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previous: Benjamin Fargen John,Not to be the ... -- 1/6/2000 5:39 PM

Re: Princeton Reverb

1/6/2000 6:31 PM
John Stokes	Re: Princeton Reverb Ben, I must disagree with you. THAT much surgery/modification is a hack job. That is a hand-wired, point to point amp. They don't make them any more. Even the SF era amps are now experiencing price appreciation. A lot of guys here dismiss butchery of an SF era amp as a "who cares, there's lots of them". That thinking is outdated. There's really not so many. Each year a few are destroyed by natural disasters, and others are butchered. Either way, there's fewer and fewer originals. If someone has an old p-p wired Fender amp and he's grossly unhappy with it's performance, he needs a different amp. Silverface amps are not sacrificial animals to the amp butcher shops, like many feel. If the guy wants to learn about amps, that's great, but hey, there's the AX84 project, Allen kits and several other avenues other than hacking up an old Fender. There's really no effective difference between paying some jerk tech to Torres-up an amp or doing it yourself. The end results are identical. I suspect he could have come close to what he wanted with a much lesser degree of modification. The DR and PR use completely different sized power transformers, so if the PT was replaced, there was most likely some metal cutting involved, and hence, the mods are not reversable. From reading his original post, my impression is that he was not getting enough volume. You'd be surprised at the whopping volume increase you can get with just putting in a VERY efficient speaker and doing the simple PI voltage mod. My PR will hold it's own with any stock DR now. Not really "hard-core", just reality check. No flames, no profanity. Thank you for your consideration.

1/6/2000 6:31 PM

John Stokes

Re: Princeton Reverb

Ben, I must disagree with you. THAT much surgery/modification is a hack job.

That is a hand-wired, point to point amp. They don't make them any more. Even the SF era amps are now experiencing price appreciation. A lot of guys here dismiss butchery of an SF era amp as a "who cares, there's lots of them". That thinking is outdated. There's really not so many. Each year a few are destroyed by natural disasters, and others are butchered. Either way, there's fewer and fewer originals. If someone has an old p-p wired Fender amp and he's grossly unhappy with it's performance, he needs a different amp. Silverface amps are not sacrificial animals to the amp butcher shops, like many feel. If the guy wants to learn about amps, that's great, but hey, there's the AX84 project, Allen kits and several other avenues other than hacking up an old Fender. There's really no effective difference between paying some jerk tech to Torres-up an amp or doing it yourself. The end results are identical. I suspect he could have come close to what he wanted with a much lesser degree of modification. The DR and PR use completely different sized power transformers, so if the PT was replaced, there was most likely some metal cutting involved, and hence, the mods are not reversable.

From reading his original post, my impression is that he was not getting enough volume. You'd be surprised at the whopping volume increase you can get with just putting in a VERY efficient speaker and doing the simple PI voltage mod. My PR will hold it's own with any stock DR now.

Not really "hard-core", just reality check. No flames, no profanity. Thank you for your consideration.

Replies:

Benjamin Fargen John,I respect your... -- 1/6/2000 7:29 PM
Bob Dear John Stokes,Thanks for... -- 1/7/2000 12:53 AM