Converting PCB to HW Point to Point Boards

[Larsongs]

I was curious if a current Fender 65 Deluxe Reverb or 65 Princeton Reverb Reissue Amp could be upgraded to a Hand Wired Point to Point Circuit Board..

If my PCB ever burns out it would be cool to replace it with Point to Point Hand Wired Board….

Does Fender make them & sell them?

There’s a Company that does.. here’s a Link if anyone else is curious…

https://alessandro-products.com/rewiring-services/

[JSett]

Plenty of people have done it. As long as the voltages are right it's probably not too hard

[JackFawkes]

Yeah, I think that sort of project is Mojotone's bread and butter. They sell complete kits to build your own from scratch, or the pieces separately as well.

Jack

[Larsongs]

Yeah, I think that sort of project is Mojotone's bread and butter. They sell complete kits to build your own from scratch, or the pieces separately as well.

Jack

I looked to see if they offer a finished P2P board for Fender 65 PRRI & 65 DRRI. I could find Parts to build one.. but do they offer them completely built? If so, how much?

Thanks

[øøøøøøø]

It's very possible to do, and a few manufacturers (e.g. Hoffman Amps) sell ready-made solutions. A better question would be "is it worth it?" and this is where it gets a bit less-clear.

If I had a DRRI and I mostly liked the way it sounded, I definitely would not go to the trouble and expense of a board swap.

If I had a DRRI and I didn't totally love the way it sounded, I still wouldn't (experimenting with speakers and tubes is much more likely to be fruitful).

On the other hand, if you have a DRRI and want to learn more about building amps, learn more about how old amps were constructed, or something like that... that's when it starts to be a good idea.

I have a few vintage amps, have owned a 1965 Deluxe, and have played literally thousands of rented DRRIs and vintage Deluxe Reverbs on tour. The DRRI is a good amp and holds up favorably next to a typical example of a vintage original IMO (and is much better than a worked-over original, but that's another topic for another day).

If you're chasing that last 5% of vintage magic, you're not likely to find it in a board swap. The speaker, the output transformer, the vacuum tubes, and even the speaker cabinet are more important, in my experience, than the passive components (and way more important than the substrate to which they're mounted!)

The big advantage of a hand-wired amp is reliability and serviceability, but Fender have done a pretty good job even there with the DRRI--the pots are mounted to their own sub-board, well-secured mechanically (I've never seen a pot failure in all my years of playing rentals). And the tube sockets (crucially!) are mounted off-board, so they don't see the types of heat- and stress-related failures that are typical on HRDs, Blues Juniors, etc.

It's a good reissue amp, well-implemented.

Do a board swap if it sounds fun. Don't expect it to be a game-changer sonically or reliability-wise

[JackFawkes]

I looked to see if they offer a finished P2P board for Fender 65 PRRI & 65 DRRI. I could find Parts to build one.. but do they offer them completely built? If so, how much?

Apologies, I misunderstood; I thought you were looking to do it yourself as a project.
If you're looking for a completed build, I've heard good things aboutCeriatone, but don't have any first-hand experience with them.

If you're chasing that last 5% of vintage magic, you're not likely to find it in a board swap. The speaker, the output transformer, the vacuum tubes, and even the speaker cabinet are more important, in my experience, than the passive components (and way more important than the substrate to which they're mounted!)
...
Do a board swap if it sounds fun. Don't expect it to be a game-changer sonically or reliability-wise

This is also excellent and accurate advice.

[Unicorn Warrior]

I would like to do this same thing, but with a Vox AC-10.

[Larsongs]

I looked to see if they offer a finished P2P board for Fender 65 PRRI & 65 DRRI. I could find Parts to build one.. but do they offer them completely built? If so, how much?

Apologies, I misunderstood; I thought you were looking to do it yourself as a project.
If you're looking for a completed build, I've heard good things aboutCeriatone, but don't have any first-hand experience with them.

If you're chasing that last 5% of vintage magic, you're not likely to find it in a board swap. The speaker, the output transformer, the vacuum tubes, and even the speaker cabinet are more important, in my experience, than the passive components (and way more important than the substrate to which they're mounted!)
...
Do a board swap if it sounds fun. Don't expect it to be a game-changer sonically or reliability-wise

This is also excellent and accurate advice.

I don’t want to do it now… IMO, the Fender 65 PRRI Amps are as perfect, out of the box, Amp you can buy… Without any upgrades.I might try some better Tubes but the GT’s in this sound surprisingly good! As does the Stock Speaker.. I’ve been thinking of trying some higher quality Tubes though..

In the future if the PCB goes out I might opt for a complete HW Point to Point Board if the price isn’t crazy… Maybe a Mercury Transformer too..

[Larsongs]

I would like to do this same thing, but with a Vox AC-10.

I have an AC-10 that I’d like to do too.. I’m curious how much a finished board costs?

[JSett]

I don’t want to do it now… IMO, the Fender 65 PRRI Amps are as perfect, out of the box, Amp you can buy… Without any upgrades.I might try some better Tubes but the GT’s in this sound surprisingly good! As does the Stock Speaker.. I’ve been thinking of trying some higher quality Tubes though..

In my experience, the smaller Fender combos really benefit from good tubes, and you can hear the difference much more prominently thanks to their simplicity. A nice set of old RCA is my go-to for the preamp and poweramp sections and then anything (new or old) that are nice and quiet for any effects or PI position. That'll be more noticeable than changing to p2p and easy to do.

[øøøøøøø]

To me the DRRI is really great, the PRRI is pretty good but maybe missing something slight.

I think the new Jensen C12K might be just a little bit more to my taste than the 10” Jensen they use in the reissue Princeton and Super.

The 10 is a little bit brighter than I’m accustomed to from vintage examples of those amps

[Larsongs]

To me the DRRI is really great, the PRRI is pretty good but maybe missing something slight.

I think the new Jensen C12K might be just a little bit more to my taste than the 10” Jensen they use in the reissue Princeton and Super.

The 10 is a little bit brighter than I’m accustomed to from vintage examples of those amps

Funny… I’m just the opposite.. I’ve always thought my 65 DRRI needs something.. Better Tubes, Speaker, Transformer & maybe all 3…

Whereas, my 65 PRRI was perfect out of the box…

That said, I play several different kinds of Guitars. Strats, Tele’s, AV65 JM, AV65 Jag, Les Pauls, 335’s, Casino’s, Ric 360’s & a Gretsch Duo Jet mostly… All of them sound great in the PRRI.. While something is missing re; the Sound in the DRRI….

[øøøøøøø]

To me the DRRI is really great, the PRRI is pretty good but maybe missing something slight.

I think the new Jensen C12K might be just a little bit more to my taste than the 10” Jensen they use in the reissue Princeton and Super.

The 10 is a little bit brighter than I’m accustomed to from vintage examples of those amps

Funny… I’m just the opposite.. I’ve always thought my 65 DRRI needs something.. Better Tubes, Speaker, Transformer & maybe all 3…

Whereas, my 65 PRRI was perfect out of the box…

That said, I play several different kinds of Guitars. Strats, Tele’s, AV65 JM, AV65 Jag, Les Pauls, 335’s, Casino’s, Ric 360’s & a Gretsch Duo Jet mostly… All of them sound great in the PRRI.. While something is missing re; the Sound in the DRRI….

Interesting!

Maybe the truth is that they're both fine, and individual preferences will mean that someone is always happy, and someone is always less-so

[stevejamsecono]

It's very possible to do, and a few manufacturers (e.g. Hoffman Amps) sell ready-made solutions. A better question would be "is it worth it?" and this is where it gets a bit less-clear.

If I had a DRRI and I mostly liked the way it sounded, I definitely would not go to the trouble and expense of a board swap.

If I had a DRRI and I didn't totally love the way it sounded, I still wouldn't (experimenting with speakers and tubes is much more likely to be fruitful).

On the other hand, if you have a DRRI and want to learn more about building amps, learn more about how old amps were constructed, or something like that... that's when it starts to be a good idea.

I have a few vintage amps, have owned a 1965 Deluxe, and have played literally thousands of rented DRRIs and vintage Deluxe Reverbs on tour. The DRRI is a good amp and holds up favorably next to a typical example of a vintage original IMO (and is much better than a worked-over original, but that's another topic for another day).

If you're chasing that last 5% of vintage magic, you're not likely to find it in a board swap. The speaker, the output transformer, the vacuum tubes, and even the speaker cabinet are more important, in my experience, than the passive components (and way more important than the substrate to which they're mounted!)

The big advantage of a hand-wired amp is reliability and serviceability, but Fender have done a pretty good job even there with the DRRI--the pots are mounted to their own sub-board, well-secured mechanically (I've never seen a pot failure in all my years of playing rentals). And the tube sockets (crucially!) are mounted off-board, so they don't see the types of heat- and stress-related failures that are typical on HRDs, Blues Juniors, etc.

It's a good reissue amp, well-implemented.

Do a board swap if it sounds fun. Don't expect it to be a game-changer sonically or reliability-wise

Didn't you do something like this with a Pro Jr ages ago? I was trying to find the thread about it but couldn't locate it. I remember it being sparkly

[øøøøøøø]

I did!

And I actually just completely redid it again.

The Pro Junior is a bit of a different case, as it has some flaws (IMO) with its implementation that reflect its price point.

• The tube socket solder joints tend to fail as they're on a thin PCB substrate that gets really hot
• The input jack tends to fail due being mounted to the thin PCB substrate (and having some thin/fragile plastic internal parts)
• The cabinet is a bit undersized for a 10" speaker
• The stock speaker that was used when mine was built was, frankly, not very good

There are other things I wanted to change about mine that were a bit more "subjective preference" in nature.

It was also extremely noisy, which I assumed was at least partly attributable to the PCB layout and the fact that ribbon cables were used between the tube socket daughter board and the main PCB.

That turned out to be only a minor contributing factor... the Pro Junior itself is just kind of an inherently-noisy design, with a lot of attenuation (by voltage divider) before the volume pot, such that the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty severely impaired. It's just kind of "the nature of the beast" and you have to either accept it, redesign the amp, or choose a different amp.

After trying all that stuff (some of which really did improve the amp in all other ways!), I ultimately decided to live with the hiss issue.

Funny you should bring it up, as I've recently brought it back out to try and sort that one last issue. After learning the root cause of the hiss, I've ultimately just decided to embrace it for the noisy, great-sounding amp that it is.