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My new Epi Valve Junior: A mini review


clance

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- For those of you who dont want to read my little story and only want to hear about my amp, skip down to after the third picture -

 

After ruining my very frist guitar amp (a cheapo Yamaha somethiing or other) by using it with my bass guitar, my next purchase was a LINE 6 Spider III 75. I loved it at the time.

 

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(My III 75 with my stepbrother's Stratocaster)

 

You see, back then my electric guitar was terrible. It played terrible, sounded terrible, had dead frets, the pickups were tinny, and it was just overall a bad guitar. For those of you not familliar with Line 6, their amps are all about digital modelling. Which was great! That amp made my guitar sound like a good guitar! The tone was being created by the amp, not the guitar. And I liked it. But then I got my first Gibson.

 

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(The Explorer)

 

In the store before i bought it, I got to play it on a real tube amp. But at home, whenever I tried to use it with my Line 6, i could never get it to sound good. I'd have to stand in front of the amp and screw around with knobs and presets and i could rarely make it sound as good as it did in the store.

 

So then I decided to get a tube amp. I had, lying around the house, an Epiphone Les Paul Standard Plus Top in Vintage Sunburst that i didn't particularly like or need, and I long ago decided to wait untill i found something esle i wanted and then trade it in. And when my brother got his new drumset to put in his room (we'd left his good set and all my amps in our band's practice space), I decided to finally get a low watt tube amp small enough to keep in his little room, but loud enough to be heard over the drumset.

 

In the store, I looked at several other all tube models in the 300-400 range, and the only other one that came close in tone and volume was a little Fender Super Vibro Champ XD something or other. But with it's 8 inch speaker (compared to the Epi's 12 inch Eminence) It was quiter and rattled at high volumes. So I chose the slightly more expensive Epi, and I couldn't be happier.

 

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(Sorry for the bad picture quality)

 

First off, it looks AMAZING. Right now it's just sitting in the corner of my brother's room, and for a straight trade with my almost never used Epi Les Paul it was totally worth it. Me and my brother had another firend come over so we could all break in the amp, and it is definitely loud enough to compete with the drumset, and my brother plays LOUD. When used with my Explorer, it delivers that classic natural Gibson distortion on the bridge pickup and that creamy gentle sound on the neck pickup. To manipulate the tone, all the controls you'd need are on the guitar. It takes a bit of fiddling, but i've managed to get a pretty nice clean tone even at high volumes. It just depends on how youve got your guitar set up.

 

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(I LOVE how it looks)

 

It delivers the best sound I have ever heard my Explorer make. It's volume and size is perfect for practicing in a three piece band, and It's price was what attracted me to this particular amp in the first place. The only possible complaints I can make are lack of a standby switch, lack of reverb, and the fact that with maximum volume flaying full chords can get kind of muddy. But switching to the neck pickup fixes that for me. I recommend this amp to ANYONE who wants a nice, great sounding all tube amp for rehearsal or recording. I cant ever see me selling this.

 

Hope someone out there finds this usefull. And more pictures of my gear and this amp can be found on my Flickr Page

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Good story, I'm glad to hear you like it.

 

I've had mine for a while now and like it. Had a good sound to it. Only problem is that I heard

there were a bunch of mods you could do to it. I can never leave anything alone so I had to open it up

and go to town.

 

Dont mean to hijack but heres an after pic of mine. I added gain control, master volume, negative feedback,

gain boost switch, reverb, stand by switch and a 9v out on the back to power pedals.

 

DSCF0414.jpg

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Thats an awesome set of mods! I love the idea of a 9v out! Can i ask how you did the reverb?

 

I installed a 9v transformer inside to power my reverb circuit so I just tapped off of that and put a jack on the back.

The reverb is a little tricky unless you feel like making your own circuit board. Basically I made the board' date=' installed the reverb tank in the inside of the head.....heres a pic.O:)

 

 

[img']http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k288/fixr1984/Amp/DSCF0412.jpg[/img]

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Since my Classic 30 is down right now I played my modded Epiphone Head and cab this week just jamming with a friend. My Casino sounded great through it. My friend's basement has really good acoustics with concrete floors and acoustic tile on the 10' ceiling. Different sound that I get at home on my carpeted room.

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Since my Classic 30 is down right now I played my modded Epiphone Head and cab this week just jamming with a friend. My Casino sounded great through it. My friend's basement has really good acoustics with concrete floors and acoustic tile on the 10' ceiling. Different sound that I get at home on my carpeted room.

 

 

Yeah, I can see this being a good hollowbody/semi-hollowbody amp. While in the store me and a friend played an Epiphone DOT 335 on it and it sounded really nice, very chimey and bright.

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