Modern Modeling: Inside the Fender Tone Master Amplifiers

If faithfully recreating the iconic sound of the Fender Twin Reverb or the Deluxe Reverb in a digital amplifier seems like a challenge, you'd be correct. It is.

Or, perhaps better said, it was.

In the new Tone Master Twin Reverb and Tone Master Deluxe Reverb, Fender has developed the brand's most innovative digital amps to date, effectively capturing the look, feel and tone of their tube counterparts.

"The original Deluxe Reverb and Twin Reverb are almost the perfect tools for doing almost any kind of guitar playing because those amps can be clean, they can be dirty, they can be bright, they can be bass-y, they have a couple of great effects on them," said Fender Director of Product Development Shane Nicholas. "Guitar players from all walks of life adopted those as the standard. A good electric guitar with a good tube amp is the complete system that has evolved into what we think of as great guitar tone.

"Tone Masters are designed to be a professional solution for the modern guitar player. We’re the authority on how to deliver the sound of a Fender amp in the digital world because we’re the authority on how to deliver the Fender sound in the tube world."

It took thousands of hours of thought and critical listening - coupled with a tremendous amount of digital processing power to achieve, but the Tone Master Series nails the circuitry and 85-watts of power in an original Twin tube amp and the 22 watts of an original Deluxe tube amp.

Both are paired with the pronounced sparkle and clarity of two Jensen N-12K neodymium speakers - which make them pounds lighter than speakers with ceramic magnets - and a resonant pine cabinet, the result is tubeless Twin Reverb and Deluxe Reverb tone, volume and dynamics virtually indistinguishable from the all-tube original. And with all these features, each Tone Master version is only about half the weight of the originals.

"We saw the trend (among players)towards lighter (amplifiers)" said Nicholas. "We saw the trend towards modeling. A lot of professionals would still tour with a high-end modeling solution that would usually be a rack mount or a floor board because it’s so convenient.

"This combines the sound of a look and feel of a traditional tube amp, but also offers some of those modern conveniences."

Shop the Tone Master Deluxe Reverb here and the Tone Master Twin Reverb here.