I decided, having entirely too much time on my hands, that I would modify my Deluxe so that I could see what I could do with it.

Here's what I did -

Put in Sovtek 5881wxt's biased to 37ma
Telefunken 12ax7's
Celestion Greenback 25w
replaced the transformer with a Mercury Magnetics unit

It freakin rocks now. I swear it sounds like someone took a huge, wet towel off the speaker.

I have way better presence and clarity, the bright switch actually turns the sound bright, the lows and highs roll off very gradually (much more so than the stock tranny) and it sounds awesome at high volume levels.

I like my Deluxe again!