Amp Recomendations Please

Tone71

So this evening I've picked up a 2020 Mk IV Tweed with Jensen speaker, in immaculate condition, looks lovely and had a quick plug and play, sounds great with the Tele, a bit shrill with the Crestwood (could be the mini humbuckers) and not sure if it's buzzy at volume or if something in my studio was vibrating!! 

It's loud, very loud but more manageable than the HRD and will be interesting to hear how it sits in a loud studio environment, I have a feeling the speaker hasn't be worked hard and needs playing in.

For less that half price new I'm beginning to think it's a good score, but time will tell.

Alex2678

Congrats it sounds like the mk4 was a good choice

rlw

Too loud was the only issue I had with the Blues Junior.  Very much too loud.

ICBM

rlw said:

Too loud was the only issue I had with the Blues Junior.  Very much too loud.

?

It has a master volume control. You can turn that down.

snowblind

It has a master volume control. You can turn that down.

Most Fender amps I've used go from zero to ears bleeding in about a hair's breadth on the volume control. Nothing, nothing, nothing, oww, I am in pain. Can be fixed of course but it is a PiTA dealing with it at times.

HAL9000

I believe that is volume taper thing has been improved on the MkIV versions of the BJ and PJ.

Wazmeister

Alex2678 said:

You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet, particularly opinions of sounds, but never has anything sapped inspiration from my soul so quickly as a blues junior 

This.

Wazmeister

rlw said:

TM Deluxe Reverb...

And this would be my choice...

ICBM

snowblind said:

Most Fender amps I've used go from zero to ears bleeding in about a hair's breadth on the volume control. Nothing, nothing, nothing, oww, I am in pain. Can be fixed of course but it is a PiTA dealing with it at times.

I’ve never come across one that can’t be set to give a good low volume - including the notorious Hotrods - you just need to move the knob carefully, and chickenheads make that easier than any other type. They are not switches.

I genuinely don’t understand this ‘too loud’ thing no matter how many times it’s repeated - I’ve worked on hundreds of different amps of all power ratings - I’ve used a 200W amp at home and had it no louder than the strings on a solidbody guitar.

Using the EQ helps too, with a passive tone stack turning all the knobs down often reduces the volume as well, especially the mids.

JayGee

ICBM said:

I genuinely don’t understand this ‘too loud’ thing no matter how many times it’s repeated - I’ve worked on hundreds of different amps of all power ratings - I’ve used a 200W amp at home and had it no louder than the strings on a solidbody guitar.

It’s not a too loud thing, it’s a fine control at low levels thing - my principal home amp is a Blackstar Series One 104 and it’s much less faff to dial in a satisfactory “quiet conversation” level on that than it is on my (otherwise lovely) Mesa 5:25, which even on the 5 watt setting often seems to go straight from nothing to just a little louder than I really wanted and then usually back and forth again several times until I get something close enough to just right.

I guess if you’re building something with the potential to cause structural damage the development and test team may necessarily spend a little more time at that end of the control travel and after the first few times the entire building takes the day off with tinnitus they put a bit more effort into getting the taper to work nicely in that area… :-)

Also I’m totally with you on the chicken head knobs…

rlw

ICBM said:

rlw said:

Too loud was the only issue I had with the Blues Junior.  Very much too loud.

?

It has a master volume control. You can turn that down.

I did, at which point it went silent.   I was unable to get a decent low volume sound out of it however I set the controls.  Volume high/master low or volume low/master high, whatever I did it went from silent to to too loud in an instant.  And, yes, I did spend hours buggering about with it.

I agree that you can get the volume down to very low levels indeed, but the one I had sounded shite at anything less than loud enough to be unpleasant in a small room.

Conversely, I have a Supro with a very effective master volume that you can get to sound half decent at very low level and which seems to be very linear in it's operation.

Too loud?  I have a TMDR which I use on the 0.2 watt setting permanently and which is unsociable beyond 5 on the volume.  I run it with minimal use of the tone controls and it sounds great on 3 or 4 but needs to go down to between 2 and 3 with any kind of drive pedal.

To my mind, better, more graduated, pots on the Blues Junior would be the answer.

ICBM

rlw said:

I did, at which point it went silent.   I was unable to get a decent low volume sound out of it however I set the controls.  Volume high/master low or volume low/master high, whatever I did it went from silent to to too loud in an instant.  And, yes, I did spend hours buggering about with it.

I wonder if it had an actually faulty pot? I’ve worked on dozens of them and never found one like that.

Yorkie

Presumably you folks mean Fender valve amps, right? Because the digital ones I tried when I came back from my 20-year hiatus were all pretty tame and controllable. 

stickyfiddle

Fender TMDR is a big winner for me. Also the Cornell Romany 12, which I don't think anyone has mentioned?  

snowblind

As rlw points out, it is a control issue with a lot of Fenders. Doesn't make them bad but some of the alternatives do give better control. It will always come down to your purchasing criteria but thinking of something like Supro, Cornell, HiWatt T20/10 if we're in that blues junior space in terms of physical size. Maybe even something like an old Peavey classic 30 which can be had quite cheap. Again, we're assuming valves are a core consideration but not everyone regards them as essential.

Beauty is in the ear of the beholder.

rlw

ICBM said:

rlw said:

I did, at which point it went silent.   I was unable to get a decent low volume sound out of it however I set the controls.  Volume high/master low or volume low/master high, whatever I did it went from silent to to too loud in an instant.  And, yes, I did spend hours buggering about with it.

I wonder if it had an actually faulty pot? I’ve worked on dozens of them and never found one like that.

Could well have done.  Although it was the latest model and was cosmetically as new, I did buy it from a well dodgy looking bloke in a well dodgy looking place almost under the Humber Bridge

NickB

stickyfiddle said:

Fender TMDR is a big winner for me. Also the Cornell Romany 12, which I don't think anyone has mentioned?  

+ 1 from me on the Cornell Romany12. At only 10 Watts it’s still gigable….just. I use a Fryette Powerstation with mine for larger gigs to give it more heft and headroom. 

HAL9000

ICBM said:

Actually the MkIV is a big improvement over the previous versions - it's much less congested and muddy sounding, which was the big issue with the old ones, for several reasons... surprisingly, the cabinet was the big one, more than the speaker. The earlier ones sounded worse when pushed hard too, which the MkIV doesn't. The IV sounds better to me than the Pro Junior, which previously was the more open and lively-sounding of the two, but hasn't been improved in the same way. The BJ MkIV also has the tendency of the previous ones to set fire to themselves cured - all in all, a pretty decent amp now and you wonder why it took them so long to get it right. I still think it's overpriced, and I don't like the black control panel on the standard models - the chrome one is much nicer - but I'm probably being fussy now .

@ICBM ;I’ve yet to hear a Pro Junior MkIV but definitely remember the PJ MkIII as sounding a lot nicer than the BJ MkIII. Why do you think the PJ hasn’t improved as much as the BJ with the MkIV version?

Dave_Mc

HAL9000 said:

ICBM said:

Actually the MkIV is a big improvement over the previous versions - it's much less congested and muddy sounding, which was the big issue with the old ones, for several reasons... surprisingly, the cabinet was the big one, more than the speaker. The earlier ones sounded worse when pushed hard too, which the MkIV doesn't. The IV sounds better to me than the Pro Junior, which previously was the more open and lively-sounding of the two, but hasn't been improved in the same way. The BJ MkIV also has the tendency of the previous ones to set fire to themselves cured - all in all, a pretty decent amp now and you wonder why it took them so long to get it right. I still think it's overpriced, and I don't like the black control panel on the standard models - the chrome one is much nicer - but I'm probably being fussy now .

@ICBM ;I’ve yet to hear a Pro Junior MkIV but definitely remember the PJ MkIII as sounding a lot nicer than the BJ MkIII. Why do you think the PJ hasn’t improved as much as the BJ with the MkIV version?

I haven't tried the newer versions but I wonder if you've maybe almost answered your own question there- the Pro Jr was already pretty good so there was no real need to improve it. Also now the dearer one is "better", which is probably what they want...

HAL9000

^ That had occurred to me. Also, to my ears anyway, the Pro Jnr has always sounded more like a proper Fender amp than the Blues Jnr has.