Fender Blues Jr. 15w Tube amp

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WhiteStrat said:
If I ever got around to using the delay and the OD, you're right, I'd switch 'em.
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But is that a thing that people will actually do? As someone pointed out, amps didn't always have effects loops. Let's say I wanted the nice OD tone of the amp, but I wanted some delay on it. If I was to record it, I could apply the delay later, obviously, but if I was doing it live, would having the pedal before the amp be an "acceptable" thing to do? I mean, I guess it's all up to taste, but it's something I've always tried to avoid before, so I don't know what the deal is.
 
thebigcheese said:
But is that a thing that people will actually do? As someone pointed out, amps didn't always have effects loops. Let's say I wanted the nice OD tone of the amp, but I wanted some delay on it. If I was to record it, I could apply the delay later, obviously, but if I was doing it live, would having the pedal before the amp be an "acceptable" thing to do? I mean, I guess it's all up to taste, but it's something I've always tried to avoid before, so I don't know what the deal is.
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What do you mean by "acceptable"? Is it ever done? Yes, absolutely. Would you like the sound of it? Try it and tell us.
 
ggunn said:
What do you mean by "acceptable"? Is it ever done? Yes, absolutely. Would you like the sound of it? Try it and tell us.
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I guess that's kind of what I meant. I just broke one of my two working guitar cables, though, so I have to fix it before I can really play with my pedals again. I need to stop sitting on the floor when I play...
 
lpdeluxe said:
A loop is a frill. I had a very nice tube amp for 28 years that had an effects loop on it, and I never used it once. One of my current amps has the feature, but I can't imagine a situation where it would be necessary.
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How much gain do you use? Do you use delay?

I play instrumental rock a la Satriani, and I like using a light atmospheric delay as a sort of reverb alternative. There's no way I could do this with an FX pedal in front of the amp - the guitar signal itself would be delayed, and when it then hit a distorted preamp, the delay repeats on the original signal would turn the whole thing to sludge.
 
Depending on the material, I crank the gain up to around 8 or 9 or leave it at about 5 for mellower stuff. A little reverb is all I need, and most of the time I don't use that. I prefer note definition to shimmer. With the 335, the tone is just what I want without any external devices.
 
That is often exactly the way that I like to use delay. If you listen to the intro to songs like "Ode to the Sun" by Dredg or "My Curse" by Killswitch Engage, that's the sort of ambience I like to go for with delay. I guess in both of those cases they are not using a whole lot of distortion, though...

So when you're doing the delay for that purpose, do you just have an amp with an effects loop or are you fortunate enough to play gigs where the sound guy can do it for you?

Edit: Sorry, forgot to include the quote. That was a response to DrewPeterson7.
 
As a side note, I noticed that there is a 1/4" jack for the speaker output wires. I imagine that if I just ran a cable out of there to my effects and then plugged the speaker into the end of that, it wouldn't work the same way as an effects loop because that's post-power amp and thus would be too loud for my pedals, right?
 
thebigcheese said:
As a side note, I noticed that there is a 1/4" jack for the speaker output wires. I imagine that if I just ran a cable out of there to my effects and then plugged the speaker into the end of that, it wouldn't work the same way as an effects loop because that's post-power amp and thus would be too loud for my pedals, right?
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Yikes! I wouldn't try that......
 
thebigcheese said:
As a side note, I noticed that there is a 1/4" jack for the speaker output wires. I imagine that if I just ran a cable out of there to my effects and then plugged the speaker into the end of that, it wouldn't work the same way as an effects loop because that's post-power amp and thus would be too loud for my pedals, right?
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Your assumption is correct. As NL5 said: "Yikes! I wouldn't try that..."

:eek:
 
thebigcheese said:
As a side note, I noticed that there is a 1/4" jack for the speaker output wires. I imagine that if I just ran a cable out of there to my effects and then plugged the speaker into the end of that, it wouldn't work the same way as an effects loop because that's post-power amp and thus would be too loud for my pedals, right?
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This is a joke, right?
 
I've got to chime in as well...

I love my Blues Junior! 15 watts, all tube and I love the way my guitars sound when play through it. Can't really add any more than what everyone else has stated.
 
hmm...that's wired...

Just like my day has gone...I answered a thread and ended up somewhere else...oh well...whatever. I still love my Blues Junior!
 
ggunn said:
This is a joke, right?
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No, but I was pretty sure I knew the answer. Just wanted to check in case I was wrong. You never know... Well, when you're like me and still learning about how these things work, anyway.
 
thebigcheese said:
No, but I was pretty sure I knew the answer. Just wanted to check in case I was wrong. You never know... Well, when you're like me and still learning about how these things work, anyway.
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That's cool. Good thing you took the time to wonder out loud. :D
 
I have one. It's OK.

Newer is better. The old ones (green PCB) had numerous problems, most notably an egregiously misdesigned reverb circuit.

Much of this speaker swapping is to compensate for the scooped Fender tone stack. It's easier and cheaper to fix that.

Bill Machrone has a lot of easy/cheap mods for this stuff and retrofixes for the greenboard amps.

I'm not a huge fan of the Blues Junior, but it's supposedly Fender's biggest seller.
 
bongolation said:
I have one. It's OK.

Newer is better. The old ones (green PCB) had numerous problems, most notably an egregiously misdesigned reverb circuit.

Much of this speaker swapping is to compensate for the scooped Fender tone stack. It's easier and cheaper to fix that.

Bill Machrone has a lot of easy/cheap mods for this stuff and retrofixes for the greenboard amps.

I'm not a huge fan of the Blues Junior, but it's supposedly Fender's biggest seller.
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Holy jesus, he has a TON of mods! Wow, thanks for the pointer. I probably won't do most of them, especially not while the amp is under a nice 1-year warranty GC included for me, but some of them could be useful.
 
I did a few of the mods - the one to the mid pot, the easiest of the bias mods (lowering the bias some, which I though was very nice), and maybe one other - can't remember. Of course, I got one used, so there was no warranty to void.

I put a Weber speaker in it, which made a big difference. Sometimes the reverb tank buzzes when I play a C note, but other than that, I'm in love with it.
 
antichef said:
I did a few of the mods - the one to the mid pot, the easiest of the bias mods (lowering the bias some, which I though was very nice), and maybe one other - can't remember. Of course, I got one used, so there was no warranty to void.

I put a Weber speaker in it, which made a big difference. Sometimes the reverb tank buzzes when I play a C note, but other than that, I'm in love with it.
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I've probably read this before--so forgive my redundancy--but what Weber did you put in your Blues Jr.?
 
It's a pretty good amp but I can't get a decent amount of saturation/distortion from it at low volumes and the reverb basically sucks imo. I use an analog reverb pedal instead.
 
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