Fender's original Princeton was built in the 1960s, and although rated at just 15W it became popular for its ability to produce a great tone at moderate sound levels, making it an ideal studio amplifier as well as a practice amp. Today you can pick up a battered original and pay silly money for it — or you could take a look at the new Princeton Recording Amp...

Designed to recreate the tone of the original, this new version is built in Mexico using extremely up-to-date manufacturing methods, as its densely packed circuit boards testify: you'll find neither point-to-point wiring nor generously spaced, hand-assembled PCBs here. Nevertheless, its preamp and power-amp circuits are still based on the all-tube 65 Princeton Reverb model, and they drive a 10-inch Jensen speaker. It can provide a surprising amount of volume, considering the amplifier rating. The preamp stage comprises three 12AX7 tubes and one 12AT7 in the phase-splitter stage, driving a pair of 6V6s in a push-pull configuration.

What really sets this new design apart from its predecessor is the addition of a 1U 'studio' rack just below the main control panel, where you'll find a compressor, a stomp-style overdrive and Fender's 'Trans Impedance Power Attenuator', which lets you wind up the amp to achieve the required amount of output tube overdrive, but enables you to turn down the speaker level as low as you like — in other words, it is essentially a sophisticated power-soak. This circuitry replicates the way a...