1979 Fender Princeton

Despot · Post by **Despot** » Tue Apr 11, 2017 12:04 am

Sorry to hear all of this - the cosmetic stuff wouldn't bother me so much (looks consistent with the condition of both of mine); I would be more concerned about the caps/resistors and that speaker!

Hopefully you'll be able to resolve this to your satisfaction.

Interesting to hear your take on the brightness of the amp - I have had some amps that were super bright (a Blackstar Artisan 15 amp, and that old JMI AC4) ... and neither of my Princetons is as bright as those amps were. I have heard that the later '70s amps could be bright - maybe changing out the speaker would help?

StevenO · Post by **StevenO** » Tue Apr 11, 2017 2:00 am

The CTS speaker is really bright. Not unusably bright, but it's bright for sure. As for HNB's settings, I use Treble at 4 and bass at 4, usually, and that is with a Weber in there. So, the settings make sense to me.

Despot · Post by **Despot** » Tue Apr 11, 2017 4:00 am

Sounds like a Weber could be a good replacement/match for it then.

I find that bass at 6 and treble at 4/5 works best for me. That's what I love about Princetons ... they're just so damn useable ... it's pretty much turn it on, plug guitar in and go.

I'm off to the country seat this weekend for Easter and the SF PR will be coming with me. It's going to be great to be able to play it at a proper volume at home - it'll be Prinecton, Tele, Jazzmaster and ES345 = one happy Despot.

StevenO · Post by **StevenO** » Tue Apr 11, 2017 4:12 am

Princetons are the only amps that I've ever played that I had to try really hard to get a bad sound out of. In fact, I h Ink I'm still waiting to get a bad sound of my PR...

HNB · Post by **HNB** » Tue Apr 11, 2017 6:26 am

I will have a better idea on the sounds once it is fixed. The sound is likely not what it should be with those capacitor issues.

Post by **sookwinder** » Wed Apr 12, 2017 4:45 am

with the caps being kaput (old and needing replacing decades ago) your bass response in the amp may well be compromised considerably.
make the assessment when it comes back from the amp hospital

HNB · Post by **HNB** » Mon Apr 17, 2017 7:37 pm

The work is all done and the amp is home. I ended up putting a Jensen C10Q in it. The stock speaker (even repaired) was too ice pickey for me. There were other mods done along with the repair work. Here is the list.

2017-04-17_08-30-47 by Christopher Louck, on Flickr

New gut shot with the new can, capacitors, and a couple resistors.

20170417_160132 by Christopher Louck, on Flickr

New speaker.

20170417_202708 by Christopher Louck, on Flickr

20170417_202737 by Christopher Louck, on Flickr

All done!

20170417_202907 by Christopher Louck, on Flickr

20170417_202721 by Christopher Louck, on Flickr

Ursa Minor · Post by **Ursa Minor** » Mon Apr 17, 2017 7:47 pm

Nice! What's the verdict? I'm sure it sounds a heck of a lot better after a much needed tune up.

HNB · Post by **HNB** » Mon Apr 17, 2017 8:07 pm

Totally! The blown capacitor was one for the tremolo so that was in fact why it was so subtle. Now it is full force at ten.

The ground reverse mod gives it more gain by opening the preamp more. Overall the mod makes it louder a bit and more full sounding. The stock speaker was ok. Very bright and I had read that this was the case with some of the silverface Princetons. I still have the stock speaker just in case. The Jensen is way fuller in comparison. Much stronger mids and lows but not too muddy. He had a gold speaker he let me try that was almost $200 and it had even stronger mids and bass, but to me I felt like the Jensen was nicer because the gold was almost too bassy.

Dime the volume, treble, and add a touch of bass and you get rock and roll crunch. Pretty cool.

One of my favorite things about Jeff's work is he has a machine to basically manually adjust the preamp gain in the ground reverse so you can get it to what you like best. Clean at ten or crunchy at ten and from there you can tweak how loud before you lose your clean. The amp is adjusted to what sound I liked best and can be easily put back in stock with that resistor value.

StevenO · Post by **StevenO** » Tue Apr 18, 2017 1:56 am

That's great, HNB! Your tech sounds like he really cares about whether or not you actually enjoy the amp. Seems hard to find!

HNB · Post by **HNB** » Tue Apr 18, 2017 6:30 am

He even said if I don't end up liking the speaker when it breaks in, he could take it back and give me some money back or credit it towards some work on something else. I don't see myself having a need to do that, but it is nice that he wants to make sure I am happy with what I have.

beauzooka · Post by **beauzooka** » Tue Apr 18, 2017 9:57 am

I'll definitely try Velvetone next time I need some amp work.

HNB · Post by **HNB** » Tue Apr 18, 2017 4:46 pm

I feel like he is the best. He just did some repair work for Mastodon this past weekend. He isn't cheap, but he does awesome work and really tries to make sure you get what you are looking for sound wise.

Ursa Minor · Post by **Ursa Minor** » Tue Apr 18, 2017 5:30 pm

So great to have a tech you not only trust, but one you like! Glad this turned out to be a keeper in the end.

marqueemoon · Post by **marqueemoon** » Tue Apr 18, 2017 8:59 pm

beauzooka wrote:I'll definitely try Velvetone next time I need some amp work.

Yeah. Sounds really promising.

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1979 Fender Princeton

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Re: 1979 Fender Princeton

Re: 1979 Fender Princeton

Re: 1979 Fender Princeton

Re: 1979 Fender Princeton

Re: 1979 Fender Princeton

Re: 1979 Fender Princeton

Re: 1979 Fender Princeton

Re: 1979 Fender Princeton

Re: 1979 Fender Princeton

Re: 1979 Fender Princeton

Re: 1979 Fender Princeton

Re: 1979 Fender Princeton

Re: 1979 Fender Princeton

Re: 1979 Fender Princeton