Fender Excelsior Guitar Amplifier Review

The Fender Excelsior is one of the latest guitar amplifiers released by Fender.  This latest range of gear has a really unique and magnetic appeal to guitar junkies all over the globe.  When I first used the Fender Excelsior, I was really impressed by the lack of control options on the amp.  The less controls on the amplifier I have to fiddle around with the better my playing experience usually is.  This is for a few reasons. I love to tinker with controls so not having that option available (or a very limited option) makes me focus more on playing guitar than fiddling with knobs and buttons. This is of course assuming the amplifier sounds good to start with – and the Fender Excelsior sure sounds good.

When you look at the Fender Excelsior guitar amplifier you notice straight away that the design is seriously old school.  You’ll either love it or hate it, but to me I really love the design.  It reminds me of an old school record player that used to open out.  Something you’d see on black and white movies or even something from the early 1970’s.  It looks nothing like a conventional amplifier and to me that’s the appeal of it.

So how does the Excelsior sound?  It sounds wild! Not in your typical smooth Fender way, but in a total gritty, dirty and raw sort of way.  If you don’t have this amplifier cranked some might think it’s way too bright on the “Bright” setting, but the way this amp works the louder you have the volume control, the less tops will actually come through due to the way the tubes naturally compress the audio signal, so it ends up rolling out a lot of the high end.  For me, the Dark mode is only good for low volumes.

I have however, changed the stock Chinese tubes out with a full set of JJ tubes, both with the 12AX7 tubes as well as the 6V6 Tubes.  This has made a very positive difference to the tone and it makes it ever so slightly louder as well.  The Chinese tubes rattled a lot, certain notes would trigger them off.  Out of the 4 tubes that were in the Fender Excelsior only one of them was fine, the rest were Microphonic or had internal rattling.  If you do any mods to this amp be sure to swap the Tubes out for a good brand like JJ, Mullard, Groove Tubes or something similar.

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The thing I really love about this amplifier other than it’s look, it’s vibe and character is the fact they chose to put a 15” speaker in, instead of a 12”.  The stock speaker sounds really good and suits the gritty vibe of the amplifier to a tee.

All in all this amplifier packs a huge bang for buck and it’s my main low volume amplifier due to its’ small lightweight design, great tone and great power tube distortion when it’s cranked.  The Fender Excelsior handles pedals really well too.  I mainly choose to use a BOSS OD-3 Overdrive pedal or a Fulltone Plimsoul with this amplifier as both really enhance the natural tone without too much coloration.

The onboard Tremolo is really nice too! You can’t beat an amp with Tremolo built in, some of my favorite amps of all time have onboard Tremolo or Vibrato.  The Tremolo on the Excelsior is really great the only small limitation of it is, you can’t use a footswitch to enable/disable the Tremolo.  Otherwise it sounds magic.

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All in all this is a great little amplifier combo for those who like raunchy tweed style tones.  It doesn’t have the deepest or thickest sound of all time, but it’s a great home practice amp or small gig amplifier. I give the Excelsior a 3/5.  I did give it a 3/5 because the stock tubes it comes with need replacing due to their rattling issues.  Once this is re-tubed I’d give it a 3.75/5