It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
https://speakerimpedance.co.uk/?act=two_parallel&page=calculator
soundcloud.com/thecolourbox-1
youtube.com/@TheColourboxMusic
The deluxe sounds way better when pushed than the Princeton imo. My Princeton was only good until the point where it started breaking up and got farty real fast after that
@colourofsound this is classic forum suggestion (ie not what you asked at all) but I'm much happier with my thr10 at home than I have been with anything that has a full sized speaker
(Fwiw I eventually sold my deluxe and got a 74 pro reverb. Much better spread on stage)
and yes, the Deluxes are so directional haha
Website || Feedback Thread || PayPal
I also just took a mint PRRI in a trade deal. Always fancied one, but never had an excuse to pick one up till now. It sounds lovely at home volumes for sure. I have the luxury of a soundproofed music room so I can wind them both up to gig level and directly compare. I'll see if I get a chance to that this weekend (though it's a 5-gig weekend for me so I may struggle to find time)
For most of my gigs lately I've been using a Quilter TB200 and their teeny 1x10 cab, using the line-out into IEMs, so stage volume isn't a big consideration. I will bring the PRRI out though and see how it balances in the room vs drums and the other guy's AC10.
The DRRI I tend to keep for the Stones tribute gigs, where a bit more stage volume and obviously the look are both important. We're always miked up though, and wedge monitoring is the norm. The next one of those I have isn't till November, but I'll see how the PRRI fares there and will report back (assuming I still have it!)
Trading feedback here
The Princeton won’t sound as nice and not much quieter either. 10” speaker, same 2 x 6V6 valves.
Trading feedback here
The biggest factor for home playing though maybe that the Deluxe has a higher noise floor, but that depends on the individual amp in my experience.
I’m in Manchester and have a PRRI.
Mines a bit different though, uprated heyboer OT, uprated Hammond PT (because the original blew).
caps all uprated (F&T etc, the Fender ones are shite)
speaker change
I liked it at home volumes, broke up about 5 with the jensen which was too loud if other people were in the house but if they were out not so loud that neighbours called the police.
I sold it and bought a silverface champ which had even nicer cleans and perfect home volume but no reverb or tremolo. If you can bite the bullet cost wise a rift PR6 might be the perfect home amp, or I have considered a Tone King Falcon which has built in attenuator.
For me personally I ended up moving on the SF champ because I prefer the sound of my tweed champ to both of them.
My take on all these things is that they both sound quite similar and really great at very low volume - I really don't get the 'too loud' thing at all, you just turn the volume knob down, they have a good pot taper (it is logarithmic/audio). Obviously this is for a clean sound, both are too loud to crank up into power-stage overdrive at home unless you have no family.
The Princeton takes pedals slightly better at low volume than the Deluxe's Vibrato channel because that has a bright cap on the volume control which can make them sound scratchy - but the Deluxe is better on the Normal channel since there is another bright cap in the reverb section which the Princeton also has - you can jumper to the Vibrato channel with the treble turned right down for reverb and tremolo if you want. (By 'takes pedals' I always mean the pedal being used to generate distortion, not push the amp into it.) Neither of them is too bassy at all, they both have a lovely full deep tone even at very low volume. You *can* turn the bass up too far, but it's usually perfect at around 3-4.
When overdriven they sound much more different - the technical reason is that the phase inverter circuit is totally different in both amps, the Princeton has a 'cathodyne' type (like the Tweed Deluxe) and the Deluxe a 'long-tailed pair' (like all larger Fender and most other amps), so the Princeton generates more of its overdrive from the phase inverter and sounds tighter and more compressed, whereas the Deluxe is looser and more open-sounding. The Princeton also has a bias-modulation tremolo rather than the Deluxe's opto-coupled one, which makes the Princeton's more interactive with the power stage overdrive.
(You can reduce the Princeton's phase inverter distortion by doing the 'Stokes mod', but I've never actually tried that on a reissue so I don't know how difficult it is on the PCB.)
At high volume I don't think either of them have enough clean headroom for a band - I've always found Deluxes frustrating, the clean tone is a bit too thin and lacking punch, and then they go flubby and farty at just too low a volume for me... and I don't play loud. Fitting them with 6L6s and/or a solid-state rectifier helps, but I still find a Vibrolux better. I've never even tried playing a gig with a Princeton, I don't think it would work at all for me unless it was fully mic'ed, and even then I'm not sure. And I did gig with a couple of original Super Champs years ago - sometimes just one - so it's not just the 10" speaker and 6V6s that are the problem. A Princeton with a 12" speaker sounds more like a slightly bigger Princeton than a Deluxe.
As always, your mileage may vary (drastically ).
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Assuming a ‘normal’ pop/rock band where the guitar needs to be heard, for me a Princeton won’t cut it, nor an AC-15. A DeLuxe will barely work either. All of these are great amps but I think for live work you need 30W minimum - a Vibrolux, HRD, Blues DeLuxe are all portable and take the worry about headroom off the table.
I’ve played all of them at home happily too - obviously at nowhere near gig volume, but they still sound good turned right down.
i find it is incredibly directional though; I suppose that’s just guitar amps for you.
Website || Feedback Thread || PayPal