1965 Princeton with Prune Music sticker

[scelerat]

[This is a repost from the Gear Page, but it was recommended I share it here]

Craigslist find, seller turned out to be a friend of a friend.

This is a 1965 Fender Princeton modified with a Vibrolux output transformer, and a push/pull volume knob which shifts the bass response. Pushed in, it's a very black faced-sounding guitar amp with a lot of headroom; pulled out it's a thumpy throaty bass amp.

I took some pictures of the insides. Couple of interesting mysteries:

1. there are three speaker jacks, one labeled 'spkr,' another labeled "extrnl spkr," and another labeled "head." I don't know what head does, cause I haven't tried it yet.

2. There's an internal pot (visible in pictures 5 & 6), only accessible if you pull the amp out of the enclosure. I don't know what this does either. Didn't have time to mess with it.

The seller told me he found it at a garage sale many years ago, non-functional. He saw the Prune sticker and figured it must have been a Randall Smith project from his Prune days. He took it to Mesa in Petaluma, and they replaced the OT with one from a Vibrolux. He said that RS was there at the time, flashed a grin and said something to the effect of "I think I remember that one."

UPDATE: RS disavows (see comments below)

Anyway, here are the pics. If I get around to it, I'll post a sound clip.

Imgr Album

1. 
2. 
3. 
4. 
5. 
6. 
7. 
8. 
9. 
10. 
11. 
12. 
13. 

 

[Authorized Boogie]

I just ran the info and photos by Randy. Sorry, but he replied:

"That is definitely NOT a mod by me. No question: it's far too rough and funky; the power transformer alone is not how I ever did it and the rest of it looks like a mess to me...Could have been the amp was merely sold by Prune and someone else did the mods, but guarantee it wasn't me!"

 

[scelerat]

Thanks for running that by him.

Seller told me that the current Vibrolux OT was a repair performed at Mesa at some point (recently, within a decade or so)*.

Anyway I guess it remains a mystery.

* EDIT: I was wrong about this. seller said Mesa performed repair in the mid- or late- '90s. See Authorized Boogie's comment below about Mesa not performing work on non-Mesa amps, and my clarification below

 

[Authorized Boogie]

Thanks for running that by him.

Seller told me that the current Vibrolux OT was a repair performed at Mesa at some point (recently, within a decade or so).

Anyway I guess it remains a mystery.

We do not repair non-Mesa amps, or use other brand parts...thanks!

 

[scelerat]

So I was wrong about the timing of the Mesa repair, just confirmed with the seller.

He said he bought the amp as a non-functional chassis (i.e. no head cab) at a garage sale in Petaluma in the mid- to late '90s. He said he took it to Mesa very soon after he bought it, and that he just walked right in and Mesa agreed to service it. I asked if this was a normal thing, or if he knew someone at Mesa specifically. He said, no, it was a regular thing and he had at least one other non-Mesa amp repaired there around that time. He reaffirmed that Mesa replaced a faulty OT with one from a vibrolux. He said he didn't keep any receipts from this work.

He had the amp further modified to add the push-pull shift, some years later by the owner of a local guitar shop who was a tech for a famous local band, and that may account for the "mess" that RS is noticing.

Obviously, I'm talking about someone's recollections about the past. I'm not making any claims about what Mesa's policies are presently, and not trying to represent this amp as anything but a curiosity.

 

[woodbutcher65]

I realize this thread has been inactive since 2017 but I'd rather reactivate it than start up a new thread.
I'd just like to see if someone has a real Randall Smith modified Princeton that they could post a demo of. With Mesa having just released the Mark VII, it'd be fun to compare the amp that started Mesa with all of its successors over the last 53 years.

And, I've never heard a Smith modified Princeton, or at least, not known what I was hearing if I did.

I would like to build a replica of a Smith modded Princeton as well. I'd like to see some good clear photos of one to use as workmanship standards. I've located a Princeton chassis, now I just need to decide to buy it.