What is the difference between the Fender 68 Princeton Reverb and the 65?

fretmeister

Anyone?

Just curious really.

p90fool

Speaker, NFB resistor value, a resistor in the reverb circuit and a couple of components and a wire link in the midrange circuit. 

munckee

p90fool said:

Speaker, NFB resistor value, a resistor in the reverb circuit and a couple of components and a wire link in the midrange circuit. 

In laymans terms the 68 has the bassman tone stack in and so is somewhat darker and breaks up earlier, apparently takes pedals better  too.

I just sold a 68 and bought an original 74 champ, the champ has the fender clean sound I thought the 68 would have - I would certainly have another 68 though was a seriously nice piece of kit.

p90fool

FWIW I modded a 68 Custom backwards and forwards to PRRI spec a couple of times and didn't really feel strongly either way tbh, certainly not at gig volume. 

The biggest changes on either circuit were caused by speaker swaps and bunging a 12AY7 in V3 to tame the flub and the reverb at the same time, so there's no real need to dive into the guts if you're not confident. 

If I was looking for another Princeton reissue I'd happily grab whichever was nearest and/or cheapest, with no strong preference in terms of tone. 

The larger models in the 68 Custom range have significant circuit differences, but the two  Princetons sound very similar to each other. 

munckee

Agree re speaker change putting a jensen alnico in gave a more traditional fender sound than the stock celestion to me and reduced the bass as I found the 68 to be bass heavy and never moved the bass dial off of lowest point.

p90fool

The 12AY7 worked wonders in that regard too, I ended up running the bass around halfway up, and it cured the ridiculous clanging overtones from the reverb too. 
Oh, I also bunged a MOD tank in mine too, but mainly because the Accutronics died, predictably. 

mart

3

newi123

Big difference for me was the price........ wanted a 65 but bought a 68 new from DV247 when they had one on special for £700 and a bit pounds. Changed the speaker to a Rajun Cajun and couldn`t be happier. 

crunchman

Speaker is probably a bigger difference than the circuit changes.  Changed the Celestion for a WGS Veteran, which sounds a lot better to me.

Epsilon

The 68 is very/too dark, in my opinion. I was running it with treble on full and the bass way down and still struggling to get enough top end. Seems to be a common complaint with this. Mine also had a very noisy reverb/trem. Returned it for a refund.

The 65 has a very clear and bell-like top end. Good amount of bass also. Much more how princeton should sound, to me. Definitely worth the extra cash over the 68.

p90fool

Yours sounds faulty, the top end in both amps is pretty much the same, it's mainly the midrange which is different, and that's not radical. 

jellybelly

68 is very much a single coil amp - worked really well with my jaguar in particular and took pedals much better than a standard Fender tonestack. I also liked the stock speaker. 

As someone has mentioned, either can be modded some or all of the way towards the other (between the ‘65 and ‘68). When I owned mine these mods made less difference than you’d think but I practically always preferred the 68s tone

Epsilon

p90fool said:

Yours sounds faulty, the top end in both amps is pretty much the same, it's mainly the midrange which is different, and that's not radical. 

Possibly, though my experience seems to be similar to many others based on forum posts about these amps. In fact if you Google this exact question the general consensus seems to be 68 = dark and 65 = bright.

fretmeister

Interesting. Thanks chaps.

I'm not particularly in the market for an amp, but when looking for inspiration I stumbled across a vid or 2 on youtube... well you know how it goes!

Barnezy

Isn't the 68 made in Mexico and the 65 made in US? Might explain some of the price difference. 

I played a 68 in a store and although very nice, it sounded a little muffled and bass heavy, which was probably the speaker. Bought a used 65 and couldn't be happier. The guy I bought it from had changed the speaker to a Workhouse Veteran to "warm up the tone" in his words. I have the original in a box but haven't changed it back so couldn't tell you how different it is.

I guess you can get them to sound very similar to one another if you're changing the speaker anyway. 

ICBM

Barnezy said:

Isn't the 68 made in Mexico and the 65 made in US? Might explain some of the price difference.

All of it. There’s no quality difference.