princeton tweed distortion

[brian newman]

I built a Fender princeton tweed awhile back and have been playing with different 8" speakers.I tried some vintage alnico Heppners,but they couldn't handle the wattage.I got a deal on some Sammi sound 8" professional grade drivers and installed them.They are louder but I find the sound too distorted for my tastes.Maybe I'm being too critical(It's the audiophile in me)but I'm beginning to think it's the amp itself.
Could the output tubes be biased too cold??
Any suggestions out there
Thie amp is built to Angela instuments schematics.I've used the hammond
125ESE as the OPT.

Brian

[Tom Phillips]

Brian,

Since you have never liked the amp. The “problem” could be anything and you need to determine if the electronics or the speaker set up is the problem. I’d suggest that you keep trying your amp with other speakers. A good method is to find a buddy with an amp with a single speaker and play your electronics through the other amp’s speaker. You can also hook another amp to your speaker to determine if your speaker is a problem.
Small single ended amps can be really nice. However, if I were to build one, I would not bother with a speaker smaller than 10”. In fact, I’d probably start with a 12”. Just my preference and something to consider.

For a really fun time I like to play a 3W Champ into a 4x12 cab.

Regards,
Tom

[bob p]

I would have to echo Tom's advice, and say that the biggest impediment to a small amp sounding really good is the fact that small amps typically come with crappy speakers. More than anything else, this is a price point issue, as most people don't take small amps seriously.

In my slanted view of things, if you care about tone, then there's just no good reason for any amp to be sold with a cheap speaker. The corollary to this is that many an amp that are inexpensive will sound LOTS better if you give them a quality speaker to play through, and give them the opportunity t "be all they can be."

As far as speakers go, there are LOTS of quality speakers starting at 12 inches and going up. There are a number of good 10 inch speakers, but there are just as many if not more crappy 10 in speakers, so you have to be careful. Going smaller, there are very few good 8 inch speakers -- most of them are crap.

Just my extremely biased opinion. YMMV.

[brian newman]

Thanks for the replies
I'm using two 8" in the amp.I'm going to take it to someone I know who has heard a fair share of these amps to get his opinion.I'll let you know how it turns out

Thanks Brian

[Fabio]

Pay attention with the eletronics.

In my case the great problem was the wire wich came from imput jack was close to the filaments wires.

Once the eletronics is ok, try ECC82 instead 12AX7.

For me this combination is nice!

FAB

[stingray_65]

I was just saying in a different post

I piggy backed a 22k resistor ontop of the existing 22k NFB resistor giving me a lot cleaner sound.

it's a quick and easy mod, and easily removed if you don't like it

the over all volume suffered a bit, but no one has ever built a princeton thinking he was going to have a defening amp

Ray