Hot-Rodding The Brown Princeton - Ask Zac 101

well hello friends welcome to another
1:33
Ask Zac
1:35
today we are going to uh tweak the brown
1:38
Princeton
1:39
or i guess i should correct myself and
1:41
say I'm going to tell you how
1:43
i had fun tweaking the brown
1:46
Chris Stapleton 62 edition
1:49
fender Princeton amp these are really
1:52
fun amps and i i couldn't leave it alone
1:54
because yeah it's a sickness
1:57
and uh so i had to mess around with amp
1:59
some and so I'm just going to tell you
2:00
what i did and uh
2:03
yeah and tell you what my thoughts were
2:05
with uh changing out some tubes and
2:06
speakers and stuff like that so
2:09
yeah so while you're thinking about it
2:11
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2:12
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2:14
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2:16
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2:17
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2:20
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2:26
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all right
2:39
so let's dive in so of course last
2:41
week's episode
2:43
was on the uh the mighty Chris Stapleton
2:47
edition 62 Princeton amp from fender
2:51
now of course i couldn't leave well
2:53
enough alone
2:54
because it's just it's a simple amp you
2:57
know because it only has you know five
2:59
tubes in it and a single you know 12
3:01
inch speaker
3:03
and immediately you know i started
3:05
tweaking on it and yes
3:08
I'll admit it right here
3:10
that i should have like documented every
3:13
step of the way but i didn't i didn't i
3:16
just you know i was just kind of
3:17
experimenting with it and then kind of
3:19
after the fact i thought oh it would
3:20
have been really cool if i would have
3:21
done all these before and after videos
3:24
but
3:24
sorry i wasn't up for all that
3:26
uh I'm just gonna I'm gonna tell you
3:28
what i did and what what i found and
3:30
what i think's the most helpful if
3:33
you're wanting to change the amp at all
3:35
so i think the amp is great as is
3:38
i think the amp
3:39
as it comes from the factory
3:41
is very
3:42
stout and big shouldered and and loud it
3:47
just depends on if you want to soften it
3:49
and kind of take it
3:50
a little bit more toward uh
3:55
i don't you know the thing is it still
3:56
sounds like a brown Princeton it's just
3:58
that it's a more stout robust version of
4:00
a brown Princeton if i guess if you want
4:02
to
4:03
degrade it down to a less stout version
4:06
which is kind of you know what i did in
4:08
a way so
4:10
let's let's just walk through that so
4:11
first I'm going to talk about tubes so
4:14
i looked at the tubes in it
4:17
and and was kind of surprised because it
4:19
had a
4:21
instead of a 5y3 rectifier it had a 5ar4
4:26
now what that does when you put a 5ar4
4:30
into an amp that normally takes a 5y3
4:33
what you're doing is you're hitting all
4:35
of the tubes with more voltage than they
4:37
would normally get
4:39
so
4:40
i saw also that when i looked at the
4:42
power tubes it was not your normal 6v6
4:46
it was the groov tube 6v6s
4:51
and you might be saying what
4:53
what does that mean well
4:55
s stands for slovakia which means that
4:57
basically this is a jj 6v6 which the
5:00
jj6v6
5:02
is more robust and capable of taking
5:04
higher voltages than a regular 6v6
5:07
so i think they did that on purpose they
5:09
put in a 5ar4
5:11
and then they put in these jj
5:14
uh
5:15
you know rebranded by groov tubes as uh
5:17
6v6s tubes in there and what that does
5:21
makes amp louder makes it makes a little
5:23
bigger sounding and
5:25
yeah and just a brief aside on groove
5:28
tubes um
5:29
groov tubes was never a factory as far
5:32
as tubes
5:35
tube manufacturing left the u.s probably
5:37
in the 70s or maybe early 80s
5:41
groov tubes never had a factory as far
5:43
as tubes were concerned they were always
5:45
a rebrander of tubes so they would get
5:48
new old stock us tubes and they'd get
5:50
tubes from
5:51
other countries and then they would reba
5:53
rebrand them as groove tubes
5:56
and then always the last
5:58
letter on the tube would tell you the
6:00
country of origin
6:02
so if the last letter is at s it's
6:04
Slovakia which means it's from the jj
6:07
factory
6:08
if it's r it's Russian and if it's c
6:11
it's Chinese and then
6:14
the other one that you're going to see
6:16
is
6:17
if you have some really old groove tubes
6:19
you'll see stuff with an a on it which
6:21
meant it was made in America so
6:23
and that would have to be pretty pretty
6:25
old so i have some old
6:27
groove tube labeled 5751s that say
6:31
5751-a on them
6:34
all right
6:35
so
6:36
looking at that i decided well
6:38
let's put a real 5y3 now that's another
6:41
problem is there aren't many
6:42
manufacturers that make a 5y3 that's
6:44
actually low voltage like it's supposed
6:46
to be
6:46
the only one that does that is um
6:49
is jj or you can get an old 5y3 and so i
6:52
had an old 5y3 line around so i put that
6:54
in there
6:55
and it changed the sound it kind of
6:57
softened things up a little bit but then
6:59
i decided well let's go ahead and change
7:00
the output tube so i got some
7:03
you know just brand new tongue saw
7:06
six v6s and that you know brought the
7:09
the base level down a little bit
7:11
brought the you know the loudness down a
7:14
little bit uh i messed around with
7:17
putting a 5751 in it and that kind of
7:19
pulled the mid-range back some and it
7:21
made it a little sweeter but i didn't
7:23
like that so i put a regular 12x7 back
7:26
in
7:27
okay
7:28
so that was kind of the the the tube
7:30
thing i did um which again was just an
7:34
experiment it was just kind of having
7:36
fun
7:36
so which the way you're hearing the amp
7:38
right now it has an old um rca 5y3 in
7:43
there which rectifiers don't change the
7:46
tone of anything per se
7:48
they just either work or they don't work
7:51
um yeah of course you do have different
7:52
specs that will put out different
7:54
voltages and that can
7:56
affect tone so but i think it'd be fine
7:59
with a jj 5y3 in there and then i've got
8:01
the tongue sol
8:03
6v6 is in there
8:05
and i i like it
8:07
is it an improvement i don't know i mean
8:10
it just kind of just kind of brings it
8:12
down a little bit it kind of tames it a
8:13
little bit it just depends on where you
8:16
want to take the amp
8:18
so here's where you start getting
8:20
where
8:22
yeah you you start
8:25
really changing the sound of the amp
8:27
more so than changing tubes is changing
8:30
speakers okay
8:32
now the speaker the stock speaker in it
8:34
was an 11 pound eminence
8:37
and
8:38
very efficient you know rating of spl
8:41
over a hundred it goes 101.
8:45
so as soon as i started experimenting
8:47
with speakers of course most of them
8:49
made the amp
8:51
not as loud
8:53
also that speaker the stock speaker is
8:55
very robust very uh mid and base forward
9:00
so uh
9:02
yeah so here are some some of the
9:04
speakers that that i tried was i put an
9:07
alnico blue celestion speaker in it
9:09
and i thought that speaker in it sounded
9:11
fantastic except
9:14
it kind of took away some of the charm
9:16
of the amp to begin with and
9:20
yeah it just it just felt like it
9:22
started becoming a different amp
9:24
altogether
9:25
and so as much as i liked the speaker
9:28
pulled that out
9:30
next one i tried was the wgs 12 cs and i
9:35
have it here
9:38
oh
9:40
so this is part of their uh
9:43
their American lineup but it has kind of
9:45
some well i guess some older features on
9:47
it so here you can see it's a smooth
9:49
cone
9:50
it doesn't have the
9:52
ridges in it and the ridges uh
9:54
help the speaker kind of hold together
9:56
longer help it you know stay cleaner
9:58
longer as far as the speaker itself I'm
10:00
not talking about the the tubes
10:03
and then it has kind of a felt looking
10:05
dome on it which that kind of smooths
10:07
out the highs you can see it's got a big
10:09
magnet it's uh
10:13
75 watts
10:16
yeah this speaker sounded really good
10:19
except
10:20
it just didn't have
10:21
a whole lot of life to it in in this amp
10:25
and so
10:26
it didn't really feel like an
10:27
improvement to me or even something
10:29
really different over the stock speaker
10:32
so then
10:33
i started
10:35
so then i stuck a uh
10:37
another warehouse speaker and this was
10:40
at the recommendation of a friend of
10:42
mine
10:43
and this is a very different speaker
10:45
it's called the g12q
10:48
and you can see this has a tiny little
10:49
baby magnet on here
10:51
and it's a tiny little dust cover and
10:53
voice coil
10:55
and it has the the ridges on here and so
10:58
this is a 20 watt speaker
11:02
and when i put this in the amp
11:04
all of a sudden it really sounded like
11:07
an old amp kind of warts and all
11:10
so now of course it didn't sound exactly
11:12
like an old one because an old one would
11:13
have a 10. so it still sounded bigger
11:16
but it sounded very fendery very papery
11:19
it had that kind of high end thing
11:22
going on that was missing in the other
11:24
speakers
11:25
however
11:27
unless you crank the amp up
11:29
the high strings on the telecaster
11:31
especially on the bridge pickup sounded
11:32
kind of banjo-y
11:34
and some people would say
11:36
it does that anyway but uh it was a
11:38
little too banjoy but when you turn this
11:40
thing up it sounded really really nice
11:42
because again you know you've got like a
11:45
12 watt
11:46
amp with a 20 watt speaker with a little
11:49
magnet
11:50
little voice coil little dust cover and
11:52
everything so this is a cool speaker but
11:55
i just didn't end up loving it so then
11:58
i uh
12:00
thought well let's find something a
12:02
little a little bigger than that a
12:03
little more than 20 watt so this
12:06
is the original speaker that was in my
12:08
deluxe reverb so this is a 1965 fender
12:12
labeled Utah speaker so fender used
12:16
oxford Utah and jensen speakers in the
12:19
mid 60s
12:20
and they were all supposed to be the
12:22
same speaker but it was just three
12:23
different manufacturers so they were
12:25
supposed to be interchangeable but of
12:27
course they sounded different and this
12:28
one was originally blown so vin
12:31
vintone
12:33
reconed it
12:34
and
12:35
it's it's really nice and it was kind of
12:38
an improvement in some ways over the
12:41
g12q
12:43
but it it still kind of lacked some some
12:46
beef so again this is a good speaker and
12:48
good in its own application but it
12:50
wasn't really right
12:53
okay
12:55
so then i put in a
12:57
uh
12:58
you know one of those 90 watt cream
13:00
alnico
13:01
celestions that i have
13:03
that was one that i experimented with
13:05
years ago
13:06
and i put it in there
13:08
and again it it kind of hid
13:11
the amp all of a sudden it started to
13:12
sound like some kind of
13:14
odd boutique amp
13:16
and so
13:18
i was kind of i know there's so many
13:20
speakers out there but i was kind of
13:22
done experimenting with speakers i was
13:23
just kind of worn out with it
13:26
and one of the guys at true tone bill
13:28
keck who's uh who helped me in doing
13:31
some of this stuff because he's a he's
13:33
an amp guy he's built amps and and such
13:36
and so he's a really good guy and a
13:38
friend
13:40
he said you know what i have this old
13:42
eminence uh gb 128 which is kind of like
13:46
their version of a it's kind of like
13:48
their take on a greenback speaker he
13:49
said
13:50
you got to try that
13:52
so
13:53
i got the speaker out and the first
13:54
thing i noticed was how huge the dust
13:57
cover and the voice coil was had this
13:59
huge you know much bigger than the ones
14:01
on the other ones
14:02
and uh and i just thought you know i
14:05
don't like greenback speakers in general
14:08
but i stuck that thing in the amp that's
14:11
what's in it today and i just really
14:13
liked it so is it
14:15
you know an improvement you know over
14:17
anything
14:19
i don't know but it was just it was fun
14:21
to put in there
14:23
and uh and and hear kind of what what it
14:26
does i think it's a good
14:27
compliment to the amp so at the end of
14:30
the day
14:31
you know i have the original preamp
14:33
tubes still in the amp there's just two
14:36
12x7s
14:37
then i have two tongue saw you know
14:40
brand new tongue saw six v6s in there
14:42
and then i have an old 5y3 an old rca in
14:46
there which again
14:47
a jj would be fine but other
14:49
manufacturers the 5y3 will be higher
14:51
voltage
14:52
and then i put in the eminence gb 128 in
14:56
there which is like a
14:58
you know 80 to 100
15:00
you know speaker
15:01
so
15:02
yeah i thought you know it was really
15:05
really fun
15:07
and uh
15:09
let's find
15:10
we have to find a pick uh
15:13
here's here's kind of the neck pickup
15:16
[Music]
15:22
[Music]
15:24
[Laughter]
15:35
[Music]
15:37
of course both
15:51
[Music]
16:00
[Music]
16:02
and of course you heard the uh you know
16:04
the back pickup on the
16:06
on the intro where i was doing that
16:08
[Music]
16:17
and if you turn it up
16:18
you know
16:26
[Laughter]
16:35
doesn't sound too bad
16:37
sounds pretty good
16:40
so
16:41
yeah so that was kind of my experiment
16:44
with the amp and in tweaking it just to
16:46
kind of see what what you know what
16:49
different sounds you could get out of
16:50
the amp
16:51
at the end of the day i think the amp
16:54
sounds great with the stock tubes and
16:56
speakers it's just these are some
16:57
possible mods that you could do to the
17:00
amp if you want to take it maybe in a
17:02
little less
17:04
robust sound direction if you want to
17:06
make it a little less loud
17:10
otherwise leave the amp as is i think
17:13
it's great as is in fact i would love to
17:16
you know play through it uh you know
17:19
live as is that again this was just
17:22
part of the sickness of it all of of uh
17:24
you know hearing everything that a you
17:26
know something can do especially a
17:28
simple amp like this where you know tube
17:30
and speaker changes make such a huge
17:33
difference so
17:35
all right guys well i hope you've
17:36
enjoyed today's episode and a little
17:39
look at tweaking the brown Princeton and
17:41
uh yeah and we'll see you next time
17:44
bye-bye