Hey there community friends, my first ever tube amp arrived recently, a Fender Blues Junior IV, the Tweed model with Jensen speakers. I am very happy with how it looks, sounds and feels
I got a ton of advice from the community that led to this selection.
Congratulation Ashu.
I think there’s a lot to like about that amp. I almost got one too.
I really like the IV version. I don’t know what changed between the III and the IV, but I really liked the IV.
Now the question is, will your old amps that aren’t tube amps get any play at all? Hope you really enjoy having a tube amp. The tones they can produce will be addicting.
Just hope ya don’t get bit by the tube amp bug though. Assuming that ya do get bit (very easy to do when one is in the house), that’ll lead you to buying more tube amps in the future…
Congrats man and hope you have a lot of fun with your new amp.
Nice Amp, Jensen speakers in a Fender Tweed amp are a match made in heaven! It’s sonically a wonderful combination, full of what Fender amps are about!
I had hoped to buy a tube amp that had some of the modern features of my digital amp eg FX loop so I can mix acoustic and electric guitar sounds, a direct out to my DAW… but I decided to keep my Catalyst 60 for those use cases, and use the Blues Jr for all others.
To me, that’s the fun of a tube amp. It’s just me and my amp (maybe a pedal or two, sometimes). To me, it’s what tones I can get out of my tube amp w/o any outside influence.
As for DI into my DAW. Two of my amps have line out, so I could plug into my DAW. However I don’t. I put a mic in ft of them. My 3rd amp don’t even have line out. It’s just a amp. No choice but to mic it.
It’s the simplicity of this that I like. There are many tones to get out of your tube amp. Embrace the simplicity… Play with the control you do have. ie tone stack, vol. controls, onboard reverb I think ya got. + ya got your guitar tone and vol. controls too. That’s quite a bit of control imho. Just not effects.
It’s like my acoustic guitar. It’s just me and my guitar. If I sound good, I’m doing good. If I sound bad, I got work to do as there is nothing (ie effects) to cover my poor playing.
Embrace simplicity!
I’ve really been leaning towards something else for an amp for awhile.
My Fender Champion 40 is a decent amp but I can’t quite get the sound I want out of it. I can get somewhat close and I’ve done okay with that. But it’s just not quite there. I’d love a boutique amp and there’s more than one boutique amp builder in town. One of them has prices I’d have to save and budget for a long time to buy. The other one has more modest prices that are not too far off from what a new Blues Jr. would cost.
That said, I think I want something with at least a master volume. I played on a Blues Jr. tweed amp at the local Guitar Center and that just emphasized to me that a master volume control is exactly what I want.
Much more fine-grained control over the volume and the way it sounds at that volume than what I have without getting too fiddly. I thought when I bought it that my Champion 40 gives me some control over tone without being too fiddly with settings but I’m leaning harder and harder on wanting even fewer settings. Also I like the reverb on the Blues Jr. better than the reverb on mine. Reverb on the Champ 40 is combined with chorus and you can’t really adjust them independently of each other.
GC didn’t have my exact guitar in the shop, but they had one that was pretty close. The pickups were the same. Mine has different pots with more push-pull controls (the one I played in the store didn’t have push-pull pots). The tone that came from that guitar through the Blues Jr. amp is exactly the sort of sound I want. I think I’m going to head into the store with my guitar just to make sure it sounds pretty similar and that the pots don’t change things that much. And if it sounds just as good, I think I’ll sell my Champ and put the proceeds towards a lightly used Blues Jr. (the prices on the used market are pretty good - benefits of there being quite a few of these out there).
I can’t imagine my guitar could sound THAT much different from the (less expensive) one I tried in the store. A little bit, sure. Tomorrow will be a shorter day at work, I think, so maybe I’ll take my Epiphone in to try.