Fender Princeton sterile tone

[Colas LeGrippa]

Hi, I was jamming last night in a blues club and I played on a Fender Princeton, all pots set to 10) to get a decent volume . The cream Celestion alnico that was fitted in gave me the impressiom  that it would sound fantastic....duhhh duhh duhhh.....It was just like playing a cheapo SS amplifier with chinese speaker !  I would really like to tweak this amplifiet ! Even with a pc board,  this amp can be correctly voiced  to  make the alnico speaker sound right !  These speakers are so good they give  back exactly the same tone they re feeded with ! I already  tweaked a Fender DeVille. I had to double the bias voltage supply from  minus 65V to minus 35 V to run the tubes to their max, enhancing the amp's tone. Thse commercial amps are tuned to last long, over the warranty limit and must be tweaed to sound  right.
It isuseless to put a 300 bucks speaker in a sterile tone amp.





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[tubenit]

Which Princeton?  Fender made a bunch of different ones.  (and even a Princeton Chorus that was solid state)

With respect, Tubenit

[jjasilli]

I agree that my SF Princeton was lackluster, until I hotrodded it.  OTOH I think stock Princeton Reverbs might have a bit more gain & better tone.

[Colas LeGrippa]

I can t tell what model it was but it had one channel two inputs, reverb and vibrato.
It was definitley not a PP 2X 6V6's , the vol was too weak for a PP. I guess it was a SE...I know very little about Fender amps models. The owner of the amp told me it was a reissue. Anyway for the price of the speaker he put it, he could have easily turned  his amplifier into something very interesting even with the stock speaker.

[bmccowan]

I do not believe there was ever a single ended Princeton with reverb and vibrato. they are PP 2x6V6 far as I know. So if vol is way below expectation, I'd guess there is something wrong with the amp that is affecting vol and the sterile tone.
Based on a friends experience with a Fender reissue Deluxe Reverb with PCB, I'd say it could be any number of things.

[jjasilli]

Earlier Princetons, 5F2 and prior, were SE 6V6.  Basically a Champ, 5F1, with a tone control.  Anyway, knowledge of Fender circuits is required.  Please review the entire Fender schematic section and give a full report in the morning.  There is no escape.


Also, Champs, Harvards & Princetons were considered "student amps".  They lacked bells & whistles.

[bmccowan]

Right - but none of those SE amps had Reverb and Vibrato like the amp in question.

[shooter]

Right - but none of those SE amps had Reverb and Vibrato

and there's a reason for that, small SE amps are pretty hard to shoe-horn in bigger amp stuff.  there's not much signal path to experiment with, and not many examples of WOW amps in the small SE field.  but pedal "fixes" have come along way