Guitar Gear Forum

There's a fender hrd for sale and its one of the early is made ones mid 90's most of the reviews says the gain channel is shit ?? Any opinions ?

The clean channel is fantastic all the way through the sweep of the volume knob, and gives a lovely crunch when dimed. I found the gain channel pretty useless. It also likes dirt pedals.

I had one. I didnt like the dirt channel when I had it(and that is the channel I use 99% of the time). I did hear a guy playing through one at Humbuckers music, didnt know what amp he was using, and it sounded great.

Great platform for pedals for sure!

If ever I get across one for cheap, I'd replace both volume pots to make the channel volumes easier to deal with.

Yeah the Gain channel is kinda meh, but I bet I can make it useful once I replace the damn volume pot.

Love the clean. Gain is so so but at times love it with single coils.

My friend has an older one and a it sounds great IMO. He's also a hell of a guitar player too, so that helps. I actually like the drive channel on these.

Great cleans and takes pedals well. Records well too

How is the gain channel can it get jcm800 like I'm really looking for a decent crunch and ill be using this through a Mesa 212

Vic wrote:How is the gain channel can it get jcm800 like I'm really looking for a decent crunch and ill be using this through a Mesa 212

If that is what you are looking for, please, run away from this amp...

GREAT cleans though....

Gary

HRD is one of the shittiest sounding and shittiest built amps. The clean channel is ok but the drive channel sucks major balls. It's made of cheap shit and the one I had broke down all the time. I bought it new and it was before I knew anything about amps.

I jUST traded for a hrd III. Gain channel isn't good, still. Loose and grainy sounding. Nowhere near enough gain to be a gain channel. I was able to get some decent bluesy breakup tones out of that channel w/gain low. But the clean ch w/tube screamer or other od pedal sounds better. Reverb is way over the top until you replace the reverb tube w/12Au7 or something lower gain than 12AX7

Like others, I have heard clean channel + dirt pedal for best dirt results with that amp.

I don't think they're as terrible as people make them out to be. Clean channel is decent, and while not fantastic, I found the gain channel useable. I've gigged with them a few times and it wasn't bad. Most people use them as pedal platforms though. Doesn't sound anything like a Marshall though. If that's the sound you want you could probably find a Marshall Haze combo for about the same price.

I like these amps. The clean is great and works well with pedals. The dirt channel is good, but that depends on what you're using the amp for. If you need high gain for metal or hard rock, look elsewhere. But if you play country, blues, or don't need alot of gain, the overdrive channel on the HRD is pretty good, especially with a good boost pedal.

You are not going to get JCM 800 tones out of this amp stock. Flat out, that is the truth. But, the right distortion/overdrive pedal could do it for you. The rhythm guitarist in my last band and another buddy of mine use a Visual Sound Jekyll & Hyde 2.0 pedal trough the clean channel on their Hot Rod Devilles and they get pretty good Marshall like tones with that setup.

I had one. Beautiful clean channel, takes pedals well but trust me on this, it is a LOUD amp. I wanted it to break up but honestly couldn't do it at gig volumes. Very LOUD is all I can say.

What everyone else has said. Good clean channel and takes pedals really well. Use a dirt pedal for dirt. Forget the amp even has a second channel, forget it.

Spent a lot more time w/mine yesterday... Same tones as before, but damn the combo is noisy. Rattles and buzzes all over it. Wasn't a single screw completely tightened down.