[Music] This is the Fender Princeton Tone Master. It’s part of Fender’s digital series of amps that they call the Tone Master. It’s computers and it’s emulating tube amps and they’ve been around for a number of years. This is one of the newer ones. It’s been around a couple years now. Uh, I can’t remember which which model is the latest, but they seem to be going through all the tube amps and releasing them. Full disclosure before we get going. This was sent to me by Fender for a different project. So, they didn’t ask me to make a video dedicated to this amp, but I’m going to actually do a number of videos. Maybe they actually said, "Don’t ever make a video about it, please. We don’t want you to ruin this amp for people." It’ll be up to you if it if I’m ruining it. But anyways, let’s get going. This is a digital amp and we’re in the world of digital stuff, right? I’ve kind of put off doing digital stuff for a long time. I was like tube amp guy with microphone. Um I’ve recently got into modeling and so this is a model of a Fender Princeton. Uh does it say which one? I’m going to go with it’s the 65 reverb. And if you looked at it, the front panel, if you didn’t turn it around and you didn’t pick it up and it didn’t have that little tag on the front, you would not know the difference. You can’t tell. They’ve made it virtually identical, and they say they’ve made it sound virtually identical. This video, I’m not going to compare it to the tube amp version. I have a handwired Princeton that I assembled, and in the future, I will do a full sideby-side tone comparison to see how digital sounds compared to the tube. and uh I think it’s going to be pretty fun. So anyways, look forward to that. If you haven’t subscribed, please subscribe and then click the thing that lets you know uh when new videos come out so you don’t miss that one in the future. Yeah. So, the idea with this amp is it recreates the tube sound. It’s lighter. It doesn’t heat up. It’s a computer. And hopefully it doesn’t ever die. That’s the idea because computers can die. But um so can tube amps and I don’t know what the track record is on these amps. They’ve been out a number of years from my own looking at stuff on the internet. Re is that research? Is that what research is? I haven’t seen anybody complaining about them dying or failing. So I think so far so good. So let’s just talk specs. We’re going to hear it a bunch. And I I really want to show the the features on the back as well because that’s where this amp is more versatile than the standard tube amp because it can do power attenuation and I’ll explain that in a second. Okay, so the front panel left to right, it’s exactly like a Princeton. There’s no difference. Got the two inputs, a high and a low. You got your volume, treble, bass, reverb, which is a digital reverb. It’s not a spring reverb. Uh speed and intensity for the tremolo. comes with a twob button foot switch. So that enables the reverb and that enables the [Music] tremolo. Now flipping it around, this is where stuff changes. This is where things are different. You got your power on and off, which is where it is on the standard Princeton. Then next to that, there’s a standby mute switch. They just call it a mute switch. It’s not a standby, and it just silences the amp. Some amps have standby switches. It’s not that because this is a computer. How many times have I said it’s a computer? Hey kid, I’m a computer. Moving across to the next part is the output power. And this is where things get interesting because full power, it’s 12 watts. And then you can do six, three, 1.5, 75, and 3 watt. And the cool thing is generally you don’t crank your Princeton. Like usually people have Princetons for a nice clean sound and then they add dirt pedals. With this one, you could crank any of these settings. You can even crank the 12 if you want. But I found uh like the 1.5 and the three, if you crank that, you get some nice breakup, some dirt sounds. So it’s pretty cool. I definitely recommend this if you have an apartment. You could play it in there for sure. Don’t take my recommendations as a rule of thumb. Everybody’s different. Maybe you live in an apartment that’s made out of uh cardboard paper walls and people can hear through. Don’t know what I’m saying. Um, and the next cool feature which makes it also super versatile is the uh balanced line out. You can take an XLR connection, right? Plug it into an interface, plug it into a mixer. Say you’re playing live, plug it directly into the board, the PA system, and then you’ve got three options. You’ve got the uh cabin cabinet emulation, which is IR can be off, so you’re just getting a straight signal out, or you can have number one and number two. Number one is supposed to be like a Sure SM57 and number two is like a Royer R121 ribbon mic. [Music] [Music] And there’s a ground lift button in case you have some kind of hum going on. And you can control the volume. And then uh yeah, so it’s pretty cool. You can do a lot with that if you want to record the amp directly and you don’t want to mic it. In this video, I am micing it. We’ll compare both [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] So Being a huge Princeton fan, I just want to give you my thoughts on the whole uh experience so far. I think it sounds really good. I’ve had a 12-in alco blue Princeton, which was my favorite. I don’t have that anymore. Once I built this this handwired version, uh I sold the other one cuz I don’t need multiple Princons. It’s got the 10-in Jensen speaker. I really like the sound. Uh I like the options. I don’t find in uh the recordings, I didn’t find the uh the XLR out was better or worse than the uh microphone recordings. It’s just different. Um I don’t have an SM57 to compare directly. So, we’re doing an E906 right against that. So, it’s good. Uh I guess one complaint that I can think of is that it’s a computer. So, that’s always in my mind. What if a computer dies? Who’s going to fix it? Is it a throwaway landfill thing? I don’t know. I can’t answer that. And uh hopefully it lasts for years. And let me know in the comments if you’ve had any experience with the Tone Master stuff and what’s your experience been with um the longevity because there’s no tubes to replace, right? That’s not going to die. What would die in a computer with no moving parts? I don’t think there’s any fans. I want to look inside in the future for the next video and uh take a look at the parts. I’m I’m assuming it’s I’m assuming it’s a few motherboards, little daughter boards and sister boards and um computer stuff. And uh anyways, that’s for the future. Uh I think the sounds are good. My one complaint, and this is going to sound stupid, but if I have it on the shelf and uh I go to turn it on, it actually slides because it’s so light. So, I actually don’t like that it’s that light. I know that sounds dumb, but I’m not moving it around. If I was carrying it around, obviously, yes. Awesome for that. But I prefer when amps have a little bit of weight because they stay in place. And uh I know that sounds kind of stupid, but so do I. I’m an amp. No, so do I sound kind of stupid. Yes. Anyways, that’s my thoughts on the amp. Uh I like it. Um it’s made in China, designed in California. Last time I looked, they’re like 9, no 1,100 US. So, it’s probably about 14-500 Canadian. Is that expensive? Um, I can’t really answer that. I don’t know anymore. I find prices in the world of everything are expensive. So, is that expensive compared to a tube amp? I don’t know. I don’t know. Let me know your thoughts. I just I don’t really have an opinion on it. I don’t think it’s I don’t think it’s crazy overpriced. I think for what it can do, it’s a good value, but maybe it’s uh, you know, yeah, it’s a tough it’s a tough thing to talk about these days with uh, all the prices and inflation and all that crap. I don’t really want to get into that stuff in this video, but we can save that for another video. Okay, let me know. Princeton Tone Master, do you like it? Yes or no? Um, again, thanks to Fender for sending it. Uh, I have links to Fender. I have affiliate links if you want to get it from there. If you’re anywhere else in the world, you can order it from one of my links and that helps support the channel. And uh yeah, it’s a cool amp. That’s my thoughts. Let me know yours in the comments. So, as always, play guitar and have fun and I’ll see you in the next video. Take care. [Music]
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