Princeton Reverb Build using 6V6s and 6L6s

[HotBluePlates]

I was wondering whether, since they were using a cap can, they may have thought it better to load it onto one cap, rather than splitting it to more than one cap and risking ground loop hum.

I seriously doubt that played into Fender's thinking.

All old Fender amps run grounds to the chassis. It's not an optimized system in any way. But non-optimum works all the time; it just might eventually have problems that are hard to diagnose.

If you look at the oldest Fender amps, the chassis' are an L-shaped piece of copper that all grounds are soldered to. This works quite well, and is something you'd expect out of a radio guy.

[varaso]

Hi, I've got the exact same setup, a Princeton reverb clone with Vibrolux PT and a Deluxe OT but I want to upgrade to Vibrolux OT so I can use either 6L6GC/KT66s or 6V6. The goal is to be able to use it as a 15W amp and a 35W amp . I know it'd sound amazing even with just the big tubes plugged in and biased correctly

But I read the whole thing and I have some questions..

1)I thought about having a heavy duty switch that will choose between different dropping resistor values and because of the high voltages the switch will only be operated when the amp is off I guess. Should I use it to choose between 2 values or adding a resistor in parallel with the 18 to drop its value?

2)The stock volues are 18k and 18k. The Deluxe has 10k and 10k and their big brothers have 1K and 4k7.

To be able to drive the 6L6GCs/KT66s it's necessary to increase the voltage of the PI by using a lower resistor for the C section. But what about the next resistor..? What's the deference between 170V at the preamps vs the max voltage you can achieve by using the 1K and 4K7 combination?

The goal is to be able to drive the power tubes, and have power amp distortion as well. So by increasing the PI voltage you can pass more signal to the power tubes. So if you also increase the voltage on the preamps you'll have more signal to pass into the PI and then into the power tubes? But the downsize is that you'll have less preamp distortion because of the increase in voltage.. ? Could you also make the PI distort with such a larger signal?

3) I can't get when the PI distorts on it's own.. I guess with more voltage it'll distort later so it can handle the extra signal. Do you need some kind of smoothness, I mean the preamp should clip the same time the PI clips and the Power tubes clip?

4) The thing is I like the way the 6V6 sounds I just may need a little bit more headroom. Using 6L6s/KT66s is just for fun and perhaps I'll need the extra power/hugeness sometime. So, if I just use an 1K resistor for the C section of the PI and increase the PI's voltage a lot and then put a 18k+17k=35k resistor to keep the voltages of the preamp the same, will it make the PI not distort? Or PI's distortion is a part of the sound and we need this? Will this give me more headroom?

I know.. a lot of questions but I want to see if I get this right.. I may have to start reading a book about all these stuff..

Thanks in advance!