So, it was a long story, see the beginning here: http://www.gretsch-talk.com/threads...or-swart-atomic-jr.170846/page-3#post-1026920 But now is the happy end : my proudly made of best parts famous Princeton Reverb handwired clone. Yes, you may call it an attempted counterfeit, but I will “Fender”, "Princeton Reverb" etc. on the amp . Just as some manufacturers still writes long expired patent numbers on his items – “for historical reasons” as they claim -, I use the old inscriptions as "Fender Elect. Instr. Co" for historical reasons. As I do not intend to sell my amp, I think this should be legally okay. IMHO this amp is much more true classical Black Face era Fender as modern 65PRRI. I feel Leo Fender got it right The parts : - georgeous chassis and face & back plates, an exact copy of old Princetons, including fiber circuit board & bias board, brass ground plate, and aluminium plate for covering the A/C Outlet hole. Quality of silk screen printing at face & back plates is irreproachable. - Mercury Magnetics transformers - Jensen P10R-F speaker (special Fender Edition alnico with extended dynamic and frequency ranges) - Tung Sol valves - resistors are mostly Allen Bradley (in the anode and cathode circuits), Sozo Blue Molded, Sprague Atom - solid pine cabinet with birch plywood baffle, dowetail joint. Tweed is lacquered with three layers of nitro lacquer with additional toning with shellac. So only top quality components was used. Some small mods are following (nothing to change the tone): - extern Bias Points & Bias Pot - 3-Pos. "Off"-"Standby"-"On" Switch Here some pics of "inner space": And now ready to play : The sound is incredible : mellow clean tone... the amp brings the rich, warm timbres, it's true vintage blackface sound. Unfortunately I haven't neither good mic nor recording skills to make a samples... just trust me: the sound is brilliant. Love my new amp sooooo much
Congratulations, it looks good indeed! Hopefully I'll get to building my variation of the Princeton Reverb this year - finally...
Beautiful. I have been playing through a couple of blackface Princeton Reverb clones for a while and they are wonderful amps. Yours looks fabulous. Congrats.
RomanS It's Epi from Japan made Elitist series http://www.gretsch-talk.com/threads/epiphone-elitist-country-deluxe-chet-atkins.165539/ Mine is heavily modded : TVJ PowerTrons, Bigsby B6 Original US series, Gotoh locking tuners and ABM roller bridge. A superb instrument!
