Internally, the Deux features printed circuit-board construction with 16-gauge copper-plated wiring, and the preamp and power tubes are mounted on separate boards. Its chassis, transformers, and cabinet are all made in the U.S., and the custom Rivera speaker is voiced to sound like a cross between a Celestion Vintage 30 and the more modern Celestion G12T-75. The Deux is hand-soldered at Rivera’s shop in Burbank, California.
The latest, the Venus Deux 1x12 combo, serves up 25 watts of delicious tone in a single-channel design with footswitchable reverb and just enough fancy features (including a series effects loop) to make it a fascinating option for those who’d like blackface Princeton- and Deluxe Reverb-like tones-only with a lot more versatility. But for the last few years, Rivera has put particular emphasis on its Venus series, which aims to put a lot of versatility into an oft-overlooked niche: classic-voiced 6V6-powered heads and combos. His line has always been diverse-from the Sedona 55’s dual-channel design for electric and acoustic-electric guitars, to the punishing, MIDI-controlled KR7 head for Slipknot guitarist Mick Thomson. has been running his own boutique amp company. The man behind the best of these designs was Paul Rivera Sr., and today amps such as the Super Champ and Concert are still prized by amp aficionados in the know.
In an effort to modernize and compete, Fender revamped its blackface amps with handwired models that aimed to offer revered Fender clean tones and modern, higher-gain sounds. In the amplifier realm, no company made that point more painfully than Mesa/Boogie, whose hot-rodded designs with cascading gain, dual-function knobs, and graphic equalizers were winning over fans in every genre. Some of that stigma is unfair, but there’s no denying that in the budding digital age the juggernaut was increasingly viewed as a sleeping, outdated giant. The period of CBS ownership from ’65 to ’85 is notorious for having adversely affected the house that Leo built. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, Fender was in a tight spot.
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