The woes of an old brownface 6G2 Princeton

[i love sharin foo]

I haven’t had a lot of time to play lately but made some last night. I went downstairs and turned on the old ‘62 Princeton, which I haven’t used in a while… and it sounded like garbage. Distorted, tinny, low volume, etc. I REALLY didn’t want to have to tear into it so I wanted to rule out all the external stuff I could.

Bypassed pedalboard .. still garbage tone
Tried different cable.. garbage
Tried different guitar.. still garbage
Known good preamp tubes.. garbage (notice a trend here)
Output tubes… garbage
Rectifier… garbage
Speaker… yes, GARBAGE

So, out the chassis comes. Damnit. It took about ten seconds to VISIBLY find a bad solder joint So I went up stairs, got my trusty old Weller iron, fired it up and reflowed the joint. Slipped the chassis back in, tested it to make sure it was fixed. It was and it sounded great. Then I turned it off and went back upstairs since I’d used up all my play time fixing it. Sometimes old gear is cool. Some times it’s a real pain in the ass.

[DeathJag]

Totally worth it for that amazing little piece of amp history! Your future self will thank you for getting it working.

[JSett]

Yep, I hate when that happens. I've had a few old vintage cars that would always be a dick every time the sun came out and I wanted to take it for a spin. Many a sunny afternoon has been spent pulling out a tranny or fixing a leak or something instead of going for a nice drive to a country pub of whatever was planned.

Glad it was an easy fix though.

Have you played the little tweed build you were doing (5F2?) much?

[i love sharin foo]

Have you played the little tweed build you were doing (5F2?) much?

I have! It sounds really nice. It was really finicky as far as the B+ went. It sounds good a bit high but really started to have the tweed grittiness when dropped a good bit. I still need to put a better speaker in it. The Jensen I have in there now was wrecked in transit before. I’ve repaired it the best I could but when pushed, it’s more ragged than I like. It has some Link Wray tones for sure And thanks again for that transformer! It’s been perfect!

[JSett]

Have you played the little tweed build you were doing (5F2?) much?

I have! It sounds really nice. It was really finicky as far as the B+ went. It sounds good a bit high but really started to have the tweed grittiness when dropped a good bit. I still need to put a better speaker in it. The Jensen I have in there now was wrecked in transit before. I’ve repaired it the best I could but when pushed, it’s more ragged than I like. It has some Link Wray tones for sure And thanks again for that transformer! It’s been perfect!

That's good to hear. I stuck my amp build in the attic in the end as I never used it. Turns out it was an expensive, but useful, learning experience.

Glad the transformer is doing it's part. To be honest, that old 60s Fender Iron will probably outlive us all in such a low-demand amp. I wonder if you could sneak a little bit inside that you could tweak the B+ on the fly to go from cleaner to tweed grime easily

[Ursa Minor]

I was getting scared for you! Glad it was something easy to figure out and get fixed right away. I was worried it was a bad cap or worse. Have you recapped it?

[i love sharin foo]

I was getting scared for you! Glad it was something easy to figure out and get fixed right away. I was worried it was a bad cap or worse. Have you recapped it?

I was scared too!

Yeah, I've been all the way through the amp. When I bought it, it had some really half assed work done with a few mods. It really sounded like crap. I recapped it, went through it testing everything (had a few resistors that drifted WAY out of spec), rebiased with a nice old pair of 6V6s, and returned it 100% to the stock specs using an original schematic. I even kept the bias resistor instead of a pot I like to do things the hard way! It sounded (and sounds) 458,000% better than it originally did. I really love the amp. My only regret is that I didn't buy one when they were still about $500

[zhivago]

Good to hear you managed to get it back on track, Justin!

I too remember the $500 days of these Brownface amps...the days were golden!

[ziess]

Add me to the list of people who wish they’d bought one!

One of my only gear regrets (beyond not buying a vintage Jag when they were about $1000) is not picking up a Princeton when they were that cheap. They said, I paid $1100 for my brown Deluxe a decade ago which seems to have been a pretty savvy move!

Glad you got it sorted. What really makes these amps for me (other than tone of course) is the near-infinite repairability with minimal specialist tools.

Tommy.