65 Shootout! Fender Twin vs. Super vs. Princeton Reverb

hey folks i'm jack fawcett and today we are going to shoot out three classic fender reverb amps the 65 twin reissue 65 super reissue and the 65 princeton reissue now there's some dramatic differences between these but there's also some dramatic similarities and many of you may be in a situation where you can get one but not any of the others so we're going to put them back to back so that you can hear which one might suit you best totally which one might suit you best features and size wise let us know which of these amps is your favorite and stay tuned to the very end and i will tell you that if i could only keep one of these amps which one would it be please remember to like share and subscribe follow the link below where you can listen to some music including my brand new album that's just been released let's get started hope you enjoy [Music] please [Music] all right so this is a pretty substantial shootout between three different amplifiers covering a vast range of sizes now i will not in any way call this the ultimate fender reverb amp shootout the reason that i will not do that is because you'll probably notice there are some pretty big omissions from this the two most notable being the deluxe reverb and the vibrolux reverb among others also probably give a tip of the hat to the pro reverb and then there were many many others around there now these are some of the more primary of the reissue series some of the ones that you'll see most often so why aren't the deluxe and the vibrolux in here short answer is because i don't have them anymore the long answer is because i don't have them anymore because those two many of you may have seen my video where i make the case for the vibralux being the best fender amp ever and i stand by that in many ways all the arguments i made i i really think are very very good arguments what i will say is that when i did that video what i was talking about was the vibralux in general the specific one that i had many of you pointed out was the modern custom vibralux and that particular model wasn't the best one that fender ever put together the reverb was a little bit weak it was a little bit noisy and while i looked into maybe doing uh some of the mods like the frommel mod or you know various others to just kind of make up for those little things i also really wanted to get a twin back because i hadn't had a twin for years so i wound up trading that vibralux for the twin so i do still stand by what i said about the vibralux the reason that i swapped that out was because i really wanted the twin also wanted to you know really just cover the whole range of these amplifiers i've been working with a lot lately the deluxe reverb you can make the case for the deluxe reverb being one of the best amps of all time i still think the fender basement is the best amp of all time you can make the case for the deluxe being at least one of the best amps of all time deluxes don't suit me and that's all due respect to any of you who love them i could you could give list all your reasons as to why you love them and i would say yeah i totally get that for me they just don't work they're a little too brash and punchy with the single 12-inch speaker hitting you right in the face with the tone for some players that works for me i like something that's a little bit more s something you know what i'm talking about anyway we're going to dive right in with these amplifiers so there's obviously a pretty big difference in the size there's a big difference in the wattage we're going from 15 watts all the way up to 85 watts there's also a massive difference in the speaker configuration the princeton has one 10 inch the super has four 10 inch and the twin has two 12 inch so while tonally these are all kind of in the same series they deliver it in vastly vastly different ways and because of that not only are the tone but the responsiveness are quite a bit different and because of the vast difference in wattage and tube configuration there's going to be a major major difference in responsiveness based on how much the tubes are being pushed at similar volumes for instance when the princeton is already really warming up as far as the power tubes go the twin is barely even breaking a sweat right the the the princeton's kind of like nearly at full sprint and it's kind of a tortoise in the hair sort of thing if you're talking about the power tubes there the super core sitting there right in the middle one other notable difference that i will mention is also the princeton has six v6 power tubes whereas the super and the twin have six l6 power tubes so you have a difference in the breakup and the responsiveness there that also factors in now again the deluxe reverb will also have the six v6s before you get up to the six l sixes so there is it's not just a drastic jump when you're talking about models in the line i just the princeton happens to be the 6v6 amp that i have represented here now i'm not going to crank the amps in this video the reason being is because i want to focus on a more practical aspect on what are settings that you would actually use these for in everyday context in either gigs or recording in order to crank any of them including the princeton you'd have to be on a pretty big stage you could certainly crank the princeton possibly the super in the studio if you have a studio engineer who really really likes you or if you isolate it the twin i'll be honest you're just not going to crack it i don't know anybody who does if you do feel free to tell me that i'm wrong but i i do it's just just so so loud i'm not going to crank it i'm just not doing it so we're going to dive in with some tones that are more practical that are probably what most of you would use in an everyday kind of situation or a more common situation we'll say so we're going to go through a bunch here and we're going to do it with this guitar this is defender american original telecaster with andrew robertson super 60 pickups and we're going to use a gibson es335 with lust for tone 57 lust buckers we're going to go back and forth with these guitars here's some different tones and we're going to dive right back in right now we've just heard it clean with the telecaster now we're going to hear it clean with the es335 so you can get a good picture of what these amplifiers sound like clean with both single coils and humbuckers so let's hear some clean tones on each amp from the es335 [Music] uh [Music] food [Music] me [Music] do now i mentioned that i'm not going to crank them how do you get drive well most players are just going to use these as a pedal platform when it comes to as far as attenuators go it's certainly a possibility and everything but but the vast majority i think would i would guess would use these as a pedal platform that's how i use them they do take overdrive pedals well but they're slightly more finicky than you'd expect because they just have this sort of glassy top end so you do have to be careful about making sure that you find the right pedal and get one that kind of sinks into it as opposed to just sort of floats on top in this in this weird way so the two pedals that i like with these amplifiers are for single coils i love a tube screamer and for humbuckers i really like some sort of a clone clone with the ka type pedal i think those are the two that work really great with these amplifiers so for this guitar i'm going to use a classic ts-808 and ibanez ts808 and with the es 335 i'm going to use a wampler tumnus which is one of my favorite k style overdrives so let's dive in on each amp with this guitar using the tube screamer and then with the es 335 using the wanter tennis deluxe [Music] [Music] hmm [Music] so [Music] do so so [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] now we're going to switch over and test out the effects now one of the really interesting things for me is that i have found that on supers that i've played the reverb is quite a bit more lush and present and there's more of a swell to it you almost get more of that like 63 tank sound the the separate reverb unit it's just way thicker and more present in it and it fills up faster now the reverb on the princeton and the twin are also still great they just don't quite have that really filling up the sound presence now that can be good or bad depending on what you're going for if you really want that heavy lush reverb sound i found that the super is hard to beat if you want something that's a little bit more manageable you can get higher levels of reverb without your signal being washed up with either the princeton or the twin now this has been my experience with a number of different amps but it also has surprised me in an odd way i kind of thought that on these types of amplifiers you would have more of a standard reverb response particularly between the twin and the super i think you know with the princeton being smaller the difference didn't surprise me as much but i really expected the twin to have more of that heavy reverb saturation more like the super and i found that they don't however if you have a different experience please let us know in the comments i have played several of these amplifiers of each of these models of amplifiers but i certainly haven't played everyone out there so i don't know what the consistency level is when it comes to how these reverbs respond that has been my experience with these amps but again please feel free to let us know if you've had a different experience in the comments so what we're going to do now is we're going to change up the order slightly i'm going to go super princeton twin we're going to listen to the reverb with the reverb turned up at 7. i'm not going to completely wash it out but i'm going to get the reaver much more present so that you can really hear what the character of the reverb sounds like so let's check out some verb [Music] hmm [Music] mm-hmm [Music] so [Music] do [Music] um [Music] now lastly we're going to try out the tremolo now the tremolo also kind of have the it's it's pretty similar between each amp model but there are little differences in with the tremolo i found that the difference in speaker configuration seems more dramatic just because of the way the tremolo effect kind of interacts with the responsiveness and the circuit so we're going to close out here with the tremolo on each amplifier so that you can hear what that sounds like [Music] bye [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right folks we've gotten to the end here now these are some special amplifiers to me i i absolutely love this whole series of amps even the ones you know like i mentioned like the deluxe doesn't work for me if somebody said hey you can only play a deluxe reverb for the rest of your life i'd be like okay let's do this so don't get me wrong when i say that one just doesn't work for me as well if i could only keep one of these amplifiers it almost feels like a cop-out answer i think the one that i would keep is the princeton and i say that despite the fact that with both the super and the twin i have much more of a nostalgic connection and i talk about this in more detail in my videos on each of these amps individually this super that's sitting right next to me is a very very special amp to me i got it literally days after one of my daughters was born this is the first amp that i ever played a tv appearance with this amplifier has been on a lot of recordings including on that new album that i mentioned called jack faucet it's a self-titled album this is a special amp to me i've used it a ton in recording i've used it a ton in performing and again because of that connection with when my daughter was born the twin i talked about in my video i used to have a twin and foolishly got rid of it and now i've kind of had this whole like reuniting with an old friend here and i absolutely love the twin but when push comes to shove the practicality of the princeton i think just rules the roost because for most intents and purposes you can get a very very similar tone and particularly because it's so punchy that's one of the things that has really stood out to me about it versus the other amplifiers is it's very very punchy and you get essentially a similar tone but in a package that really helps you cut through the mix the princeton just works when it comes to eq and it is one that you can drive a lot harder and you can get a natural breakup sound in the studio without absolutely blowing the walls off even the super which is one that you could possibly push a little bit more again you know if you're in the studio you'd have to have an engineer who likes you and who really wants that sound and certainly on stages you'd have to be playing a really really big stage to get a super reverb to the point where it's breaking up and again the twin it's just not gonna do it so while i have more of a personal connection with the super and the twin i think for all practical reasons i would take the princeton if i could only keep one and oddly enough they're also all relatively similar in used value not in new value but in used value they all tend to be between seven hundred and thousand dollars seven hundred at the pretty low end probably more commonly about eight hundred two thousand dollars and i think part of the reason for that is because the princetons are much more sought after it's not abnormal to see a lot of twin reverbs in particular around on the used markets that just sit there because of their size as great and as wonderful and magical and amp as twin reverbs are they are big they're heavy they're cumbersome and nowadays in the age when things like line six helix and fractal and stuff like that are getting to sound really really good many players don't want these massive heavy guitar amps to bring to gigs so let us know which amp is your favorite tonally what do you like features wise if you could only have one which one would you have because those two may not line up i actually don't know that the princeton is my favorite tone of the three of them but it is the one that i would keep if i could only keep one because of the practicality of it because the tone is close enough so let us know which is your favorite tone which one would you keep do you have any of these amps please remember to follow the link below where you can listen to some music and hear especially the super reverb on my new album i'm jack fawcett please remember to like share and subscribe and we'll see you next time

Channel: Jack Fossett

Views: 7,822

Rating: 4.9266057 out of 5

Keywords: Jack Fossett, Guitar, Rock & Roll, Blues, Guitarist, Guitar Player, Fender Twin Reverb, Fender Super Reverb, Fender Princeton Reverb, 65 Reissue, TS808, Tube Screamer, Wampler Tumnus Deluxe, Fender American Original 60s Telecaster, Gibson es335

Id: Ny4MoMTL_o4

Length: 26min 17sec (1577 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/blalaber05]

The Winner is missing: Deluxe Reverb.

[u/ezw00]

gimme the flirt!!!