(guitar playing)
- Well here it is the,
62 Princeton Chris Stapleton Edition.
This is something I never ever in my entire lifetime
thought I would see,
is me getting my very own
Fender Amp.
It's a reissue of a 1962 Princeton.
Which they have never reissued.
They hadn't been made since 1962.
And this is an amp that
it's taken me a long time to get to this amp.
I've gone through several, several incarnations of
using amplifiers.
My first amp was an Vibro Champ.
An old 64 Vibro Champ.
And I like the sound of it.
I liked the vibrato it had on it.
They didn't have tremelo,
they had vibrato on those amps.
But it just wasn't loud enough.
I couldn't get loud enough with that amp.
So then I got a 4 10 Bassman, another Fender amp.
And I played with that amp for quite a while.
But it was a heavy amp when I was younger.
And I used to be running clubs.
Then I went to Cincinnati, Ohio
and I was writing with a friend of mine in Cincinnati
and I went in a music shop
and they had an old
62 Princeton amp.
And I really, really liked the amp.
And the store, it was just kind of
sitting in the corner gathering dust.
And I walked out of there with that amp.
I think I gave $900 for it.
And it kind of became an amp
that I would be using in the studio quite a bit.
The original one that I had, had the 10 inch speaker in it.
That was the original 10 inch speaker.
I got to where I really liked to use that amp,
pretty much exclusively.
But I never could really use it live
so I was still using these really big Fender amps.
Bassmans and I had another head.
It was like a 100 watt head.
But I found my self using these heads
and these high wattage Fender amps
at really low volume, so I'm not killing everybody.
And eventually I got tired of carrying those things
and I said, you know,
I'm going to hunt for something else.
And another, one of these old Princetons
came up on Craigslist
but somebody had modified it
and put a 12 inch speaker in it.
And I got that amp
and that's been the amp that I played on stage
since the day I got it.
You know you can turn it up
and be really rock and roll about it.
Or you can turn it down
and be really tender and sweet about it.
It hangs in there with any drummer
and it doesn't make anybody in your band
wanna kick you out of the band.
So fast forward, I've played these old amps
and as I've been on the road
I've collected several of them
but you know, they're old amps
so they're trying to keep these old amps in working order
and have them run in trucks
and getting handled in different weather
and things outside.
So I came to Fender and I asked them,
I said, hey can you build me one of these amps.
And they said well,
we can build one, can we sell it?
And I thought well that'd be great,
I just really need one for myself.
So we took a good amount of time,
probably a year and a half,
really digging in with some prototypes back and forth
and trying to get all the nuances
of what the magic of what
makes those old amps really sing.
They have done a phenomenal job
in every possible respect of replicating
what the magic of the 1962 Princeton is.
And it's, you know,
it's all specked out just like the old ones.
It's not just cosmetic,
it doesn't just look like it's an old amp.
It's internally and sonically
and construction wise.
They really dug in
and made this amp what it's supposed to be.
It's a really easy amp to use
which is another thing that I love about it.
It's a volume and a tone
and a speed and intensity for a tremolo switch.
Now the brown face tremolo,
that's one of the main reasons I love this amp.
You know you get 64 and beyond,
the tremolo changes to more of a vibrato thing.
I don't know, it'll be amp guys
who will tell me what's what on that.
But it's different regardless of whatever it's called.
This tremolo, the brown face tremolo,
on this amp is a magic, magic thing.
There's not a pedal that does it.
There's not a plug in in a computer that does it.
It just doesn't exist outside of
either one of these new amps
or get yourself and old one.
And that's a really cool thing to me
to hear that sound coming out of something new.
I didn't think it could be done.
To be honest with you.
When they got to the final thing when they were like,
I think this is it.
They showed up in an arena for a soundcheck
and we just sat them side by side,
put microphones on them and a little AB switch
and we kept switching between them
and I couldn't tell you the difference, honestly.
It hasn't laid down on us.
We've been using them all the way across.
When Dave Cobb comes out on the road,
that's what we're using for electric guitars
on the stage out on the road right now.
It's an amp that's easy enough,
that a kid could learn how to use it.
And it's small enough that you can carry it around
if you're playing club gigs.
But it more than does the job
if you're playing in arenas and stadiums
and things like that.
They've done above and beyond
what I thought any amp builder could do.
You could go hunt boutique amps and all that kind of stuff.
This is beyond that,
it's an actual, it's the real deal.
You know, it's not like somebody's take on something.
I couldn't be prouder of it
and I'm so thankful to Fender for doing this
because now I know
I don't have to go on the endless hunt for old amps.
I have these amps to kind of carry me through.
And I'll get to play them
probably till the day I die.
But you know if you have notions of getting one,
it comes with a Filson amp cover just like the old days.
It's a canvas, real heavy duty.
Nice cover,
the speakers is a custom thing that we tweaked out
to get it to where we liked it.
The guys at Eminence did that.
And it has little bit of badging on the back
but if you don't want it to play as someone's
signature model it still just looks like
looks like an old one on the stage.
Like I said,
if you're looking for an amplifier
this is one that'll serve you for a long, long time.
Do lots and lots of things.
Just about anything you're trying to do.
There it is.
The 62 Princeton
Chris Stapleton Edition.
(guitar playing live)