A lot of classic-car-heads (a certain Neil Young among them) believe the best way to ensure a future for 20th-century automobiles is to electrify them—to mate the designs of the past with technology of the present and future. In a way, Fender’s Tone Master modeling amps, which use digital processing in 1960s-style black-panel cabinets, are products of parallel thinking. Tube amps may not yet be an endangered species, nor CO2-spewing threats to the environment. But these days, you don’t need a big Twin Reverb cabinet to get a passably modeled representation of a Twin Reverb’s sound—just like you don’t need a 1959 Lincoln to get to work. Still, if you’ve spent most of your guitar-playing life in the analog realm, find inspiration in the company of vintage design, and never want to think about a tube change ever—well, then stuffing a little processor in a big, old-school cabinet makes perfect sense.
What’s cool and convenient about the Princeton Reverb Tone Master, of course, is that it’s not big at all. Nor is it heavy. Shunning a tube circuit means it weighs just 20 pounds—even with a ceramic, vintage-style Jensen C10R 10" speaker. And as far as digital-meets-mid-century design convergences go, you won’t find many examples that are more fun and practical.
Blink and You’ll Miss It
Just like a ’60s black-panel Princeton Reverb, the China-built Tone Master version is a slyly cool piece of kit. It’s small enough to go missing in the shadowy corners of a stage, save for the telltale glow of Fender’s signature jewel lamp. When situated more conspicuously, though, the Princeton Tone Master is the handsome essence of amplifierness. And if you’re not looking too closely, it’s easy to assume you’re plugging into a tube version. The control layout is the same, and apart from the jewel lamp glowing amber in mute mode, there are few hints that it might have a digital heart. The back side of the amp, however, reveals more clues. There are no heavy transformers or fragile tubes hanging from the chassis. And while the back panel isn’t much busier than a tube version, there are extra controls that are keys to the Tone Master’s extra flexibility. To the average player, the most critical of these will be the 6-position power attenuation switch, which moves between a Princeton’s traditional 12 watts down to 6, 3, 1.5, .75, and .3 watts. There’s also an XLR out which is accompanied by an output level control and a switch that activates two impulse response cabinet simulations. This additional functionality enables you to send the Princeton’s output to a recording interface or to a house PA.
At the full 12 watt setting, it’s a little fireball, particularly when you lean in with your picking hand.
Reverberations Across the Uncanny Valley
Like its cousin the Deluxe Tone Master (which we reviewed back in 2020), the Princeton Tone Master could leave a lot of experienced players scratching their head over whether it’s tube or digital—particularly when it’s situated in a mix, and especially at cleaner, lower volumes. Keen ears may hear less dimensionality compared to a vintage Fender amp (and really, you could say the same thing about a lot of amps). But the Tone Master is alive with a lot of the exciting, ringing high-end that makes a genuine black-panel Princeton an overachiever on small stages and a breeze to work with in a studio. Pairing it with a Telecaster sounds like heaven, whether you like jangly rhythm stuff or the greasiest Bakersfield twang. Low-end output is impressive, too. I’ve been surprised more than once at how much thump a tube Princeton can generate with a good speaker, and the Tone Master version hangs tough on that front as well. I guessed the semi-hollow with PAFs I used in this test would cloud the pretty clean details I heard with single-coils. But at moderate volumes, even low frequencies from the bottom string in D and C tunings resonated sweetly and with nearly as much heft as a Deluxe Reverb with a 12" speaker.
The Princeton is also loud. At the full 12-watt setting, it’s a little fireball, particularly when you lean in with your picking hand. But it still screams in 6-watt mode when you turn the amp volume up. In fact, these slightly quieter but more compressed, fatter, and toothy tones are some of my favorites from the amp. I loved the 3 watt mode for all the same reasons, while the 1.5-watt setting evoked an old black- or silver-panel Champ. Only at .75 and .3-watt settings did the amp sound discernibly thin and lacking in the well-rounded body found at other settings.
Generally, the Princeton Tone Master pairs well with effects. Drive pedals, though, should be used with care. Overdrives sound pretty good as long as you keep them in the low- to medium-gain realm. Fuzzes, however, tend to sound raspier than they would with an equivalent tube amp. I still had fun with these textures, and many can be sculpted with judicious use of the guitar and amp tone controls. But any digitalness you might sense in overtones at clean settings will be a lot more overt with a buzzing ’60s-style fuzz out front.
The Verdict
After reviewing the Deluxe Tone Master, I recommended it to several friends hunting for vintage Fender amp sounds, who also needed attenuated settings at home, and who would appreciate the ease and aesthetic of the 1960s amp format. I’d recommend the Princeton for the same reasons and more. It’s compact and it sounds great at civilized volumes. Plus, at 20 pounds, you can move it around the house, or to the car, bus, or subway, without a care. If you move between pristine, surfy clean tones and gnarly fuzz sounds (and I relate), you’ll want to listen to how the Princeton Tone Master interacts with your gain device of choice. But the less pleasing overtones you hear with some fuzz is one of the amp’s few limitations. For most it will be a very sensible and convenient way to bathe in the glorious sounds of black-panel Fenderness—and at a very appealing price, too.
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Revv G3 Purple Channel Preamp/Overdrive/Distortion Pedal - Anniversary Edition
The Revv G3 revolutionized high gain pedals in 2018 with its tube-like response & tight, clear high gain tones. Suddenly the same boutique tones used by metal artists & producers worldwide were available to anyone in a compact pedal. Now the G3 returns with a new V2 circuit revision that raises the bar again.
If 3 Were 6
With six times the controls found on the 1 and 2 versions (if you discount the original’s on/off slider switch,) the LPB-3’s control complement offers pre-gain, boost, mid freq, bass, treble, and mid knobs, with a center detent on the latter three so you can find the midpoint easily. A mini-toggle labeled “max” selects between 20 dB and 33 dB of maximum gain, and another labeled “Q” flips the resonance of the mid EQ between high and low. Obviously, this represents a significant expansion of the LPB’s capabilities.
More than just a booster with a passive tone, the LPB-3 boasts a genuine active EQ stage plus parametric midrange section, comprising the two knobs with shaded legends, mid freq and mid level. The gain stages have also been reimagined to include a pre-gain stage before the EQ, which enables up to 20 dB of input gain. The boost stage that follows the EQ is essentially a level control with gain to allow for up to 33 dB of gain through the LPB-3 when the “max” mini toggle is set to 33dB
A slider switch accessible inside the pedal selects between buffered or true bypass for the hard-latch footswitch. An AC adapter is included, which supplies 200mA of DC at 9.6 volts to the center-negative power input, and EHX specifies that nothing supplying less than 120mA or more than 12 volts should be used. There’s no space for an internal battery.
Power-Boosted
The LPB-3 reveals boatloads of range that betters many linear boosts on the market. There’s lots of tone-shaping power here. Uncolored boost is available when you want it, and the preamp gain knob colors and fattens your signal as you crank it up—even before you tap into the massive flexibility in the EQ stage.
“The preamp gain knob colors and fattens your signal as you crank it up—even before you tap into the massive flexibility in the EQ stage.”
I found the two mid controls work best when used judiciously, and my guitars and amps preferred subtle changes pretty close to the midpoint on each. However, there are still tremendous variations in your mid boost (or scoop, for that matter) within just 15 or 20 percent range in either direction from the center detent. Pushing the boost and pre-gain too far, particularly with the 33 dB setting engaged, can lead to some harsh sounds, but they are easy to avoid and might even be desirable for some users that like to work at more creative extremes.
The Verdict
The new LPB-3 has much, much more range than its predecessors, providing flexible preamp, boost, and overdrive sounds that can be reshaped in significant ways via the powerful EQ. It gives precise tone-tuning flexibility to sticklers that like to match a guitar and amp to a song in a very precise way, but also opens up more radical paths for experimentalists. That it does all this at a $129 price is beyond reasonable.
Electro-Harmonix Lpb-3 Linear Power Booster & Eq Effect Pedal Silver And Blue
