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Reason #4,735,221 why every electric guitar player should own Valve Jr. amp(s).

Steven Lister

By Steven Lister
in Epiphone Amps & Accessories

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Steven Lister

Steven Lister

Posted
Posted

Ridiculously low maintenance costs.

Changing 1 or 2 valves (and they are about the cheapest ones on the market at that) at tune-up time is so very easy on the wallet. Plus, with operating costs this low, you don't fuss over whether you can afford to play it anytime, all-of-the-time. Just warm VJr. up and wail.

 

My friends with their high dollar Marshall's and vintage whatevers mostly let them collect dust instead of using them for practice or to gig as much as they would like to in order to "save my precious NOS tubes." Sad right?

I say, "what good is all that killer tone doing you, brother when you hardly ever turn it on."

 

Perhaps VJr.'s true niche is that of THE perfect compliment amp.

It doesn't replace your ______, rather it's the low cost, great tone, versatile, modifiable, companion amp.

 

Placing my meager spare valves order today and noticing the "oh my gahwd" NOS valve prices drove this point home to me once again. :D :- :-

 

Hit every BLUE NOTE baaaby..., I'm going to play on:-"

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layboomo

layboomo

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I guess I have to agree.....sold my fancy point to point custom hand wired Marshall 1987 that I never used(cause it was all those things and too freakin' loud)...and never missed it with my valve jr's around. They have quickly become my "go to" amps.....infact I changed my avatar back to the Epi Jr pile!

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TWANG

TWANG

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Posted

I've grown happier daily using the simple micro cube through the epi..

true the tubes call me back and I always wind up playing without it.. but when I want

some delay or reverb, it's quite nice, really.

the vox setting via the power amp break in is really nice.. and the blackface and the jc cleans..

Less so the marshall and I don't care for the mesa sounds much. but hey.. three pretty sweet sounds to add those efx to is just fine with

me.

It's freaky to think the micro cube costs nearly as much as the vj..

but I have to say, as a practice device, headphones, cd input... it's probably the last thing I'll buy of this type.

 

Epi ought to build a copy of this.. no speaker.. and tune it for the vj!

TWANG

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scott58

scott58

Posted
Posted
I'll Agree; But . . . I Do Miss my Fender 1965 Twin Reverb though!

But with the GNX3000' date=' I still can dial it in through my EPI ![/quote']

 

Oh yeah, Vj + modeling is my 1 slice of heaven. I swear this thing sounds better then alot of $1000

amps I've heard.

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strangedogs

strangedogs

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Posted

 

Oh yeah' date=' Vj + modeling is my 1 slice of heaven. I swear this thing sounds better then alot of $1000

amps I've heard.[/quote']

 

Right on... I tested out a Blackheart 5-watt stack awhile back at the Guitar Center (in their glass amp room) and honestly I'll take my V3 Valve Junior over it any day. With my Korg ME Pedal I can dial in some pretty convincing MARSHALL's, FENDER's, MESA's, etc. and I could fool a lot of folks with the recordings - amazing what this lil' baby can do with the right effects...

 

Sure - I'd love a whole pedalboard full of analog pedals but I'm "poor" so the Multi-Effects is what I use - and I can actually tweak it so it doesn't sound so "digital" and it lets the VJ really shine through.

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scott58

scott58

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Posted

For the last 2 days. I plugged my 79 ML into my Vox DA 20 (which is a pretty fair stereo SS amp

I think). played maybe 6 hrs total. Tonight I plugged back into my Vj/POD there really isn't any

comparison. The richness of the tone just jumps out at yeah. I know what you mean about

Marshall and Fender sounds and all at bedroom practice level with no police involvement! No cops

is another good reason to get a Vj.

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glad2cu

glad2cu

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I was over Gill's the other night and took my epi and pod to play thru his greenback that he had in his custom built 18watt. The sound was fantastic! The tube warmness of the vlj with my pod was 7th heaven. What a great setup! I use to have a Tech21 Power Engine but it sounded too sterile. Sold it on fleabay only to find I had the sound all along with the valve junior. Then we did it thru his 18watter and it even made that amp sound better of course with alot more headroom. This amp loves my pod and I can get some really convincing sounds. What's neat about the pod is you put it in bypass mode and now you have your original epi. Modelers are gonna wake up soon and join us all only to find what a great amp this is! As always the people here that help us - thanks=d>

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ssgfowler

ssgfowler

Posted
Posted
I've been tempted to try that bad monkey. Not a bad price for a pedal that gets really good reviews from so many.

TWANG

 

You won't hate yourself if you try the Bad Monkey. I traded an expensive Marshall compressor pedal in and got the Bad Monkey and a One Shot Combo AC adapter for it...

The Bad Monkey works like a charm. Warm, juicy overdrive, works great with the low output vintage style P/U's I put in the Strat, and low and high tone knobs too play with.

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Just Strum

Just Strum

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The Valve Jr is my first and only tube amp. I play in a 10'x11' room and it's more than enough. Purchased a mod from a guy on another forum and he did a great job.

 

No complaints from this Valve Jr owner. The only thing I might do is change the speaker - thinking of doing it on my AD30VT too. Anyone use Jensen Mods in their amps (I probably should post a separate thread with that question).

 

edit: I forgot to mention, I run the guitar through a Digitech RP350 and into the Valve Jr - Kick A--!!!

 

Picture310.jpg

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strangedogs

strangedogs

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Just Strum - I had a V2 combo (yours appears to be V1 or V2) - my V3 has the best sounding speaker of all - the 70-watt rated Eminence in the V3's are super nice. I have a few other speakers I tried (in cabs) with mine including a Vintage Rola, A Celestion 10", etc., but the 8" Eminence in my combo sounds best to me... IT'S HOT!

 

and Scott I agree - we need a VJ Forum just for us VJ owners - we should do the advertising for Epiphone as we're all in love with this amp and we know how to TOOT IT'S HORN! Epiphone (GIBSON) should give us a platform and a BILLBOARD and let us ADVERTISE the best lil' amp in existance.

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Just Strum

Just Strum

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Posted
Just Strum - I had a V2 combo (yours appears to be V1 or V2) - my V3 has the best sounding speaker of all - the 70-watt rated Eminence in the V3's are super nice. I have a few other speakers I tried (in cabs) with mine including a Vintage Rola' date=' A Celestion 10", etc., but the 8" Eminence in my combo sounds best to me... IT'S HOT!

 

[/quote']

 

Mine is a V1. My musical taste leans primarily with the blues, how does that Eminence perform with the blues? Most times I play clean with just a taste of dirt and maybe a little more for Texas blues.

 

Which Eminence are you using in your Valve Jr/

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Robo

Robo

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Posted

 

You won't hate yourself if you try the Bad Monkey. I traded an expensive Marshall compressor pedal in and got the Bad Monkey and a One Shot Combo AC adapter for it...

The Bad Monkey works like a charm. Warm' date=' juicy overdrive, works great with the low output vintage style P/U's I put in the Strat, and low and high tone knobs too play with.[/quote']

I have a Bad Monkey which I think works great thru my Fenders, but just sounds too middy for my taste in the VJr. I just got a Danelectro CoolCat Drive overdrive, a while back, and just LOVE it thru the VJr. The BM sounds muffled and middy thru the VJr, but the Drive just screams. Thick and tasty! Metal enclosure and True bypass. Still on the same battery for three weeks and been playing it everyday. This tone is all purely subjective of course. $24.00 couldn't beat it.

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Eracer_Team

Eracer_Team

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Just Strum: Are you sure yours is a Ver1? looks like a ver2 to me

(this is the face plate of a rev1: http://duhvoodooman.com/VJr/VJr_mods.htm )

 

From what I can remember the Valve Junior name and the graphic lines at the top make it a Ver2, the Ver1 combo's had the graphic line going through the center of the face plate, and through the volume control straigh over to the power switch.

Rev1 also used a/c heater lines on the pcb and made the amp hum with even mild volume, ver2/3 switch to d/c heaters and don't have the hum issues.

rev2 benefits from an output transformer change, rev3 does not (unless you're very picky)

(ver1 just needs a lot of work, but I'm fairly sure your's is a rev2)

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Just Strum

Just Strum

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Posted
Just Strum: Are you sure yours is a Ver1? looks like a ver2 to me

(this is the face plate of a rev1: http://duhvoodooman.com/VJr/VJr_mods.htm )

 

From what I can remember the Valve Junior name and the graphic lines at the top make it a Ver2' date=' the Ver1 combo's had the graphic line going through the center of the face plate, and through the volume control straigh over to the power switch.

Rev1 also used a/c heater lines on the pcb and made the amp hum with even mild volume, ver2/3 switch to d/c heaters and don't have the hum issues.

rev2 benefits from an output transformer change, rev3 does not (unless you're very picky)

(ver1 just needs a lot of work, but I'm fairly sure your's is a rev2)[/quote']

 

Funny you should use that link, DVM is the guy I bought it from and he is the one that listed it as a V1

 

from another forum:

 

This is a "version 1" Valve Jr, so first it needed to have the original design shortcomings fixed (mostly excessive hum/noise and some grounding errors). After that, I added some new features, as well as making numerous improvements to the amp's gain & tone, plus a few safety & relaibility enhancements. Many of these are included in a group of mods that have become very popular with the VJr modder community, often referred to as the "silver/gold mods". I stuck with the stock speaker and original EH/Sovtek tubes, and Strum can upgrade those later, as he sees fit.

 

Noise/Hum Reduction

 

* Convert to DC filament heating

* Add more filtering to power section

* Multiple resistor & capacitor upgrades to reduce noise

 

Reliability & Safety Mods

 

* Reduce voltage levels and bias of EL84 power tube (stock is w-a-a-a-y too hot)

* Upgrade multiple resistors to quieter/safer metal oxide type

* Replace dinky stock volume pot with a beefier 24mm pot

* Add "bleeder" resistor to DC power rail to drain large filter caps after power-down (shock hazard reduction)

 

Added Features

 

* Tone pot, patterned on Fender's Tweed-era Princeton amp

* Standby switch

* Gain boost switch

* Brightness switch

* 8 and 16 ohm output jacks (stock is 4 ohm)

 

Tone & Gain Improvements

 

* Upgrade stock output transformer to a Hammond 125DSE--multiple tonal benefits

* Multiple resistor and capacitor changes/upgrades to improve tone, clarity, gain and punch

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Eracer_Team

Eracer_Team

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very interesting, dvm was one of the first to start moding epiphones, maybe this was one of the cross-over combo's that started to look like a ver2 before the ver1 stuff ran out and the converted all the combo's over.

 

one way to tell is the circuit board installed, rev1's are very different from rev2's (rev3's are the same layout as 2's but the board changed to colour black).

 

if you are really interested to know,you can look at his web site and see the ver1 boards, and a if you look at this web site it shows a stock rev2 board: http://www.billrushing.org/20060711_epiphone_valve_junior_pt2.htm

 

That's only if you're really interested in knowing... Not that I doubt dvm's work.

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