Princeton Amps Never Looked This Good!

 

Deric Dobesh wanted a modern looking faceplate and nameplate to complement the green tolex and wheat grille on his Fender Princeton Reverb style build. He liked the slick look of the brushed silver/black faceplate material and we used the same stock to make the matching nameplate. The result, I think you'll agree, is fantastic! Great job, Deric.

Cool Amp Gallery Features Vintage Designs

Vintage amps come in more flavors than Marshall and Fender. Some of the coolest designs around stem from the smaller players who tried to make their mark with more outrageous designs than the two big boys.


The guys over at We-Buy-Amps.com have a great gallery of obscure and unusual amps that might help the homebrewer get ideas for the look of his or her new amp.


Here at amplates.com, we love it when our customers go for the more unusual design elements, and we can take an idea from an old Gibson or National, like those in the photos above, and run with it. Happy amping!

Plan ahead for faceplate design

When designing and building your amp, be sure to plan ahead on the faceplate side of things, too. You want to make sure that you have enough real estate to fit control labels and other markings, plus any logos or flourishes.

Inspirational faceplate design

For inspiration, I like to look to the more unusual amplifier faceplates from the past, and this 1964 Gibson Titan III bass amp is a good one to draw from.

The plate uses legible typography for the controls and a futuristic script face for the amp logo. The use of rules and outlines gives the design movement to imply that this amp is forward and ultra modern (for 1965 it was!). And you've gotta love those stovetop knobs!

Thanks to the Gibson Garage for posting this and hundreds of other great pics of the classic Gibson amp line!

What makes a good faceplate design?

Since faceplates are our bread and butter around here at Amplates.com, I figured a primer on what makes a good plate design might be in order. Bullet points are always fun, so try these tips on for size:

• Legibility. There are two basic types of fonts: text and display. You want to use text fonts for your control labels. If you use crazy, squiggly or super stylized fonts in positions above controls where they need to be small to fit, they won't be readable. Save the squiggles for your amp name and logo.

• Simplicity. Don't throw the kitchen sink on your faceplate. This isn't the launch control for ICBMs, it's a guitar amp built to be used on a cramped, dark stage. You need to be able to quickly and easily change settings, and having 1 billion small knobs and switches will seriously muck up the works.

• Style. The world doesn't need another Fender or Marshall clone. Think outside the box a little when choosing fonts, colors, and design elements. Simply adding a rule or box on your plate can make it stand out from the hordes and make people go "wow!"

Keeping your plates original

I often get emails from customers with semi-designed faceplates or instructions for font choices that they find appealing. This is great! It's always cool when customers know what they want.

But at times, what someone wants is what everyone wants. Take the top two fonts for Amplates.com design in the last two years: Magneto and Deftone Stylus. These are two very cool, retro fonts, but they are becoming victims to their own popularity. If a customer really wants to go with one of those, then hey, by all means, we'll do it. But I try to steer customers to other, also cool script fonts if possible. A lot of my customers aren't aware of the wealth of font choices at their disposal. That's where my experience comes in:

Why not try some new-school retro fonts like Nougat or Hamburger Heaven? You too, can be a "Saucy Millionaire"! In fact, there are literally thousands of fonts to choose from, and I can recommend something that will look cool, be very readable, and will stand out from the crowd.

What's more, we can use those fonts as a starting point to design a completely original logo to truly brand your amps. I'm a big believer that whether you make 1 amp or 10,000, quality and originality count.