Blues Junior

  • Thread starter Thread starter JCH
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JCH

JCH

El Nacho
I traded for this a few days ago. So far I'm pretty happy with it. We'll find out later how it sounds with a P12R, and some vintage tubes.

The guitar is an Epi Alleykat that I picked up a couple months ago.

bloozkat2.jpg
 
What's it got in it now--stock speakers and tubes? I'm happy with my Blues Jr. (it's all stock) but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts after you swap those out.
 
What's it got in it now--stock speakers and tubes? I'm happy with my Blues Jr. (it's all stock) but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts after you swap those out.

It was all original. I changed the speaker and tried it out before changing the tubes. The P12R does sound better. I haven't had a chance to really crank it up, but at lower volume it sounds great. The tube swap helped too.
 
Awesome.

Would love to hear a sample.

You just have to love the versatility and simplicity of the BJr.

Cheers,
FM
 
"Would love to hear a sample."

I'm out of town for the week, but I'm anxious to see how it records.
 
In your opinion

Which made the greater improvement, the speaker swap or the tubes?

And which tubes did you use?

While I have heard proof that the Jr can sound good relatively cranked (with the right pedal), I have yet to hear one that sounds good at what I would consider low volume.

I have a stock one, btw.
 
Since JCH is traveling, I'll butt in :cool:

I changed the speaker, the tubes, and did some billm mods on mine. The biggest change in sound came from the speaker. I used a Weber 12F150, but there are plenty of other good choices, of course.

Changing the tubes for me seems to be more about removing bad sound (fartiness, hiss, thinness) than adding good sound, but maybe that's just perspective. So far my favorite power tubes are some old RCAs - I also like the RFT ones I got from mask in the classifieds.

Mine was biased way too high, too, which made it sound crunchier, but I have Marshall for that (and the BJr. didn't hold a candle to it - it was a farty crunch) - I wanted a cleaner, Fenderier sound, so I lowered the bias by replacing the resistor that Billm tells you too, and I thought that made a huge improvement - also means the power tubes will last longer, I suppose. With the high bias, I didn't even like the RCA EL84s that much - they farted out a little (albeit less than inferior tubes) -- not to mention that I was afraid to run them that way for more than 5 minutes. With the lower bias, they do what I want - very cleanly and transparently awesome-ize the sound of the guitar. They distort a little at high gain and that's nice, too.

I did the mid-range billm mod, too, so that the mids will go down to -infinity, and that may have made a big difference, but I wasn't paying enough attention to before/after to say.
 
Which made the greater improvement, the speaker swap or the tubes?

And which tubes did you use?
The speaker made the greatest difference by far.
I put in some Tungsram 6BQ5's, Two Telefunkens, and a RCA in the Phase Inverter for the 12AX7's



Since JCH is traveling, I'll butt in :cool:

I changed the speaker, the tubes, and did some billm mods on mine. The biggest change in sound came from the speaker. I used a Weber 12F150, but there are plenty of other good choices, of course.

Changing the tubes for me seems to be more about removing bad sound (fartiness, hiss, thinness) than adding good sound, but maybe that's just perspective. So far my favorite power tubes are some old RCAs - I also like the RFT ones I got from mask in the classifieds.

Mine was biased way too high, too, which made it sound crunchier, but I have Marshall for that (and the BJr. didn't hold a candle to it - it was a farty crunch) - I wanted a cleaner, Fenderier sound, so I lowered the bias by replacing the resistor that Billm tells you too, and I thought that made a huge improvement - also means the power tubes will last longer, I suppose. With the high bias, I didn't even like the RCA EL84s that much - they farted out a little (albeit less than inferior tubes) -- not to mention that I was afraid to run them that way for more than 5 minutes. With the lower bias, they do what I want - very cleanly and transparently awesome-ize the sound of the guitar. They distort a little at high gain and that's nice, too.

I did the mid-range billm mod, too, so that the mids will go down to -infinity, and that may have made a big difference, but I wasn't paying enough attention to before/after to say.
Thanks for the info
 
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