Tag: features

Like large celestial bodies, some guitar collectors have a gravity that draws objects to them. In 2016, rare custom-color Les Pauls began entering Joe Bonamassa’s orbit.

Brought to Gruhn Guitars, an oddball brown Les Paul consigned by its owner in Minnesota caught the attention of a web-surfing Bonamassa. More fascinated than interested, he sent a link to his friend, Mat Koehler, guitarist/collector and Senior Director of Product Development at Gibson Guitars’ Nashville headquarters.

“Joe asked if I thought it was real, and at a glance I figured there was no reason to doubt it, especially since the knobs were painted to match the finish,” Koehler said. “I’m never fully confident judging only by photos, but the asking price seemed low for a custom guitar. I figured that even if it was a refinish, it was a cool refinish.”

The curio was soon on its way to Bonamassa’s Nerdville headquarters in Los Angeles.

“At first glance on the website, of course, I was thinking it was a refin,” Bonamassa recalled. “But once I had it in my hands, there was no doubt it’s original.”

Fast-forward one year. Gibson archives curator Jason Davidson is scanning shipping ledgers on behalf of Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen, when, in the 1955 book, he stumbles upon consecutive entries in unusual penmanship, with no serial numbers and listing colors he had never heard about – Nugget Gold, Platinum, Samoan Beige, Viceroy Brown, and Copper Iridescent. Wondering if they might have a connection to Bonamassa’s brown guitar, Davidson fired off a note.

“When I saw that, I started researching the color names,” Koehler said. “Gibson was using Duco and DuPont car paints in the ’50s, and Rick Gould, a friend of Joe’s who’s very into vintage instruments, went online and matched some to Cadillac and Chevy colors.”

Old color charts are part of the game for guitar collectors, but none of these had been seen on a guitar.

“I recognized Viceroy Brown as a sunburst finish from the 1960s,” said Koehler. “But it appears to have been an opaque walnut-brown, according to ’50s car-manufacturer paint chips.”

His informed speculation was that Gibson had sprayed experimental finishes on five instruments bound for the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) show, which would help explain their oddball ledger entries.

A new chapter in the mystery opened in 2018. Koehler was surfing the web one day when up popped an ad for a “1970s Les Paul Deluxe in Custom Brown.” Judging by the small photos, he thought it could be the same color as Bonamassa’s ’55. The seller listed little info, but the guitar looked to be in very good condition, its embossed pickup covers signaling it was from ’72. And like on the ’55, the knobs were painted.

“That was the 20th anniversary of the Les Paul, and Gibson did all sorts of special runs that year – Les Pauls, in particular,” Koehler said. “I guessed it was a nod to something they’d done in the past – maybe the same employee who helped create the brown ’50s guitars had something to do with this one. Or maybe someone in sales ordered it, perhaps as a tribute to the late Clarence Havega, who was beloved at Gibson and would’ve shown those first brown guitars at NAMM in 55.

“Sales guys dictated more product changes and one-offs than people realize, including with neck profiles and fretboard widths. There were changes driven outside of sales, but most of the major ones in the ’50s and ’60s came from the sales team.”

Anyway, as with the first brown guitar, the asking price for the ’72 was reasonable and posed little risk even if it wasn’t exactly as advertised. Besides, Koehler reasoned, if anything in the world belonged at Nerdville, it’s a pair of funky Les Pauls. For the next few years, all was right in guitardom.

Then, in 2021, Bonamassa got an e-mail from his friends Jay and Trevor Boone at Emerald City Guitars, Seattle, telling him they’d found a brown Les Paul with a 1955 serial number in Yuma, Arizona.

“Joe told me about it right away, and I was skep tical, because what are the chances?” Koehler said. “It was just strange that we found those entries listing these bizarre special orders… then they start to appear? But we went back to the ledger and there it was – ‘Special order, Copper, Hi Fi strings.’ I thought, ‘How much more provenance do you need?’ The whole thing was just too cool.”

Bonamassa certainly won’t argue.

“I would’ve thought a guitar made for a trade show was a unicorn,” he said. “But of course it was thrilling when the second one showed up and was exactly the same color. It just makes you go, ‘Holy cow!’ It’s a really odd story. One doesn’t have a serial number and was first sold in Minnesota, the other was found in Arizona after its owner moved from Minnesota…”

Describing Copper Iridescent, Bonamassa says, “From five feet, it looks brown. But in direct light, you see gold metalflake in the finish, and it’s just so cool. And it’s fascinating to think they kept the color around even though it never appeared on their custom-color charts. It’s just crazy how all three of the guitars came in different ways. They’re identical, and it’s the coolest trio you’ll ever see.”

Bonamassa was recently contacted by a nephew of the original owner of the first ’55, saying he had the amp his uncle bought with the guitar; the two-tone GA-20 is once again sitting alongside its partner.

“For mere mortals, stumbling upon a guitar like any one of these would be life-changing. But finding all three? It’s just another day in the life of Joe,” Koehler said with a chuckle.

Bonamassa adds that they offer a lesson for all guitar collectors.

“Never say you have the only one of something,” he laughed. “Because the chances are good you’ll be wrong.”

Speaking of, Koehler recently found a Copper Iridescent guitar listed in the 1956 ledger, prompting him to clown with Bonamassa.

“I texted an animated gif of Yoda saying, ‘No, there is another’ and a photo of the entry.”
Bonamassa says, “We have no idea where it is,” and insists he’s not on the hunt. If he waits, though, it’ll probably drift its way through time and space to land at Nerdville.

This article originally appeared in VG’s February 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Getting the job done – five simple knobs on the Princeton’s control panel.

1966 Fender Princeton
• Preamp tubes: one 7025, one 12AX7
• Output tubes: two 6V6GT
• Rectifier: GZ34
• Controls: Volume, Treble, Bass, Tremolo Speed and Intensity
• Speaker: Single 10″ Jensen C10R or Oxford 10J4 (modern replacement seen in this example)
• Output: approximately 12 watts RMS

Fender’s Princeton Reverb combo has long been considered one of the best all-round amps, while its non-reverb sibling languished in its shadow. The humbler ’60s classic, though, presents bountiful charms of its own, and can even be the preferred vehicle in some situations.

Maybe you just couldn’t afford the reverb model, or maybe you never liked reverb in the first place. Whatever the rationale, Fender saw the desirability of including both versions of some amps throughout its glory years. The fabled Deluxe had a non-reverb version, as did the Pro and Bandmaster, but for all the bias toward reverb-laden small Fenders, the Princeton might be the most utilitarian.

Of course, the Princeton was born without reverb. Among Fender’s very first amp models, it arrived in 1946 as the smallest combo in a trio that included the Deluxe and Professional in ascending order, all birthed when the delay-based effect wasn’t even a glimmer in Leo Fender’s eye – or anyone’s for that matter.

Arriving with Fender’s primitive “woody” cabinet, the Princeton took on the seminal tweed covering (a type of aircraft linen) in the TV-front cabinet of 1948. Through this period and until the end of the ’50s, it remained a single-ended amp, meaning it had just one output tube, a configuration more familiar in the form of the diminutive Champ, which also joined the lineup in ’48. At that time, the Princeton gained both a Volume and Tone control, which was two more knobs than it had been born with – the original theory being that players could use their lap-steel guitar’s own controls to govern this “student” amp’s volume.

Evolving into the wide-panel tweed cabinet circa late ’52 and the narrow-panel in ’55 (alongside the rest of the Fender amp lineup) the Princeton remained the second combo up the ladder. Though its circuit was virtually the same, barring the added Tone control, the Princeton was in a larger cabinet that helped its sound bloom, and had an 8″ speaker versus the Champ’s 6″, before it too was upsized later in the ’50s. Otherwise, through nearly the first decade and a half of its existence the Princeton had kind of remained “a Champ with benefits,” and little more than a lower-rung student or beginner’s amp.

All that changed in 1961. Along with revamping its entire amp lineup, Fender kicked the Princeton into the big leagues… or medium leagues, at least. The brown-panel 6G2 Princeton of 1961-’63 carried two 6V6GTs in a fixed-bias, push/pull output stage that generated about 12 watts – all elements and specs we can apply to the black-panel Princeton you see here. The preamp had two 12AX7s (technically, the first position held an equivalent 7025), which is also the topology of the non-reverb Princeton that followed in black Tolex with black panel and black skirted knobs with silver-inserts in ’63. From ’61 onward, the Princeton jumped into a slightly larger cabinet with a single 10″ speaker.

The result of all this was that, while it still made a great student amp, the combo was capable of cutting it on the club stage alongside a moderate drummer, and was arguably the ideal size and power for studio use.

Though the brown 6G2 Princeton of 1961-’63 and the black AA964 Princeton of ’64-’67 had two preamp tubes for gain stages, tremolo, and phase inverter, and they outwardly appeared to have been applied to similar duties, a few differences in the configuration brought notable changes to the way these successive amps sounded. While the signal chain for each went input to gain stage to controls to gain stage to output stage, the single Tone control on the 6G2 drained less gain, leaving it hotter as it hit the output stage compared to the signal loss imposed by the AA964’s two controls and circuit with Bass and Treble pots.

Whereas the AA1164 Princeton Reverb included another half of a 12AX7 post-reverb – a full third gain stage – to bring the gain back up to 6G2-like levels after the tone stack, the second and final gain stage of the non-reverb AA964 Princeton merely restored what the EQ circuit took away. This kept it all crisp and pristine on the way to the phase inverter, with little in line to push the amp into overdrive; therein lies the beauty of this circuit for certain playing styles.

In all of these ’60s variations, the final preamp tube is split into two uses – half powers the simple-but-effective tremolo effect, the other forms a simple split-load phase inverter much like on the earlier tweed Deluxe and the larger tweed Super, Pro, Bandmaster, and low-powered Twin.

Put all of this together and the non-reverb Princeton doesn’t sing with the gusto of its gained-up sibling, but that tendency can be used to a player’s advantage; where the AA1164 Princeton Reverb can sound a little raw and haggard when pushed hard (especially with humbuckers), the AA964 remains throaty and articulate right up to 10 on the Volume control, delivering the early signs of succulent breakup when hit with a humbucker guitar or a set of P-90s, but barely edging beyond clean with single-coils, as on a traditional Strat or Tele or any vintage-voiced Gretsch. This also means the non-reverb Princeton retains impressive headroom for its size and rating, but it pairs very well with a good overdrive pedal or two in front, enabling a near-symbiotic merging of clean and overdrive tones, and arguably delivering more of the good stuff from each than the quicker-to-fold reverb amp. All that, and its luscious bias-modulated tremolo suffers not in the least from the amp’s lack of reverb.

Though so often the underdog on the vintage market, the non-reverb Princeton ultimately reveals a thing of sonic beauty, and displays more of the characteristic that helped make black-panel Fenders legendary performers in the first place – some of the sweetest, liveliest clean tones ever produced this side of the Atlantic.

This article originally appeared in VG’s February 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.