Silverface Fender Princeton Reverb

[Hesketh308]

Hi there guys, new here but there seems to be a lot of knowledgeable people here!

I am in the process of designing my own valve amp, and was able to find a princeton reverb chassis for cheap so i am going to use that.

I was wondering if it would be possible for people to link me to some photos of original princetons, so that i can see the general logistics of the design. Particularly the bottom end of the chassis with the transformers is what im looking for, as the few pictures online i have managed to find, only show from the top of the chassis


Thanks very much
Tom

[JHow]

You requested photos of originals, which would be interesting, no doubt. I am also always curious to have a look at some orginal amp guts.

From the standpoint of putting together a working amp, however, the historical schematics and layouts for the various princetons are all over the web. Have a look at "schematic heaven" for starters, or just google AA1164 layout, or AA964 to get an idea.

The layouts and schematics will tell you nearly everything you need. You won't pick up the fine details like wire colors, sloppy "monday-morning in fullerton" solder job, or the fine curl of the ancient paper eyelet boards of the originals, however. But i'm not sure how valuable it is to reproduce those kinds of details.

[Dave Curtis, dB AudioTech]

Here's my pix of a '66:

'66 Princeton Reverb - a set on Flickr

The silverface isn't very different.
Disregard the bias circuit; that's obviously not original.

[JHow]

Okay. I admit it. Those ARE pretty cool pix! I just looked at everyone. I like the shot of the input jacks and how they folded the 1M res.