Fender Princeton and Champ reissue prices...has the world gone mad?

YellowLedBetterMan

I got a Kustom Coupe 36 for my fendery needs after finding this same fact for myself a few years ago. It's just not worth the prices these amps are brand new.

The Coupe cost me £120 in great condition (bar one flickery LED which I still need to get around to replacing), with footswitch, a cable, a good cup of Yorkshire gold tea and 2 whole Jammie Dodgers when I went to collect it.

Voxman

YellowLedBetterMan said:

...and 2 whole Jammie Dodgers when I went to collect it.

OK, now you're just rubbing it in & showing off! 

Voxman

SPECTRUM001 said:

@Voxman - yes I totally agree with you. Sadly, Fender's sales and marketing policy isn't pointed at "here's a great deal/bonus to you guys". 

In fact, I think they think they are giving us a great deal/bonus by actually manufacturing the amp. And in some ways they are - I for one have been hankering for one, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Feels a bit like Dyson - they have good products, but charge ridiculous insane OTT prices for their air-fans, hair straighteners, hair dryers, vacuum cleaners etc and they get away with it because of wonderful marketing, packaging, and a perception of quality - but probably above all they've cultivated an image that makes owning a Dyson a 'status symbol' and nothing else will do.   I get that feeling with Fender - 'if you want the Fender tone and name we're gonna make you pay crazy insane prices because its an industry status symbol and we know you'll convince yourself of its quality and will pay what we ask'. 

Benm39

Thank heavens that Dyson haven't started producing amps or guitar effects.... just imagine the tone suck?!

Voxman

Benm39 said:

Thank heavens that Dyson haven't started producing amps or guitar effects.... just imagine the tone suck?!

Not if they use genuine vacuum tubes! 

Benm39

Voxman said:

Benm39 said:

Thank heavens that Dyson haven't started producing amps or guitar effects.... just imagine the tone suck?!

Not if they use genuine vacuum tubes! 

Ba-boom tish! Yay

Lewy

dazzajl said:

Of course the amp that should be ringing the death knell for the Princeton is the TM Deluxe Reverb. It does everything the Princeton can, quite a few things the Princeton can’t and it’s cheaper. 

Of course I also know it won’t really dent Princeton sales at all 

It can’t do bias tremolo which the Princeton does. It’s a quite different sounding and feeling effect compared to the opto trem modelled (correctly for a DR) on the ToneMaster.

gubble

It's no real surprise that we have fashion in the guitar world is it?

It is funny how it travels down to amplifiers though. 

My niece is 20 and plays guitar. She is astonished when i tell the tales of how back in the olde days Uncle Gubble could go out and buy a Wem Dominator for £100. 

She's quite hip and trendy so I daren't tell her just how cheap offset Fenders were back in the early 90s. I think she would most likely explode.

Ddigger

^Go on, tell her.

Then post the video... 

ICBM

gubble said:

She's quite hip and trendy so I daren't tell her just how cheap offset Fenders were back in the early 90s.

Or even worse, how cheap non-MV Marshalls, Hiwatts, Oranges, AC30s etc were in the 80s. You could get any of these for £100, often in reasonable condition.

I once paid £50 for a non-MV Marshall 50W head, a home-made 2x12" cab with Celestions, and got a wah pedal thrown in...

Voxman

ICBM said:

gubble said:

She's quite hip and trendy so I daren't tell her just how cheap offset Fenders were back in the early 90s.

Or even worse, how cheap non-MV Marshalls, Hiwatts, Oranges, AC30s etc were in the 80s. You could get any of these for £100, often in reasonable condition.

I once paid £50 for a non-MV Marshall 50W head, a home-made 2x12" cab with Celestions, and got a wah pedal thrown in...

Me too. But even £100 was a fair whack in the early 70s. 

Modulus_Amps

Its a simple equation

(Material costs + Labour costs + Overhead costs + mark-up + shop Mark-up + warranty costs +  distribution costs) / (what we think the product can sell for) = 1 

Fender sell strats from a couple hundred to thousands and the difference is not always stark. but you do pay extra for extra attention, same with real pine cabs, handwired eyelet boards etc non of that matters though if you don't like the amp/guitar end product.

Funkfingers

SPECTRUM001 said:

The Cornell Romany (mentioned on a separate thread) is marginally more expensive and possibly better (though obviously very different).

I second this recommendation - not least because I am a Romany Plus owner.

The build quality is exemplary. Hand wired, point to point, then, sealed to prevent corrosion. So clean, you could eat yer dinner off it.

High and low gain inputs handle everything from blackface cleans to Neil Young overdrive saturation. Switching out the EQ emulates a tweed Champ circuit. The onboard reverb is smooth rather than rattly. The optional modulation is nice too. I regret not paying the extra to have it. 

IMHO, the small cabinet, small 'speaker variants can sound boxy. A Jensen 12 delivers a wonderful, big sound.

srato

I agree with the OP - Fender prices are ridiculous.  When you add up all their production costs you realize the huge margin they make (about 10x) and the fact that people pay for a name and the look of a product.

On top of that quality is not great and Princeton amps can fart, the Custom 68 amps have a hiss problem with their reverbs and a ticking problem with their trems, etc. 

newi123

Its the Jaguar business model of charge as much as your customer base can possibly stand - the guy running Fender has a main job of maximising profit for the company, and he seems to do fairly well!

On a positive note, my 68 Princeton is the best amp I`ve ever bought (with a few extra pounds invested for a speaker change) - with a small pedal board and a sennheiser in the gig bag if needed it gigs virtually any style bar full on metal, sounds great as part of a two amp rig on bigger stages, is easy to transport and doesn`t break my back. It`s quiet, doesn`t hiss, and is easy to get a stellar sound out of.

I much prefer it to the rabbit hole of handwired boutique amps I was down for a while - even the Carr. And if I had to keep just one amp, all the big ones would go and the Princeton would stay. 

In saying that, I did buy B stock before they really pushed the boundary on price. 

menamestom

The PCB Princetons are great but mine had a failure which damaged the PCB.  It was then repaired by Martin at Gartone that raised a few issues with the design.  A new PT later, cap upgrade and a fuse bypassing the damaged PCB track and it was good as new, or better, but what was a quite complex repair would have been much easier in a handwired version.

Many of the boutique versions fundamentally change the circuit, and tend to sound quite different, which is why people may be drawn back to the Fenders as they can sound better than ones costing 3 times as much, depending on what you are after.

It’s a great circuit well implemented in the reissues, handwired won’t necessarily sound better but it just ensures serviceability and no big repair bills if a valve goes.

srato

newi123 said:

the guy running Fender has a main job of maximising profit for the company, and he seems to do fairly well!

Nobody knows that.  

slowpilgrim

Expensive, small, questionably priced 5 watters seems to be the new trend clearly. Some nice upgrades with the vibro champ (reverb, 10” cab) but I’d be swapping out the speaker immediately. It makes another ludicrously priced small amp, the supro 64 reverb, look slightly more tolerable noting that comes with a decent C8R and valve-driven spring reverb for another £100.

Champs aren’t exactly rare beasts though, and you can still pick up an original for way less. How many other amps can we say that about?

JezWynd

ICBM said:

gubble said:

She's quite hip and trendy so I daren't tell her just how cheap offset Fenders were back in the early 90s.

Or even worse, how cheap non-MV Marshalls, Hiwatts, Oranges, AC30s etc were in the 80s. You could get any of these for £100, often in reasonable condition.

I once paid £50 for a non-MV Marshall 50W head, a home-made 2x12" cab with Celestions, and got a wah pedal thrown in...

I paid £50 for a Laney Klipp 100 head and he threw in a 2x15 cab ( I think he was grateful to reclaim the space in his junk shop)

Epsilon

If anyone tries out the 68 Vibro Champ Reverb I'd be interested to hear how noisy it is. Many years ago I returned the 68 Princeton RI because the hum when the reverb and/or tremolo were turned up high was intolerable.