Fender type Deluxe Princeton with options hand wired

Hand wired Fender type Deluxe Princeton with options

Turret board hand wired! No PCB in this thing.  Easy to service in the future and bullet proof. Made to be gigged.

This amp is a vintage Fender that never was.  It is a mix of the power amp of a AA1164 Blackface Princeton with its gorgeous bias tremolo circuit and the front end of a Blackface Deluxe with a little Tweed Bassman and Vibrolux thrown in for good measure.

In addition to the well known treble, middle, and bass Blackface Deluxe controls, the front panel includes a master volume that is quite usable.  Depending on the needs of the gig/practice, warm Fender clean tones can be had at a variety of volumes.

The back panel has two controls that can change the amps tone quite a bit: a variable negative feedback control (VNFB) and a Raw control.  When turned down, the VNFB decreases the damping that the amp has on speaker, so that you can replicate the “loud amp” response of the speaker.In other words, it is more dynamic in its transient response and has a looser low end.  When turned up, the Raw control gradually removes the tone stack.Removing it increases the gain and changes the amps voice significantly.  These two rear controls allow you to really dial in the voice of amp.[Be aware that this doesn’t make this Fender style into a Vox or Marshall, but it will lean it heavily into the Tweed era.]

Amp was built with Deluxe power and output transformers, so it can be Deluxe volume with 12AX7’s loaded.See below for suggestions on a more Princeton volume output.

The Tweed Bassman portion comes in the form of a “cathode follower” tube stage just before the tone stack.  This allows the Blackface tone stack to not rob the amp of as much gain as a typical Blackface stack.  In practice, what this really does is allow for a variety of 12_ _7 family of tubes.

I suggest that the amp ships with a 12DW7 in the first tube slot.  The 12DW7 is ½ 12AX7 and ½ 12AU7.  The 12AU7 portion makes a more efficient cathode follower than other 12_ _7 family tubes.  The amp will operate perfectly with any of the following preamp tubes in any preamp slot: 12AX7, 12AT7, 12AY7, 12AU7, 12DW7.  By “tube rolling” different preamp tubes in different locations, a great deal of variety can be obtained.  For instance, with a 12AU7 in the first preamp tube slot and a 12AT7 in the second (driver tube) slot, the amp is a very clean machine, but Princeton-level volume.With those 2 tubes you can get some grit if you dime the volume control, but it is more of the edge-of-breakup variety.

With 12DW7 and 12AX7 (driver) preamp tubes mounted, you get maximum drive and maximum volume.  A loud warm pedal friendly set up.

You can really dial in the amp for your most frequent settings.  For instance, for my home use, it would be the 12AU7 and 12AT7 for great practice volume tone that is warm and pedal friendly.

So, you can get a variety of Fender tones that you can tailor to your needs.

One of the options that are on offer is what type of preamp tubes you would like the amp to ship with in which slot.

              Gain stages 1&2 Preamp slot options: 12AX7, 12AT7, 12AY7, 12AU7, 12DW7

              Driver tube Preamp slot options: 12AX7, 12AT7

Just let me know!

The rest of the tube compliment are the 2 6V6’s that you would expect in a Deluxe or Princeton and a rectifier tube.

The rectifier tube offers 2 more options.  If you want full Deluxe-like volume, put in a 5AR4.  If you want more sag and more Princeton-like volume, put in a 5Y3. 

It will ship with a matched pair of NOS JAN Phillips 6V6’s and a NOS Raytheon 5Y3.  Preamp tubes will be modern production tubes from eastern European factories (EH, JJ, Sovtek, etc).  That is what I have in stock.

Where the Vibrolux portion comes in is in the use of 2 10” speakers.  The 2 speakers that are mounted are a Warehouse Guitar Speakers ET10 and a Warehouse Guitar Speakers G10C/S.

A beautiful sounding amp with great Fender flexibility and a great gig volume amp!

Shipping to continental USA only.

39.2 lb

22.75" x 18" x 8.5" top-9.5" bottom