I second that! I want to add, a lot of Bruce Zinky’s custom shop designs seem to have quirky decisions. None of them have negative feedback loops – causing the “hissing” sound associated with the Custom Vibrolux Reverb. It just doesn’t sound very “Fendery” in cleans, IMHO. Some of them have the “gain adjustment” resistors (plate resistors) on the phase inverter flipped over for no apparent reason. E.g. Prosonic, Custom Dual Professional (R31/R29 in that schematic). Some of them have an arbitrary mismatch in output impedance – e.g. the Dual Professional has a 16 Ohm speaker load connected to an 8 Ohm secondary tap. One of them – the Prosonic – even has shunting capacitors across the first gain stages, of which he himself states “remove them. I don’t know what I was thinking”. And then they all have those Celestions, regardless if their voicing matches the amp or not. Who on earth puts Celestions in a surf-related amp like the Dual Professional? It seems that Zinky experimented a lot, to no particular end. It seems unfair that Fender would demand $3000 for amps that just are not finished or thought through.

I bought a MINT 2007 Fender “Custom” Vibrolux Reverb Vacuum Tube Amplifier from Guitar center for $500.00. It came with the manual and all of the hang tags in the factory original plastic zip lock bag. It also came with the footswitch. I was wondering if these amps came from the factory with an amp cover? If so, mine is missing. If not where can I buy one? My amp has the same hissing sound as many others have mentioned. I really love the platform of 40 vacuum tube watts and the 2X10″ Jensen Driver’s. I figured for $500.00 I could purchase the “Formal Mods” and have my amp tech do the installation. He told me he has done the “Formal Mods” on ’65 DRRI’s but never a Vibrolux. I am certain he can do it no problem. Ya’ know, I contacted Fender to have mine dated month/year. The Fender “Customer Service Representative” fully admitted in writing that this amp has noise issues. He went on to say that he owned one and did the “Formal Mods”. This kind of bothers me as Fender Musical Instruments, Co. knows this amp is faulty yet they have not offered any kind of “recall” or offering to make the amp right. I suppose it’s just like many 1970’s 3 Bolt Neck Stratocaster’s with that awful “White Metal” all in one bridge and tremolo block with those horrible bridge saddles. I owned (2) 1975 Fender Stratocaster’s one White and one Black. Both Strat’s would not stay in tune, the tremolo would knock the guitar way out of tune no matter what I did, and the pickup’s were crazy microphonic. I read that Ritchie Blackmore said “Fender did make some really good Strat’s in the 1970’s”. While I believe this to be true, I have never found one that was great. At least I didn’t spend a lot for my Vibrolux so purchasing and paying to have the Formal Mod’s installed should work out for me financially.

I recently acquired a Custom Vibralux Reverb-amp in a trade. It does say Made in USA on the front black panel and has the white knobs. I appreciate all the comments above about the specific mods that have been made to what already appears to me to be a pretty nice amp. The reverb is not working right now but what I’m really intrested in finding out is how to date this thing. The serial # is AB009076…

I have CVR serial number AB022836…..and type CSR 8….has the 10″ Jensen speakers…do you know year of manufacture??

February 1990