium based speakers which are very lightweight. In the Tone Master Super Reverb, they do not, instead going with Jensen Alnico P10-R speakers. These are the same as the speakers in the Super Reverb ‘65 Reissue. Fender has also gone with a lightweight plywood casing instead of whatever combination of materials was used in the sixties. If you have to move an amp, weight matters. If you don’t, maybe you don’t care. I do, and I do. The plywood is called Meranti, also known as marine mahogany. It comes from Indonesia and is very well respected material. Light, stable and not some kind of particle board or MDF.

The control layout matches the original. Two channels, each with two inputs and a bright switch. Like the original the normal channel offers bass, treble and volume. The Vibrato channel offers that plus middle, reverb and two controls for the tremolo, speed and intensity. For my initial play test, I used Input 2 on the Vibrato (Tremolo) channel because it allegedly handles hotter pickups with more aplomb and my modified white Strat’s Seymour Duncan Everything Axe pickups are higher output than my sea green Strat with Fralin Pure ‘54s. I also played my Gretsch Electromatic with Broadtron pickups and my Les Paul Axcess with whatever came in it from the factory.

The Tone Master Super Reverb is not a tube amp. That means that its guts are also lighter weight and it is pretty much instant on. In lieu of a standby switch, there is a switch that activates the speakers and the DI out or mutes the speakers and pushes signal only through the DI out. This is a very nice thing for recording. I can run an XLR cable direct to my interface.

There are two cabinet simulation options built into the Super Reverb. Setting one is a dynamic microphone pointed at the edge of the speaker (think SM57) and setting two is a condenser microphone (think U47) pointed at the centre of the cone. Both are good representations and sound like other good cabinet simulations.

The Sound

I mentioned that the Tone Master Super Reverb sounds like an old tube Super Reverb. Based on well done comparisons on Reverb and on Anderton’s, I think that this is fair as a generalization. That said, I find the Tone Master much more in your face with a very high level of immediacy and with hotter pickups, I find it less forgiving than its tube based grandfather. Whether this is the modeller, or the solid state pre and power amp section, I am not able to say. Purely opinion based, I like it less than a tube amp.

After my first go at the amp, I took a break and came back to spend more unrushed time with it. More experimentation, more positive results, but also some disappointments.

I must confess that I am not a big user of tremolo, and I really found the tremolo on this amp very clinical. Nothing like the tube driven tremolo on the Twin Reverb. I did not like it, but it would not impact me because when I do use tremolo, I prefer a harmonic tremolo and own pedals that do that very well.

The digital reverb is decent. I am a reverb glutton. I like the sound of great reverb. This is nothing like a tube driven spring reverb as in the original Super Reverb and I hear the difference. I am not a big fan of this digital reverb. It is certainly not awful, just not what I would desire. For those wanting to go to Surf City, it can definitely get you there. As a recordist, I would forego the amp reverb and use a UA Reverb plugin instead or use a reverb pedal. I used a Walrus Audio Fathom for my recording tests because I did not like the built in digital reverb.

I got happier results into the Normal channel, even giving up the Mids tone control. In order to get more volume flexibility, I found that I liked going into Input 2 with the bright switch on. When I needed Reverb, I used the Walrus Fathom pedal and got the sound that I was looking for. I believe that a normal (non-reverb geek) person would find the digital reverb just fine.

Volume Control

This amp includes a built in attenuator. At full power it emulates the output of a 45 watt tube amplifier. The other options are 22w, 12w, 5w, 1w, and 0.5w. Using a lower output level, permits you to turn the volume up on the amp to allow for overdrive. It sounds a lot like an overdriven solid state amp, not like an overdriven tube amp. I see the value for quieter practice or to limit volume when playing in sensitive locations, but I do not see the attenuation as a means of overdriving the amp. I put a JHS Morning Glory in front of the Tone Master, and that achieved a much more pleasing overdriven tone. In my Les Paul Axcess recordings, the overdriven tone is from the Morning Glory.

I will say that in the unattenuated position, this amp can get really loud and with my white Strat, fairly ice pick like when you crank it up.

The built in attenuator is useful to allow you to play the amplifier without modifying the input settings and get lower volume at the speakers. This can be extremely valuable in today’s low volume, no volume world. In my experience however, dropping the output level of the attenuator so you can drive the inputs harder does not give the same response as driving the inputs on a tube amp. There is natural overdrive, but it sounds, in my opinion, pretty horrible. Far better to use an overdrive pedal of your choice to get overdrive tones out of the Tone Master. In fairness, getting natural overdrive out of tube Super Reverb involves ear shattering and police summoning volume, so I would use a pedal there too.

The Playability

Guitarists often talk about the feel under the strings of both guitars and amplifiers. For guitars, I am a real nerd about this, listening to them acoustically, tapping the body for resonance, and listening for natural sustain. I can hear a difference. There is a big difference in playability from my ‘71 Les Paul to any of my more recently built versions, with the new ones consistently feeling better under my fingers. This translates very well to when amplified.

My white highly modded Strat which consistently feels great was uncomfortable into the Tone Master. Fearing that the first experience was me, having an off day, I kept coming back to this. It sounds fine, but I wouldn’t want to play a gig or record songs with that guitar into that amp. The high end was very bitey and the bottom end very boomy. I’ve not ever experienced that before and was quite disappointed.

My Gretsch G5622T was a very different experience. This guitar was wonderful through the Tone Master, producing very nice tones without the bite that I was getting from the Strat. I had to turn up the bass, as it was lacking in the neutral setting on the front of the amp, where the Strat had been boomy. I put this down to the pickups. Next to the Twin Reverb, this is the one of the best tones achieved with that guitar. The strings felt wonderful under my fingers, my only challenge being that I was in a hurry to play and didn’t stretch my left hand properly first, and so Mr. Arthuritis reminded me not to be so stupid.

The Les Paul Axcess was different again. It’s one of the originals and I don’t know what pickups are in it, not that Gibsons from that era were particularly consistent anyway. I know that they are hotter than PAFs, and the guitar has that Floyd Rose and sculpted neck so likely designed for speedier players who like to dive bomb. It’s not my favourite Les Paul, but it is good for evaluations because there is a lot of flexibility with its push pulls and coil splits. I discovered that it was better in the Normal channel, input number 2, and the Bright switch had to be off, otherwise I would get this horrible audible clipping buzz in my Shure in ear monitors.

My conclusions on playability is that in general the Tone Master Super Reverb is pretty good as it is delivered. It feels nothing like a tube amp. I think that it is expensive for what it delivers, and I know that we are paying for name and pseudo vintage, as we do with pretty much everything from Fender these days.

Recording

Due to the location of my evaluation, I could not run the Tone Master into my usual Apollo interface. Instead, I ran the DI out into a Focusrite Solo, connected via USB3 to a Dell XPS17 laptop. Plenty of horsepower on the Dell, but I am not particularly skilled using Windows based recording software. Since I am an Adobe subscriber and I have used Audition on the Mac in the past for voice work, I decided to go this route for timing and familiarity sake.

The Tone Master has three DI cabinet sim options, two mentioned above and one with no cab sim at all if you want to use cab sim plugins. I’ve attached a few short samples to this article, a couple from the Gretsch into input 2 on the normal channel with the bright switch on, and one from the Les Paul into input 2 on the normal channel with the bright switch off.

The Gretsch recordings have the Walrus Audio Fathom providing the reverb. The Les Paul recording has the JHS Clover Boost set to neutral volume (it opens up humbuckers nicely), the JHS Morning Glory for the overdrive, and the Walrus Audio Fathom for the reverb. No plugins were used in recording or post production. The primary tracks were replicated twice, with one being panned 45 left and the other panned 45 right to create audio space.

I like the Mute switch when recording. Placed where the Standby switch would be on the tube version, this deactivates the power amp / speaker systems with no effect on the line out. This allows for nearly silent recording at any time of day or night, excellent if you live near other folks and do your recording when most people are sleeping. The line out has a nice big level knob, and there is a ground lift switch, should you need it. I did not, but you will need to manipulate the level based on the output of the pickups in the guitar, just as you would expect.

As typical for me these days, I play fine until I know that I am recording and then things tend to go sideways. I never said that I was a great player.

Conclusions

For me, it always comes down to “would I buy it?” As much as I think that the Tone Master Super Reverb is a very nice amp, I find it overpriced for what it delivers and it is my opinion that you can get a more flexible modelled amp for quite a bit less that can sound just as nice. You are paying a fair bit extra for the name and the look. The Class D amp is rated at 200w I believe, which is what it takes to properly model a 45w tube amp. That power rating means nothing to me, as I am seeking tone not power. I assure you that without the attenuator engaged, the Tone Master Super Reverb can easily achieve deafening volume that does not have any of the joy that comes from a similarly loud tube amp. And for me, that’s the real issue. I like tubes. Or valves, whichever you prefer. There is a feel that comes from valves that the Tone Master series, despite how nice they are, just doesn’t deliver. I don’t think that Fender is claiming the feel of tubes. They do say something along the lines of the sound, and generally I would agree. The feel, to me is nowhere near the same. There is a rise and fall that comes with tubes / valves that you do not get with digital. I mind this less with the little THR 30 II in my office or the Katana Air that I may take out to the back deck. They exist for a different use case for me. If I wanted the sound and feel of 45 watts of tube preamp and power amp in a 4x10 cabinet, I would have to save my nickels (no pennies here in Canada any more) until I could get a reissue Super Reverb, which is about $900 more than the Tone Master and I probably would not as I have the Bassman and a Twin Reverb. That said, my use cases are unlikely to be the same as yours, so if you are looking for a very nice digital amp built to model the ‘64 (or so) Fender Super Reverb, this amplifier will get you very close, and be usable right out of the box without a complex manual or a ton of learning required up front.

Thanks for reading, and until next time, peace.