The Steel Guitar Forum

You also need to check to see if your amp's cabinet has a removable baffle. Sometime after the transition to silver face Fender changed from a removable baffle screwed to cleats in the cabinet to a non-removable baffle board set into a dado groove in the sides and bottom, and a removable grille. I know the earliest SF amps starting in '68 had the old style construction and I don't know when they switched.

John, it looks like his has the removable baffle board. Mine didn't. But it was still easy to cut out for the Celestion 12" I put in it.

Be careful if you put a 12" speaker in a Princeton. The cutout has to be off-center for the speaker to clear the transformers.

That amp looks great - exactly the model I'm looking for.

I think a high-headroom speaker is a great idea, but as everyone says, make sure you measure carefully so you don't run into the transformer(s). You obviously know to remove the stock baffle and put in a repro. I can't tell you how many I've seen those beautiful stock baffles cut into, and there's no need with the early silverfaces with removable baffle.

I think the glued-in baffles started around 72 or 73. I've definitely had 71 and 72 silverface amps with removable ones. There may be some variation in when they started by amp model.

i bought a new brown princeton in about '64. my friend has owned it for many years now and would never part with it. perfect plug in and play guitar sound! i wish i had it now for lap steel.

Dave Mudgett wrote:I think a high-headroom speaker is a great idea...

I respectfully disagree, Dave. The weight would be excessive, and high wattage speakers don't really find their best tone in small amps. If I were to change the speaker in a Princeton, I'd go for a Tone Tubby. They are light weight and sound just gorgeous in low wattage amps.

http://www.tonetubby.com/od.html - Ask for the dimensions first, though. The alnico hempcone model is the sweetest sounding, but it might be too deep for the Princeton cab.

To me, high-headroom is a relative phrase. High-headroom for a 12-watt Princeton no-reverb is much different from high-headroom for a 100-watt Twin Reverb. So I guess it depends on what one is going for, but I agree that a Tone Tubby is a reasonable "higher-headroom" option. The ones I've tried were quite a bit higher-headroom than the lightweight (and sometimes a bit shrill when pushed) original 10" speakers typical for SF Princetons.

I have a small Thiele-Small cab with an EVM-12L speaker, and it sounds great with any good-sounding amp I plug into it. It has a clear sound and a naturally good-sounding frequency response to me. I put a "relatively" high-headroom 8-Ohm, 8" speaker into my 68 Vibro Champ so I can run it in parallel with that cab - it sounds great to me. I think a Princeton has enough juice to move that EVM - it's pretty efficient. But fitting it in that small Princeton cab is another story. I ultimately decided just to leave my EVM in the Thiele cab and use it as a secondary cab for a variety of amps to help fill in the sound when needed. It works great for that.

I never know firmly in advance what kind of speaker is going to sound good in a particular amp. So I keep a bunch around, and just experiment to see what I like in a particular application.

My PR is at Zaza's studio, but if I recall correctly, the speaker is a Celestion G12-80. It sounds terrific. I don't like speaker distortion. There are about a dozen of these little 20 watt PRs on stages here in the Northern Ohio area.

FWIW I think the brown Princeton is probably the single-best clean-tone amp Fender ever made. Turned up to about 5 or 6 with the right tubes it's crystal clear, articulate, warm, and sounds about 5 times as big as it is.

I traded my 62 a while back to Ed Bierly - he had it dialed-in for his sound and I think it's his primary amp.

I've had BF and SF non-reverb models as well. No comparison. The brownie is just otherworldly, and in the past few years the prices have caught up to "you get what you pay for".

I do still have my '58 Princeton - basically a big-box Champ with a tone control. Fabulous-sounding for low-volume practice.

I had investigated getting a new baffle w/offset for the Princeton to accomodate an EVM12L speaker (which I currently use in a separate cabinet), but found the EVM was too deep for the Princeton. Plan B is to try the Vintage Weber 10F150T, which is recommended as a replacement speaker for the Princeton. I'll also take a look at the Tone Tubby Bob suggests.

I tried a Weber in my PR. Did not like it at all. Try a Celestion or the Tone Tubby. I just heard from the tech who built my amp. He has the Tubby in his own PR.

Thanks, John. The Tone Tubby San Rafael 10" looks like a good alternative, and the price ($99) won't put too much of a strain on spousal relations!

As I recall, he said it was one with a hemp cone. I don't know it's model name. Maybe the one b0b mentioned? My PR has a 12" speaker now, not a ten. I think they discontinued the G12H-80 that I use. I did try the rather expensive Celestion Blue in the PR, but didn't like it as well. Note that I play very clean, sometimes with a bit of "grit," so if that isn't what you're looking for, you might want to try a Weber.

Man, if you can find a JBL D-110F, they are incredible in these amps.

Mike, I'll bet! Not too easy to find though, I'd wager!

D110f in a princeton sounds awesome. heavy....

+1 on the JBL D110F, good luck finding one.

But a JBL K110 also sounds great. OK, none of these are light, but the whole package ain't heavy at all either way.

Michael Pierce wrote:Thanks, John. The Tone Tubby San Rafael 10" looks like a good alternative, and the price ($99) won't put too much of a strain on spousal relations!

I haven't heard the "San Rafael" Tone Tubby model yet, so I can't comment on it. The ceramic hempcone sounds very good for steel, though, and the alnico hempcone is excellent. These speakers really smooth out the high end nicely. They never sound harsh.

Jonathan Lam wrote:D110f in a princeton sounds awesome. heavy....

No, it's not heavy at all. The speaker is surprisingly lighter than you think it is, adding only about 4-5 lbs. more than the original speaker

I use a BF/PR for guitar pit work, shows and low-key gigs. It has a D-120F in it. It sounds nice.

WEll, walking that one block to the subway is significantly more challenging with the JBL...than with the original...I guess if you are going to the car its not a big deal... But it made me have to use a dolly...

Princeton owners should check out the Weber Neo 10" and 12" speakers (https://taweber.powweb.com/weber/). They are very close copies of the JBL D series, but with lightweight neo magnets that shave substantial weight off the original JBL weights. And, they come with different edge treatments, and with aluminum or paper dust caps. Judging from the 12" Weber Neo I just got, these really nail the JBL sound, without the weight. I don't know what Weber was thinking when he came up with the California series, but let's just chalk it up to a learning period. With the Neos, he got it right. The voice coils are the same diameter, and the magnets are the same flux density as the old JBLs. But since they are neos, they weigh less.

Read what Ted has to say about neo speaker magnets. He has it all figured out, and explains why some other neo speaker manufacturers products don't deliver the tone one wants from guitar speakers.

Further Weber info: There are over 100 models of speaker variations available, so trying one Weber is nothing close to trying them all!

Jonathan Lam wrote:WEll, walking that one block to the subway is significantly more challenging with the JBL...than with the original...I guess if you are going to the car its not a big deal... But it made me have to use a dolly...

You're probably right about that. Maybe it's a little heavier than I thought, or maybe those workouts are really working out for me after all.

Still, for the difference in sound, I could never go back to the original speaker. I would consider the Weber Neo, though. Rick Aiello sold me on the neodymium magnet's effectiveness and efficiency long before anyone else.