Best Practice Amp (under $500) for Rics

wormdiet · Post by **wormdiet** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 6:00 am

The big issue I have with a lot of "practice" amps is that they come with dinky speakers and flabby low end.

ken_j · Post by **ken_j** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 6:32 am

Paul, If you have the early Blues Jr. with the green circuit board there is a fix for the reverb hum. I have the link at home for the mods. Let me know and I will post it or send some info to your Email. Mine is a later version with the cream board. Fender fixed it by then.

quote:
"The big issue I have with a lot of 'practice' amps is that they come with dinky speakers and flabby low end."
The Blues Jr. has a 12" speaker. The bottom end is ok, but I changed two of the tone circuit caps for even more bottom. The cost was about $5.

early_topboost · Post by **early_topboost** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 12:14 pm

I have a Blues Junior, and I love it! Very Vox ac15ish. Running the master volume at full, and the preamp to about 4 gives a great full sound with slight break up. Loud enough for the bands I play in, and this amp sounds good played quietly as well.
I recently compared a Traynor 20w combo to a new BJ, not bad but much harsher in my opinion. The BJ has a more "classic" tone.

chim · Post by **chim** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 12:53 pm

i have a traynor ycv40 and i think it sounds absolutely beautiful, i never crank it past 3 and it just sounds gorgeous with ricks. No headphone output though, if thats a major deal

ken_j · Post by **ken_j** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 3:25 pm

As promised here is the link for the Blues Jr. mods. They are backed up with alot of data and test results. I did the bias mod and the tone stack mod and am very happy with both. The reverb mod is about halfway down the page. I found this on the Fender forum. I only read good reveiws about it.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/machrone/bluesjunior.htm

paul_shover · Post by **paul_shover** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 3:48 pm

Ken,
My Blues Junior does have the green circuit board and I would love to fix that hum. I use that amp live every week, and if I have the reverb on, it bothers the soundman. So I have just left the reverb off for the last year or two. So if you would, I would love to have that link on how to fix it. Thanks, Paul

paul_shover · Post by **paul_shover** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 3:50 pm

Ken, Thank-you very much. I will get to work on it. Paul

ken_j · Post by **ken_j** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 4:39 pm

Paul, You are welcome. Do the bias mod too, you won't regret it. Bill is a good guy to deal with. If you buy the kits from him he sends you templates for drilling and laying out the mods on the circuit board plus a little more info than on the web site. Well worth it.

fendertweed2 · Post by **fendertweed2** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 2:20 pm

VibroChamp, BF or SF...

rogiercreemers · Post by **rogiercreemers** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:56 pm

I use a Laney LC-15R and it sounds really sweet... So sweet even, that I gig with it (with a mike stuck in front of the amp of course).

wormdiet · Post by **wormdiet** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:05 pm

I just bought a vox tonelab SE. I'm running it through an ancient solid state practice amp and. . . it sounds really good!. On the "clean" models it breaks up very, very nicely when you dig in with strumming. It is more versatile than anything that comes with a speaker, but you can use any powered monitor with a relatively flat frequency response with it. Something like a keyboard amp or PA monitor apparently works best, but solid state guitar amps work fine too.

The version of the tonelab without stomp pedals (more like a POD-type box) runs $300.

ken_j · Post by **ken_j** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 2:41 am

John, is that the one that uses a single tube (possibly a 12AX7)?

wormdiet · Post by **wormdiet** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 4:40 am

Indeed. In the POWER section.