Overview and schematics

The Fender Princeton Reverb guitar amp was first sold in 1964. Prior to this, Fender produced and sold a Princeton amp without reverb. From 1964 to 1967 the Princeton Reverb had blackface cosmetics. In 1968 Fender changed the Princeton Reverb into a silverface amp.

Overview

Princeton Reverb amps have 7 tubes: a rectifier, two output tubes, and four preamp tubes. The Mojotone kit comes with a GZ34 rectifier and 2 6V6S output tubes. The reverb is driven by a 12AT7 preamp tube, while the rest of the preamp tubes are 12AX7s. The amp has a single volume control, a treble and base control for the tone stack, and then for on-board effects it has reverb-level and tremolo speed and intensity. The speaker is a 10" Jensen C10Q.

Schematics and wiring diagrams

Click the images for larger PDF versions of the diagrams. The Mojotone schematic shows the core of the amplifier circuit across the top of the page with the input and preamp on the left and the output and speaker on the right. The reverb section is on the bottom left side of the figure. The tremolo is on the bottom right side of the figure, and the power supply is above it. The Mojotone wiring diagram uses a light blue font that prints ok, but is hard to read on a computer screen (the blue is too light).

Notes

I found it useful to print these diagrams on larger sheets of paper (e.g. 11x17) to make it easier to read and make notes on.

The Mojotone circuit does not exactly match the 1964 Fender circuit. Some of the Mojotone components have been made more robust (e.g. the cap on the bias board is 100V instead of 50V), and the inverter triode's plate runs off node C of the power supply instead of node D (a common mod).

The Mojotone diagrams have the shortcoming of not including the expected voltage values at various points in the circuit like the Fender diagrams do. This is aggravating as the Mojotone circuit is not an exact match of the Fender circuit, so the voltages in the new design may differ.

The version of the Mojotone schematic on their web page has an error. The connection from the phase inverter cathode to the grid of the lower 6V6 power tube should attach above the 1K ohm resistor, not below it. The figure below shows the issue by comparing the Mojotone drawings (on the left) to the Fender versions (on the right). The error is in the drawing on the top left... this figure doesn't match the other 3. I've reported the error, so hopefully the version on the Mojotone web site will eventually get fixed.

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This page maintained by Chuck Cranor