To date (2003) my favorite amp is my first, a 1964 Fender Princeton Reverb Amp. It had the best sound, full-bodied with great bass and crisp highs, and the original owner had replaced the stock 10-inch speaker with a Jensen 12-inch. It just barely fit, but it made a great difference as I later discovered when I bought my second Princeton about 10 years later.
When I first started playing in anything that could remotely be considered a band, I had to find something to amplify an electric guitar--anything to amplify an electric guitar. We tried phonograph players, tape players (the reel to reel kind), and we even used a projector amplifer once.
My dad ended the long search for an amp when he returned from one of his Air Force trips to Japan. He returned with a Teisco amp and a Guya single pickup hollowbody guitar more suited for jazz than the rock and roll I wanted to play on it. The guitar was okay, reminding me of something that George Harrison would play. But the amp...
It sported a 5-inch speaker and probably as many watts, although I have researched it and found that it supposedly had 10 watts. Let’s call it 10 watts of Japanese power which is to say it sucked pretty bad. Most of the phonographs and tape recorders we used had the same power.
I worked like a dog to find a way to help it out. I built a very big speaker cabinet that I put every speaker that I could find into. I bet there were at least eight speakers in that cabinet which was totally open backed and anyone who understands amplifier power and speaker loads knows that with the increase in speaker mass came a reduction in power. In short, it still sucked. I took on the mission of earning enough money to buy myself a better amp. While I was earning, I looked at a number of models. I considered a Kalamazoo, a Yamaha that had the most interesting pyramidic design, a Gibson that was “stereo” and the top of my want list was a grey Silvertone twin 12 amp with reverb and tremolo. A friend of mine had one and he never seemed lacking for power. Who cared if the tone stunk?
One day, while checking out the pawn shop where I was interested in the Yamaha, I noticed a small Fender Princeton Reverb covered with dust on the floor. Of course, Fender was originally considered to be far out of my price reach. I asked the pawn shop owner how much for the Princeton Reverb and he told me $125. He pointed out the larger speaker and tried to convince me that it was much louder than the normal Princeton. I didn’t believe him.
I had saved $98. I played the Yamaha which was what I considered my most likely choice since it was in my price range and left me a couple of doallars to play with. Then I plugged into the Princeton. My mother was with me and I hadn’t played but two or three chords and I knew this was the amp for me. It seemed to have unlimited power and I was hooked on that Fender sound. I went to work on the owner of the pawn shop trying to get the price to $98. With a great deal of begging, whining and moments of quiet thought, I got the price down to $100 and mom popped for the balance. I was a Fender owner.
I took it home and cleaned it for hours. By the time I was done cleaning, it looked nearly new. I scrubbed the entire tolex with a toothbrush and pulled the grille off and did the same to it. It came sparkling clean. The same amp nowadays will fetch $600 easy.
I logged a lot of practice time on that amp. I used to set it up on a chair and sit right in front of the speaker and practice for hours. Where it fell short is when we played at the Youth Club at Charleston Air Foce Base. It didn't have enough power to fill the room, and at the time, we knew nothing about running the amps through a P.A. system. Even if we did, we never had a P.A. system powerful enough to handle the instruments also.
Now for one of my confessions. Although I hated that a former bass player I had worked with used a guitar amp for his bass, I had to do the same for one short-lived band I played in. We needed a bass player and had two other guitar players that were much better than I was, so I acquiesced to play the bass.
My Princeton was not up to the task of handling bass alone, although it was probably more so than Doug Smith's Guyatone amp. Enter my original Teisco amp.
I ran the output of my Teisco into the input of my Princeton. I fiddled witht he volume on both and discovered that if I ran the Teisco to high as the preamp, I got major distortion. So I ran the Princeton all the way up and adjusted the input with the Teisco and used it for bass for a couple of jobs. It was awesome!
One of the guys in the band told me during the first break that it sounded like Jack Bruce of Cream. He was not my favorite bass player, an honor that still goes to Jack Cassidy of Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna fame, but it was a compliment none the less.
I imagine that the overdrive of the Teisco dropped out just enough low frequencies that I didn't blow the Princeton apart.
But one thing became apparent. If I was going to play more regularly, I needed a biger amp.
It was 1968, and I went to a music store in Charleston looking for more power. I expected to play pretty regularly, so I set myself a limit on how much I could make as a payment every month. After playing though a healthy line of Fender Amps including the silver-faced Deluxe, Super Reverb and Pro Reverb, I settled on the Pro.
Bad Mistake.
I traded my Princeton for the Pro, paid some additional cash and agreed to pay $35 a month for a year.
The first time I used it in a practice on a friend's carport, I had to crank it almost all the way up to be heard, and then I had no overhead to be able to jump out and play leads. I was very unhappy!
I gave it a chance on a couple more non-paying jobs and became so dismayed, that I went back to the music store to return it and get my Princeton back. They refused. At the age of 16 and totally unaware of what my rights as a consumer were, and with no parental support, I told them to keep their stupid amp, left it there and left amp-less.
I could only work acoustically now and I didn't buy another amp for four years.
In 1972, I bought another black-faced Princeton Reverb and put a 12-inch speaker in it. I practiced as much as I could with it and kept it for a very long time.
After moving to Salt Lake City in 1978, I looked for a band and eventually would up in Midnight Special. I quickly discovered that my Princeton was not enough once again and went through a succession of amps trying to find enough power, not for the volume, but for the cleanliness of sound.
In 1979, I traded the Princeton up to a Super Reverb that had been modified with two 12-inch speakers. It was better, but still lacked the cajones for my newest instrument, the pedal steel. Band leader Bill Bailey recognized that and after a few jobs of me struggling to be heard, he offered to trade me straight across for a Peavey Mace combo amp with 240 watts. Now, that was power!
In 1981, I found an old Fender Twin in the back of Bank's Music Store in Murray Utah, serial number AA0551. It had no tubes and no speakers and the original tweed had been removed in place of black Tolex. I asked the store owner for over a year to sell it to me and he constantly told me he didn't want to let it go and that once he fixed it up, we could talk. In 1982, he needed someone to design and print a Christmas flyer for his store. I seized the opportunity to offer my services and the services of the print shop at which I was working to put it together for him and he said yes. So, for two hours of my time and $60 worth of printing (which I got for free), I owned the 55 twin.
I took it home and discovered that the tubes it called for were impossible to get, 5881 was the tube number. I found out very quickly that 6L6 tubes, common in tube amps still today, were direct replacements and that my Peavey was filled with them. I did have to buy a rectifier tube, one 12 AX7 and one 12 AU7. I hooked up a 12-inch speaker that I had laying around the house and turned it on. It sounded beautiful! I used it at the club that night for one set and knew that I was going to have to set it up for club use. I built a new baffle board and dropped in a 15-inch speaker that was given to me, cleaned it up, and used it for more than 10 years.
In 1992, it went up in smoke in the Ponderosa Dance Club in Polkville, North Carolina. The rectifier tube had been giving me trouble, cutting in and out during songs. I found that I could "thunk" it with my finger and get it to come back on.
During the last song of the first set, Steel Guitar Rag, it started dropping out. I reached back and "thunked" it. It seemed more obstinate than ususal and I should have taken more note of it. It came back on with just a few seconds of song left.
Before I got up from my pedal steel, I checked the tuning. Susie the drummer yelled out, "What's that cloud on the stage?"
I looked around and there was a black cloud over my amp and the acrid smell of burning varnish. I jerked the plug out of the wall and noticed that the amp was very hot. I had smoked the transformer!
At the recommendation of Doug Benson who owned Apple Tree Music and was an afficianado of old Fender Twin amps, he recommended a guy in Coconut Grove, North Carolina, to repair it. Doug told me Chip did work for the Doobie Brothers and lots of other big named groups.
I had Chip repair it, but it lost the clean sound that I adored in it and became the ultimate rocker’s amp.
I foolishly traded it for a Laney Pro Linebacker Twin. It was a feature laden, 100-watt, 2-12 amp that reminded me of the Peavey Mace I had once owned. It was nothing like the Mace, however. It had absolutely no bottom. Once, while practicing with John David Coe's band, a bass player friend of mine heard it and, as politely as was possible, he said, "Man, that amp's really got that mid-range thing going!" I took it as an insult, although not outwardly. I resolved to get rid of it when something suitable came along.
In 1998, I found a Roland Jazz Chorus 77 in the local music shop and it was the closest I had heard to the Princeton, but it had more features. The owner let me take it to the club and give ti a test drive. The first time I heard my pedal steel through it, I thought I was having one of those great nights when everything comes out right. It turned out that I was just hearing some of the tones that the Laney was incapable of reproducing. I bought it.
In 1999, I saw a Roland Jazz Chorus 60 on EBay and, sure that it would complement my 77, bought it for nearly the same price as the 77. It had the same sound as the 77, but the chorus was noisy and terrible. When it arrived, the reverb didn't work, but it only took about an hour to disassemble the amp and repair a broken lead to get it working. Sometimes I would run the two amps stereo at the club. I liked the sound and a stereo pedal I had made for some fantastic effects, but normally, I kept the amp in my music room for practice.
In 2005, I was visiting my local store and just noodling around as usual when I spotted a Marshall AS50R. I had for some time wanted an acoustic amp for my Gibson CL-40, so I decided to give it a try. I took it home with the intent to use it in church on Sunday. I plugged everything I owned into it at one time or another.
I liked the sound with my Gibson. I also liked it with my Magnatone lap steel. It was the most natural sound I had ever heard with that instrument. It sounded great with my Richenbacker lap steel also. I ran my autoharp through it and was very impressed at the natural sound that its magnetic pickup produced. The only instrument that I had reservations about was my electric guitar, but I assuaged those fears by running the guitar through a Morley JF 10 amp simulator which is an awesome pedal that never really got off the ground. It does wonders for guitar and baritone guitar and can really produce those overdriven tube sounds when needed.
In short, I sold my Rolands and now own one small, 50-watt Marshall. It's all I need today.
That’s the history of my amps. I still wish I had my original Princeton.