Ty Sharron

In some ways, this amp is very much like what you'd expect from a Princeton, but in many ways it's not. The preamp section is slightly different from the 60s Princeton it claims to be modelled after: this was an intentional decision to make it a slightly friendlier pedal-platform. I find the amp, when mic'd up in studio, sounds amazing. I find the amp, when mic'd up in live applications, to be a bit dark. I generally have to have the mic more centre-cone than I usually would, and I roll the bass back quite a bit (sometimes off). Curious, but seems to be the trend. My favourite way to use this amp is cranked up to almost full and play the volume knob. If I'm doing less bluesy, more indie-pop-rock-country stuff, I generally need it to be around 1-2 o'clock. It's a good sweet spot. That said, I see a lot of guys liking to run it around 10 o'clock, but to me, the amp doesn't feel like it's giving you anything at that volume. That's just me. Nice long Reverb. Good sounding tube tremolo (even the knobs react like an old Princeton). Took me a long time to figure out the uses of this amp, but now that I have a handle on it, I've come to appreciate it. Most of my problems arise when I'm trying to get it to act like something besides a Princeton...DUH. But they advertise it as a super-versatile, pedal-platform amp. And ya, it's versatile, but after hundreds of gigs and 2+ years of ownership, I'm only now settling in on it's best use: being a Princeton.

It's a great concept that luckily sounds great, too. Don't let the meager price tag scare you. This is not a chinsy, junky sounding pedal. The ability to either stack or run the two overdrive circuits in parallel is super amazing with this thing. I run side A brighter with lower gain, and side two darker with higher gain in parallel, and blend it a bit more towards side A. The result is a well-saturated distortion that does not sound too gained out, still has clarity, and a full, strong voice. The light up knobs are a super sleek looking feature, too!

The title is self-explanatory, but I basically had to drop $500 into this thing to get it to sound half-decent. I like it now, but before the work, the pickups were so dark and over-wound, they were unusable. My tech literally completely re-wired the pickups. We also re-wired the controls to make it have an LP/SG/Gibson knob setup, rather than a more Gretsch-like one (Master volume, two volumes, and one tone). Bigsby was given a new spring and re-set to be more stable. Couldn't put a new nut in, unfortunately because of the way this one is set in with the neck. After all that and a setup, I like this guitar. Neck feels really good, it looks good, and sounds good (now).