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JK's Princeton was another "shelter" animal waiting to be rescued when I got her (or him - it's hard to determine the gender of an amplifier). I was going to leave her for last, because the kit clone 2x10 is in much worse shape and needs serious attention. He must have built the kit years ago, The grill cloth is dry and crumbling, and it's obviously been sitting in a closet for years. I wasn't in the mood to do a major job yet, so the Princeton jumpd the line. It powered up with no misbehavior. Its major flaws were all external, with the only immediately identifiable problem being nonfunctional reverb. Since it looked like an easy refurb, I decided to do it this week and get it out of the way.
Jazzkritter was a meticulous guy, and he was an amateur radio operator who knew and loved electronics. So I know that he adopted the Twin and the Princeton with the intent to make them whole again. I'm sorry he was unable to do that, and I love being able to do it for him.
The serial number on the Princeton says 1976, which seems correct. The cabinet was inexpertly recovered at some point in the distant past. The grill cloth looks much too nice to have been original, given the number of dings and scrapes on the rest of the amp. And IIRC, the original would have had blue threads running through it. Here it is as I got it (after a wipedown with Simple Green so I could assess it better):
I put the rubber feet on instead of the original metal glides when I received it, because it sits on the hardwood floor under our piano and the old glides were not kind to the floor. The chassis is in decent shape, but the electronics have been modded. The PT is stock, but the OT is a Mercury Tone Clone. There's a 3 wire power cord and the ground switch & death cap are gone. It's been fitted with both a bias pot and a bias balance pot, but it still has what appears to be the original Mallory cap can. A few of the connections were a little grotty, but the wiring is in decent shape. The tubes are all quite old, although none is microphonic and the amp actually sounded pretty good on arrival.
Oh, yeah - I forgot to mention one little detail: at some point, Rube Goldberg stuck in a first gen 12" Eminence DeltaLite. The red and black wire is my replacement for the ratty zip cord with which it came to me. Sadly, a cabinet was harmed in this experiment:
I established two sets of goals: to make it safe, sound and sweet so I can use it for practice and recording, and to make it as pretty as possible without major rework. This report is the result of the first set. I still have to recover the bottom, do a final polish on the hardware with a rotary tool, smooth and paint the cut edges from the speaker transplant, fill and recreate the holes for the cabinet back mounting screws and replace them all with a proper matched set of screws and cup washers. I'm saving this work until I redo the cab and grill on the kit amp (which is in the worst shape of the 3).
Most of the work here was cosmetic. I did a general cleaning of the cabinet and its hardware, vacuumed the grill cloth, fitted "Fender Vintage" corner guards and rubber feet, reglued some loose edges & ends, touched up the multiple small bare spots, and cleaned up the ratty edges. You can see in the pictures that whoever cut the replacement Tolex was either going through withdrawal or tried to cut straight lines without a guide. Here's a typical example:
Top right end before
Top right end after
The reverb tank is a 17" Accutronics that's probably the original - it's not a black "Revisit" and it doesn't have the plastic or nylon pieces around the RCA jacks that I see on the current ones. It wasn't working because one of the wires from the output "transformer" in the tank had broken free from its RCA jack. The electronics are sound. After cleaning up all the connections and checking the voltages, I decided not to replace any components right now. I'll get a fresh set of tubes and a replacement Mallory cap can at some point. Even the bypass resistors look fine with no signs of heat damage. With the output tubes balanced, there's absolutely no hum or other background noise at all at reasonable playing volumes. It sounds really sweet, and it's a homebody so it will never again be abused.
Here's its first post-cleanup debut with my Eastman 810CE7. I didn't realize how long Phil Wilkinson's backing track was until I listened to this. So I faded it out at 4 minutes, which is more than enough to hear how fine she sounds:
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04-13-2024 10:51 AM
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Fun project, and sounds fantastic!
[If you like more "guitar" style speakers, check out Fat Jimmy's - made by WGS, and very nice for F-amps!]
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Sounds nearly as good as the Twin! And your playing is fantastic once again my man. I like the sound of the amp with the deltalite....makes me wish I had ventured to experiment with the EM!2N's instead of the PF-350's I bought but I didn't want to risk it having never heard them in a Twin before. What a great sounding speaker.
I'd probably redo the bottom baffle support if I had access to a table saw but I actually prefer the sound of a single 12 to a single 10 every day and twice on sundays. The baffle supports look kinda like MDF from what I gather in the picture. My experience with new baffles from Mojotone in a Twin has been fairly positive though I reinforced the top edge of mine because heavy speakers were creating some movement at the top of the baffle that rubbed against the amp chassis.
I really think it is an honorable thing that you are bringing your friend's old gear back to life. You're a good friend. Maybe someday I'll have a friend like that! Thank you for sharing.
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nice work, the right guy got these amps
I'd just leave the bottom as is, maybe glue the loose flap down and call it a day.
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Princeton cabs went to MDF in about '72 and gained 4 pounds. I'm pretty sure they also went from a removable baffle with grill cloth on it to using the front panel as the baffle and sticking a removable grill over it. So whoever attacked this one cut out most of the front panel, made or bought a thin baffle, and covered it with grill cloth. There are flat head screws holding it on from the inside. I'll pull it off and we'll know for sure when I get around to finishing the rough cuts so it looks nicer.
Originally Posted by DawgBone
Wintermoon's practical solution for bottom repair may do the job. But there are 4 staples holding the Tolex on, and I don't know how loose it will be without them. If I have to lift and reglue it, I might as well put out another $10 and get a new piece . It's possible that those staples were used to hold it while the glue dried (which would be in keeping with the lack of workmanship in the speaker transplant and recovering efforts). If the Tolex is adherent except at the edges, I can probably iron it flat and reglue it.
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Despite the uneven cut of the tolex in that spot the tolex appears original. Fender used staples on the bottom in those two overlapped spots to hold down the tolex in addition to glue so you're already good to go. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
Last edited by wintermoon; 04-14-2024 at 09:57 AM.
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Wow - it looks terrible! There are 3 on one side and one on the other. I gotta make it look better than that! Originally Posted by wintermoon
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ps I had just edited my post while you were replying, see above. There should be 3 staples per side, looks like one is partially obscured by the new glides?
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I only saw one staple on that side, and I got a complete look when I pulled out the original glides and added the rubber ones. I don't remember ever looking at the bottom of any of the Fender amps I've had, so they may all have been stapled for all I know. When I get home this afternoon, I'll look under the Twin. But I'm pretty sure that it's either been recovered or is a replacement cab. The edges and ends of the Tolex inside it just look rough and amateurish. But if those staples are from the factory, maybe I expect too much from the CBS era products. Originally Posted by wintermoon
It's light enough (59 1\2 lbs with Jensen neo 12s) to be pine. As I recall, Fender made some Twins of that era using "boards" assembled from strips of solid pine and some from pine plywood. So it could just be a recovered original. I think it has a removable baffle, but I'll check again later today to be sure my memory is right.
There's no remnant of or residue from a tube chart or other label inside either cab, and no markings of any kind. To me, this is another suggestion that the Tolex is not original. Neither amp was well enough cared for years ago to suggest that the insides were kept clean and any glue residue carefully removed.
If I knew the Tolex was original, I'd save it all and clean up & reglue the errant ends & edges.
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Fender used staples in the pre CBS era in those same overlapped spots on the bottom as well. As I mentioned above it looks like a staple is partially obscured under the glide on the lower right? Hard to tell from that pic but I'd be surprised if the tolex isn't original, all those little scrapes, wear spots and especially the dings and depressions you're seeing wouldn't show on a recover unless they happened after the fact. The texture of the tolex looks righteous as well. I'd have a better perspective if it was in front of me. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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enlarging it on my tablet I can see there's a staple partially obscured, maybe there's one under the other glide as well
of course these don't guarantee original tolex but I'm still leaning that way despite the absence/evidence of a tube chart
what else did you find?
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I see what you mean - Originally Posted by wintermoon
I don't remember seeing a staple there when I put the rubber feet on, but I was focused on getting the pilot holes in the center of the old glides' circles and the one in the middle had already upset me. I'll take off the feet tomorrow to see if there are staples under there. All I can say is that if Fender stapled the Tolex to the cabinets, even on the bottom, they should be ashamed of themselves. I will remove them and fix the bottom. This one is so far from original that I'm not harming any sacred cows.
I'll take pics of the ends and edges of the Tolex inside the cabinet. It's irregularly and oddly cut, and it just looks amateurish. Originally Posted by wintermoon
A friend who lives in our apartment building came up today with his Strat to see the amps and jam a bit. He was really blown away by them, although I don't think he's ever had anything like either of them and was probably moved more by their intrinsic qualities than by the work I did on them. I have to say that the Twin and Princeton both sound fantastic and look almost as fine. I'm really glad I did this and will enjoy both of them until they pry the last guitar out of my cold dead hands. Whenever I play through them, I also feel a connection with Jazzkritter. Now it's on to the kit amp he built...
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I wouldn't bother to take them off, doesn't really matter. Every vintage Fender I've ever owned had staples on the bottom, it was sop. They actually help keep that strip of tolex in place especially if the glue fails, a common occurrence. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
I see what you mean -
I don't remember seeing a staple there when I put the rubber feet on, but I was focused on getting the pilot holes in the center of the old glides' circles and the one in the middle had already upset me. I'll take off the feet tomorrow to see if there are staples under there. All I can say is that if Fender stapled the Tolex to the cabinets, even on the bottom, they should be shamed of themselves. I will remove them and fix the bottom. This one is so far from original that I'm not harming any sacred cows.
I'll take pics of the ends and edges of the Tolex inside the cabinet. It's irregularly and oddly cut, and it just looks amateurish.
Should have a glued in baffle though, I'd be curious about that.
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They just drive me nuts because they're not right. If I can get Tolex to stay on without staples, so can Fender. And it looks like they used an Arrow staple gun. If they couldn't be bothered to make proper retaining strips that match the chassis straps, at least they could have applied the staples in a straight line and made them symmetric from side to side. Originally Posted by wintermoon
I think the cut edges in the pic of the inside are on what used to be the glued in baffle. It was hogged out to clear the 12, which was fitted to a thinner sheet that was covered with grill cloth and bolted to the remaining perimeter of the original baffle. It's screwed in from the back. Originally Posted by wintermoon
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I'm sure they used staples from a cost standpoint as Leo was notoriously cheap and wasn't about to spend any more than necessary, especially out of sight on the bottom. Its not ideal if the flap catches on something and rips a huge chunk of tolex off so they serve a purpose for amps that have inevitably been dragged over various surfaces during their lifetime. On your amp the loose flap stopped at the staples. Could they have made a guide to butt the gun up against so the staples are in a straight line? Sure, but that's just an extra step which = $ Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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I get a real kick when I hear discussions about the elegance of his “see-through” finishes. I’m sure he told the paint guys that paint is money, so they should only spray on enough to give it some color. I know there was some kind of an auto paint store near the factory. Stories abound that he had them buy whatever colors they could get at a discount. Originally Posted by wintermoon
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