My Fender Princeton guitar amplifiersteemCreated with Sketch.

in music •  7 years ago 

Here's another post in my occasional posting about vintage tube type guitar amplifiers.

This is the only vintage Fender amplifier that I have left from my small collection of Fender amps. This is a "silver face" Princeton amplifier, it was probably made in the late 1960s or early 1970s. I've never done the research on the chassis number to know what year it was made. I got this amp from a guy that I was in a band with back at the end of the 1970s. He had changed the grill cloth before I got the amp from him, I've never bothered to change it back. It should be the standard Fender silver grill cloth. I suspect that the original grill cloth and speaker had been damaged at some time before I got it because there was a Radio Shack speaker in it when I got it instead of a Fender speaker.
All of these pictures are about 10-11 years old, the background is the house that I lived in back then.

The amp from the front.
Princeton front 1.jpg

The amp from the back.Princeton back 1.jpg

As you can see, I replaced the Radio Shack speaker with a Pyle speaker. The Pyle speaker is more efficient, so the amp is a bit louder and sounds better than it did before. The orange thing on the upper left side is a diode replacement for the rectifier tube. I'm still using that pair of Groove Tubes 6V6HD power tubes in this amp. The amp puts out around 16-18 watts with that pair of tubes, with standard 6V6GC tubes, it would put out 15-16 watts. The circuits in this amp are much like a single channel Fender Deluxe amp.
I modified this amp back in the early 2000s to give it a master volume. I had removed the vibrato circuit at that time to use the circuit board connections for the master volume. I ended up reinstalling the vibrato circuit after that, which meant that I had to add parts, and a place to mount them. I also added an adjustable power tube bias control so that I could fine tune the output tubes for best performance. One other thing I did was to put a different switch in place of the ground switch and wire it as a standby switch. With the 3 wire grounded cord, there was no longer a need for a ground polarity switch.

Here's what the inside of the amp looks like.
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chassis inside front.JPG

That's it for this bit of amp exposure, I hope you enjoyed it!

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Thanks for stopping by and checking out my post, eh!
If you'd like to read about another Fender amp that I wrote about, here's the link to the story. It's past the 7 day payout, but you can still read it. :-)
https://steemit.com/music/@amberyooper/the-fender-twin-reverb-guitar-amp

As always, feel free to leave a comment or question if you'd like.

And remember,
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Ooooh very nice!

Thanks!

Wow! You did good post my friend and interesting article! Look on my post ! I write very interesting story!

@amberyooper

Awesome piece of musical equipment... I am sure that it will bring back lots of memories later on.

Thanks!

I love me some tubes! I also like taking things apart! Ill post some pictures of an old handmade tube amp i have.
Keep steemin!

I'd like to see that hand made amp!
I've built several amps, but I'm not very good at building the cabinet for them.

Very nice! I'll have to share my '72 Twin on here when I get home! The vintage Fenders are works of art and have so much vibe.

Very true! I used to have a 50 watt Fender Bassman and a 100 watt Fender Bassman, but I sold them a few years ago when I needed money. That sucked, but sometimes you have to do it anyway.
I did a post about an older blackface Twin Reverb that belongs to a friend of mine last month, here's the link if you'd like to read it. It's way past the 7 day upvote period, but it might still be of interest to you.
https://steemit.com/music/@amberyooper/the-fender-twin-reverb-guitar-amp
I look forward to seeing your post about your 72 Twin, I'll follow you for that. :-)

Thanks! I'll check it out.