FENDER TONE MASTER PRINCETON REVERB
Fender’s iconic small combo is replicated in the digital domain
The Princeton is one of the original Fender amplifiers with its origins way back in 1946, when it debuted alongside Leo Fender’s original Deluxe and Professional ‘Woody’ amplifiers; the very first Fenderbadged products. The Princeton evolved through the 1950’s ‘tweed’ era before a fundamental design change resulting in the short-lived but highly coveted 1961 brownpanel combo, which evolved into the later black panel amplifier, with the legendary reverbequipped version arriving in 1964. Now Fender have resurrected the classic black panel Princeton Reverb as the latest addition to their Tone Master range, which uses digital technology to recreate classic valve designs.
Viewed from the front, the Tone Master Princeton Reverb looks practically identical to its 1960s ancestor. The lightweight pine cabinet is covered in thick black Tolex, with a chrome Fender badge, traditional silver sparkle grille and a small ‘Tone Master’ plate in the bottom right corner. A pair of high- and low-gain input jacks feed skirted mirror top controls for volume, treble and bass, with a level control for the reverb effect and speed and intensity knobs for the Princeton Reverb’s built-in tremolo. Look around the back, though, and you can see the digital difference, as there are no transformers or valves. A six-position rotary switch varies the class D output from a digitally-simulated 12 watts of valve power down to just 0.3 watts. Other features include a cabinet-simulated balanced XLR, together with a level control and a jack socket for the supplied two-button footswitch.
Unlike conventional modelling amplifiers, there are no presets or menus to navigate, with all of the Tone Master’s processing power focused on authentically recreating the original Princeton valve circuit. The classic blackpanel sound is spot on, staying clean up until roughly halfway, after which the amp progressively adds overdrive. On a valve
Princeton, full power would be unsociably loud, however the Tone Master lets you tame the maxed out sounds right down to whisper levels or even switch them off for silent recording. The cabinet emulations are very impressive and work well for studio or live use, while the effects are on a par with the very best studio hardware, especially the convolution reverb, which uses an entire core of the Princeton Reverb’s quad-core DSP.
Fender’s Tone Master Princeton Reverb is an almost-perfect recreation of its legendary 60s ancestor; for us the reverb is perhaps a little too bright, while the tremolo could have slightly more speed and intensity range. That’s the only downside of the Tone Master’s non-programmable concept: the amp is what it is. It’s also quite expensive for a digital product, unless you compare it with the all-valve version. Nevertheless, it’s a brilliant leap into the future.
THIS PRINCETON IS AN ALMOST-PERFECT RECREATION