why so many Fender Princeton Reverbs for sale?

[Clemford]

I've thought lately about buying a used PRRI so I figured I'd check the going rate on ebay and was surprised to see so many old and reissue's at any given time for sale. There are so many positive reviews on these that it would seem like they should be hard to come by. I do realize some may be over financial issues and also that so many have been made over the years so maybe that's the only reason they appear.

[Cygnus X1]

IMO they sound "boxy" compared to Deluxe Reverbs.
Maybe other people replace them for the same reason?

[M Fowler]

Could be that they heard one amp to have is a PR but after purchasing the amp they didn't care for it as much as the guy promoting this amp so it goes up for sale.

I owned a collectible BF PR and I did not find the amp was for me so I sold it.

Mark

[Firestorm]

The speaker is everything in these. Most 10s that came in them don't cut it. And it's only 12W: not really gig worthy.

[Milkmansound]

I find that 9/10 original Princetons sound terrible. They fart out and need help - maybe the hype is based on the 1/10 that is perfect because when they are perfect, they are killer!

That said, with just a few caps and resistors and about 20 minutes you can fix up a farty princeton and be on your way to tone town.

[Blackburn]

I love my little '66 PR. They can sound pretty flat and one dimensional if played dry and I'm not a fan of the dirty tone at all... But the bias vary trem and verb are enough to compensate for its drawbacks, in my opinion. For me, just a nice little amp played clean around the house at low volumes. I really dig it.

[telentubes]

Hi Milkman, Care to elaborate on the caps and resistor tune up?
I built a BFPR last winter that I really like, although there is the issue of the farty bass if you lean on the bass strings to hard.

[ampmike]

I 2nd that Milkman,can you share a bit on that,thanks brother,Mikey

[rdjones]

As-is the Princeton style circuit is picky about tubes.
The best place to start is a pair of brown base GTY's, Sylvania or GE.
RCA black plates are not the only game in town.

Same goes with the cathodyne inverter.
Swap around tubes till you find one that doesn't fart as much.

Rectifier, again don't be hesitant to swap from 5AR4 to 5U4.

Here's my theory:
On a circuit the lacks screen and grid buffers (stoppers, limiters whatever) the tube characteristics are more apparent.
So if you want to make a circuit sound more consistent with a variety of tubes you add large(r) screen and grid resistors.
The flipside to this is now you have the tone of an amp with large buffers.
So it's really a balancing act to find values that smooth out the clipping behaviour without dulling the tone too much.

"Amp Doc" Terry Newton likes fairly large grid stoppers.
His Princeton sounds great played full out but it doesn't have that familiar Fender edge.
It does not fart at all.

reddog Steve

[Milkmansound]

nothing magical about what I do - but it will change things drastically for better or for worse

1M grid stop to pin 7 of V4 right off the eyelet board to the tube socket

change the input to the PI to a .001 to strip out inaudible headroom eating low end

5AR4 - more headroom (this is where I start to lose people)

Bump the PI supply up 1 B+ node for more headroom

you can change the 1M resistor in the tremolo circuit to a 220k for deeper tremolo as well

all in all about 15 minutes of work and that thing will scream

[ampmike]

Thanks Milkman,Really appreciate you tone advice,I want to do a princeton one day,Thanks again brother,Mikey

[Bob S]

The Milkman delivers !
Thanks - I'll try this out.

[telentubes]

Thanks so much. I just did a tube rolling session and did find it made a big difference. I'll try some of the other recommendations as well. This is my favorite lower volume amp theses days.

[Cygnus X1]

Rectifier, again don't be hesitant to swap from 5AR4 to 5U4.

Wouldn't the current draw be a bit risky with that swap?

If not, I would like to try it on my Deluxe Reverb.

[M Fowler]

All this talk of Princeton Reverbs brought me to my bench and I found the problem in my clone a 1m instead of a 1k resistor on pin 8 PI.

I did some of Reddog Steve's changes he gave me a year ago and next some changes Richie gave me a year ago: Install a 220k off the 470k junction and Andy Fuch's said to put a 500pf cap between the cathode and plate pin 1 and 3 on the reverb return tube 12ax7.

Vibrato is too soft need to increase my bias range. Otherwise the amp sounds great.

Mark