robert_nolan's Reviews

Worth the price on the used market

First things first, it nails the blackface Princeton tone very well for a late 90s solid-state amp from Fender. The clean channel is great for a sterile clean sound, but the second channel is where things get interesting.

While the distortion/overdrive of this amp can be almost unusable when dialed high, kept low gives it the classic compressed Princeton sound, which is exactly how I keep it. You also gain the control of your mids in this channel.

The reverb leaves you wanting something better, unfortunately, though I've upgraded I've with a MOD tank and it's still not fully there. I leave it off for a number of reasons but mostly because I like the sound of my pedal better.

It's a single 12" Fender branded eminence speaker, it's not bad but it's worth considering for an upgrade. I find that the 12" really does give a nice tone that the classic 10" speaker could never touch.

The bad, and minor at that, is that this entire line was plagued with soldering issues, and now people pretty commonly report having to reflow solder in certain areas to mitigate the noise issues. This mixed with the reverb on only increased said noise, thus I leave the internal reverb off to isolate the hum to the lowest it could be... Plus I like the pedal sound better anyway.

This amp is still so much a win, I own two of them because you can use input two to daisy chain them like an older tube amp. They're light weight, sound great, and when you get past the soldering issues they are a thing of reliability that I would never get rid of. Even as a backup amp, one is loud enough, but two is incredibly full sounding.

Best Klone on the market

From a clean boost all the way to mid gain godly tones, this is what you want to have if you're looking for a Klon styled circuit but don't want to spend the climbing prices of a real one. Sound the part, look the part, a fraction of the price.