Fender Princeton Reverb

Despite having similarities with a Vibro Champ, the Princeton Reverb is a totally different animal. This is no mere practice amp, and there's nothing small or boxy about the tone. It's impressively loud, and it even with the volume turned down it still sounds big. Background hiss or hum is extremely low, even when things are cranked right up – and, believe me, you'll enjoy cranking this one up.
If you want to know what your guitar really sounds like, this amp is the one to show you because it enhances – or even exaggerates – sonic flavours. We tried numerous guitars: a Telecaster twanged and chimed like never before, a hollowbody with P90s sounded amazingly pure, sweet and 'acoustic', and a Gretsch Tennessean sounded fantastically woody, twangy and clear… better, in fact, through this Princeton than any amp it's been played through before. Moreover, every guitar displayed complex timbre changes between pickup settings that went way beyond 'more bass' or 'more treble'.
Princetons are very popular amongst jazz players; Bill Frisell has been using one for decades. At low volumes it's easy to understand why, because the Princeton Reverb has an almost hi-fi quality without the blandness or sterility of some clean solid-state combos. However, in reality, there's not much clean headroom. With single coils the onset of overdrive occurs between 4 and 5 on the Volume knob, and you can barely stay clean up to 4 with humbuckers and P90s. But, just like the Treble and Bass controls, Volume is very gradual and easy to fine-tune – and since the Princeton is so responsive to playing dynamics, you can also easily control the overdrive by hand.
As the Princeton Reverb progresses further into overdrive the sound gets fatter and richer and the clean jazz tone gradually morphs into a more driven Charlie Christian or Barney Kessel-style sound, then progresses to a singing, bluesy bite at around Volume 5 or 6. Push the volume higher and the sound fills out in the midrange and bass and the snappy clean highs melt into a haze of harmonics. This amp can get very overdriven indeed, although it’s nothing like a Marshall crunch or even a Fender tweed tone. Somehow Fender's blackface and silverface circuits always seem to retain clarity and transparency no matter how hard you push them. The Princeton Reverb is no exception, and because it isn't too powerful you can nail that cranked-to-the-max SRV tone at reasonable volume levels.
However, the bass performance does deteriorate as volume increases. There's plenty of low end, but it starts to get farty and spongy towards full whack. Never mind: since the bass gets fatter as volume increases, rolling back the Bass control can alleviate the problem. The treble can also be a bit edgy at every volume level, especially with added reverb – but hey, that's what the Treble knob is for.
Plugging in a 2x12" extension cab proved revealing. The edgy treble is down to the stock 10" speaker, but those loose lows are probably more attributable to the output transformer – and we learned that the Princeton can be incredibly loud through a pair of efficient speakers.
As for the onboard effects, I'm hugely impressed. The tremolo is huge, deep and strong, and the reverb is lush and three-dimensional. Best of all, you get overdrive and compression by default – and since the Princeton weighs only 12.7kg you can sling your guitar on your back, grab the amp with one hand, and go.

Despite using modern construction techniques Fender has made a fairly faithful reissue, warts and all. If you cherish Princetons for what they were rather that what you might have preferred them to be, this is an exciting and surprisingly affordable amplifier. Best of all, it’s utterly mesmerising to play. It won’t give you metal sounds, it won’t do loud and clean, and it won’t make your guitar into something it’s not – but for jazz, country, blues and rootsy rock, it’s amazing.