A recomendation.
I bought one last week at Banjo Center. The Epiphone Valve Junior head a class A, 5 watt tube amp head for $99, with one 12AX7 and one EL84. One chickenhead volume knob on the front panel, and three jacks on the backs (4, 8 and 16 ohms) Real vintage vibe and tone for cheap, that will crank convincingly at living room volume levels.
Here’s a link to some tone clips I found on the web that got me interested in the first place…
http://www.instituteofnoise.com/L6/ampclips.asp
Mmmmm. Now I have even more G.A.S. Trouble is that amp might be $99 in the US but it’s £99 in the UK… basically twice as much!
I was saving for a new mic for using live (probably a Shure Beta 58), but seeing this, that may have changed!
X
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Hi Tom Hicks:
The amp you describe is a fascinating design… A single-ended class A output…
Do you have a link to some photos of it? and where do you suppose that amp is manufactured?
Bill…
Yeah - I’ve been looking at that head for a while thinking that it be a nice thing to pick up. Certainly the price is right.
And not too many knobs, either. 
Just bought the combo version. Very cool unit, sounds very 50’s when not played too loud.
I’d figure it would be a perfect match for upright piano in lively living room with upright bass and a drummer with brushes… band playing “Trying to Get to You”.
| Quote (woxnerw @ Feb. 09 2007,00:08) |
| Hi Tom Hicks: The amp you describe is a fascinating design… A single-ended class A output… Do you have a link to some photos of it? and where do you suppose that amp is manufactured? Bill… |
Hi Bill
Designed in the usa by gibson after their low watt tube amps from the 50s and built in china.
anybody got a suggestion for a small cab to go with this, for recording purposes ?
Search around on google. Theres a bunch of simple mods that really improve it to such as this and more…
http://www.valvejunior.com/
This amp has quite a following… I don’t think the amp is into it’s Second Edition, yet… I think this amp could benefit from an output transformer “Secondary” feedback “Loop” to act as a Presence Control… What that would do is… Control it’s Hi-End “Edge”… It connects to the “Buffer” stage cathode circuit…
Bill…
[EDIT]
I haven’t heard the amp and how it behaves… But I don’t care much for the Light-Bulb in the Speaker Loop… idea… I think that stresses the output transformer secondary winding…
Just make sure you do not play a fender blues junior when you are shopping. What you get becomes more obvious. I found it lacking compared to my kalamazoo model 2
but the price is nice.
| Quote (ChuckGlyder @ Feb. 11 2007,06:21) |
| Search around on google. Theres a bunch of simple mods that really improve it to such as this and more… http://www.valvejunior.com/ |
taking this OT, I smile when I see the plethora of “mods” to make kit “better”. Being in electronics myself I’m vary aware of cost cutting manufacture, and maybe using cheaper components, but I find it very interesting when I read things like “changing this capacitor from X to Y will make things better”. Sure it may make things different, but to be “better” almost implies that the manufacturer didn’t design it right in the first place.
Anyway, not a dig a Chuck’s post, just me thinking out loud.
Hi XonXoff:
I was gonna take my post in that direction … but… I bit my tongue…
When I worked at the MusicStop where I was the service manager, I used to get the guys coming in to ask me if I could make their amp sound like a Fender Twin… or Whatever… ??
On the other hand the guys would come in a grab a guitar off the line and go over to the amp line and try out amps… I used to hear them do their “Chopps”… and then they would ask me if I knew what amp they were playing on… I wasn’t able to see what amp they were playing on from where I was, but I used to “Piss” them off when they asked me… I would tell them IT sound exactly like them… Ann Murray’s Guitar Player and I would have fun with each other when he would come in on a Slow Morning and try to get me to guess what amp combo he would be playing with… He had the ability to make any guitar/amp combo sound exactly like any other guitar/amp combo on the line… It didn’t matter… IT always sounded like him playing… He’d get some ugly at me… 
Bill…
You could give me a $3000 Prs and 5k worth of amps and I still could not sound like Carlos Santana but I bet he could make my $300 MIM strat and my pod sound just like him.
| Quote (291dw @ Feb. 12 2007,00:00) |
| You could give me a $3000 Prs and 5k worth of amps and I still could not sound like Carlos Santana but I bet he could make my $300 MIM strat and my pod sound just like him. |
Perhaps, but you’d still sound and play better with the better equipment.
I want a K model 2!
Tom S
Against my better judgement I bought a model 2 on ebay last year for $150. It was as described and after a easy cap job and cord replacement it sounds great. They are pretty bullet proof inside but alot of the cabs get trashed. It really sounds cool with a harp and the vol all the way up.
I bet it does.
TomS - you can get those little amp’s on ebay from around $200.
On the Valve Junior, here’s a post from another forum when the guy modded his:
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| It’s amazing what a few mods will do for this amp. It didn’t suck when I got it, but with the mods… I LOVE IT. Better touch sensitivity, more control over tone, can get a MUCH better distortion… The chime is there. It’s everything that I wanted this amp to be. When I finish a mod, I usually think “hmmm, maybe I should tweak this…” I think this one is a keeper as-is. Here’s a run-down: Added bright switch Added bass and treble (modified Fender style) Increased gain in both preamp stages a bit to compensate for tone stack Added Standby Upgraded coupling caps And there’s the Attenuator Circuit… I used a 16 ohm L-Pad with a switch for use with 8 ohm speaker at -3 dB. I used TRS Rean type jacks and wired the center connect to give ground ONLY when no speakers are connected. That engages the dummy load. Then I put in a variable line out. The attenuator works quiet well, down to reasonable levels. If you go to whisper level, there is tone sucking and it gets a bit muddy. But I expected that. At a subjective “half as loud” level, it still sounds pretty darned good! The difference between worrying if the neighbors hear, or concentrating on my playing. I haven’t tried the line out, yet. I plan to try it into the front of my Super Reverb. It turns the VJ into an oversized REAL distortion pedal. Or a guy could record off of it, but that’s take EQ to compensate for the missing speaker. I do have a Yahoo group for those with some background knowledge and understanding of the safety concerns. It’s by invitation only, and there are more pictures there, and eventually my schematic will be posted. Here are a couple of exterior pics: http://www.seattle-attorney.com/guitar/ModifiedFront.jpg http://www.seattle-attorney.com/guitar/ModifiedRear.jpg |
I played a show last night with the Valve Junior. The soundman flipped out when he heard it and…bought my backup one off of me, in cash, right there.
These things are soooooo much fun.