Brand

Fender

Nice little tube amp with some cool features. It’s in great shape. Look at the photos. Comes with OEM foot switch. $600 firm. Fender's original Princeton was built in the 1960s, and although rated at just 15W it became popular for its ability to produce a great tone at moderate sound levels, making it an ideal studio amplifier as well as a practice amp. Today you can pick up a battered original and pay silly money for it — or you could take a look at the new Princeton Recording Amp... Designed to recreate the tone of the original, this new version is built in Mexico using extremely up-to-date manufacturing methods, as its densely packed circuit boards testify: you'll find neither point-to-point wiring nor generously spaced, hand-assembled PCBs here. Nevertheless, its preamp and power-amp circuits are still based on the all-tube 65 Princeton Reverb model, and they drive a 10-inch Jensen speaker. It can provide a surprising amount of volume, considering the amplifier rating. The preamp stage comprises three 12AX7 tubes and one 12AT7 in the phase-splitter stage, driving a pair of 6V6s in a push-pull configuration. What really sets this new design apart from its predecessor is the addition of a 1U 'studio' rack just below the main control panel, where you'll find a compressor, a stomp-style overdrive and Fender's 'Trans Impedance Power Attenuator', which lets you wind up the amp to achieve the required amount of output tube overdrive, but enables you to turn down the speaker level as low as you like — in other words, it is essentially a sophisticated power-soak. This circuitry replicates the way a hard-driven speaker reflects energy back to the power stage, which in turn modifies the feel of the guitar, so playing dynamics are not compromised by reducing level. When not required, this circuit may be bypassed completely. Reverb is provided by a tube-driven Accutronics spring (which sounds extremely sweet), and there's also a headphone output and a level-adjustable line output, with built-in speaker emulation for practising, recording or feeding to a PA system. There's a ground-lift switch to cut out ground-loop hum and a speaker output jack, which normally feeds the internal speaker but can be disconnected to allow alternative 8Ω cabinets to be used. This model also includes FX loop send and return jacks, plus a four-switch floor controller that is used to access the overdrive, compressor, reverb, and the FX loop bypass. The footswitches override the corresponding panel controls, and there are status LEDs above each switch.