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Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2010 4:04 pm
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thank you 63supro.
i was thinking you forgot me here.
i respect your opinions on tubes to be sure.
let me ask you, what differences will i notice with the JJ's ?
i do like my blues jr but feel from reading, it can be better.
which JJ's would you suggest so if we talk about them here i will at least know what we are talking about?
what should i expect to spend to rebias a amp?


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Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2010 11:09 pm
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way cool jr wrote:
thank you 63supro.
i was thinking you forgot me here.
i respect your opinions on tubes to be sure.
let me ask you, what differences will i notice with the JJ's ?
i do like my blues jr but feel from reading, it can be better.
which JJ's would you suggest so if we talk about them here i will at least know what we are talking about?
what should i expect to spend to rebias a amp?


I will bow to 63supro's vast experience if he has another idea, but I will tell you my story.

I purchased an NOS Blues Jr about 3 months ago. From reading about the amp and other users, I decided that right out of the box I would change the GT's for a set of JJ's. I did play the GT's for about an hour just so I would have my own point of comparison.

The end result was a much warmer and bluesy sounding amp with the JJs. I got mine from Eurotubes and on their suggestion, went with their standard retube kit. When I want/need to switch again, I may go for a set with more headroom since I tend to play cleaner sounds.

I jam with a guy who has anther NOS BJ that he got at almost the same time as me. He really liked the tones he got out of my amp and asked what mods I had done. The only thing I have done is drop the JJs in.

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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 5:45 am
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thank you for your report on these.
what did that kit cost you?
did you bias your amp accordingly?
thats what im looking for i think, a more bluesy
tone with room for a pedal up front.

anybody else have experience with tube changes in the blues jr?


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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 5:46 am
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way cool jr wrote:
thank you 63supro.
i was thinking you forgot me here.
i respect your opinions on tubes to be sure.
let me ask you, what differences will i notice with the JJ's ?
i do like my blues jr but feel from reading, it can be better.
which JJ's would you suggest so if we talk about them here i will at least know what we are talking about?
what should i expect to spend to rebias a amp?


Your amp may be in spec, who knows? Prices vary from tech to tech.
YMMV with tone too. I wanted more breakup, so I went with Eurotubes Blues Option #1. I also had a HRDlx so the tone was a bit different than a Blues Jr., but I do run them in my Egnater. There's a bit of a difference in tone between 6L6and EL84 power tubes. I find the EL84's a git more aggressive.

But the JJ's for me were a little warmer, tighter and the bottom end was a little fatter. They also took away the ice pick in the forehead syndrome that plagues the HRDlx. Tone is always subjective.

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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 5:55 am
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hum...... now i need to hear different tubes side by side to make a better educated choice on this.
ok 63supro, the tone im after
(w/o getting into the tone is in your hands bit)
is more of a SRV type. i like the dirty sound
but controlable with a roll back of the volume control on the guitar,
like it to clean up on demand.


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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 7:14 am
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way cool jr wrote:
hum...... now i need to hear different tubes side by side to make a better educated choice on this.
ok 63supro, the tone im after
(w/o getting into the tone is in your hands bit)
is more of a SRV type. i like the dirty sound
but controlable with a roll back of the volume control on the guitar,
like it to clean up on demand.


An Ibanez Tube Screamer would be a bit easier. A Marshall Bluesbreaker clone from BYOC sounds even better to my ears. I built two of them, one modded for my Strat and Dano's single coils and one left alone for my Humbucker and P90 equipped guitars. They are true bypass too.

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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 2:15 pm
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63supro wrote:

An Ibanez Tube Screamer would be a bit easier.


as loyal as ive been with Boss (20 plus yrs)
ive elected to move away from them for this rig and maybe
go with radial's classic tonebone or their texas bone pedal.
if not one of those im gonna go with fulltone OCD V3.
from reading, ive come to see that JJ tubes are much better than the stock Blues jr tubes. if thats actually the case then they too need to go.


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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 4:16 pm
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I'd like to offer some pointers here, as I've gigged extensively with a BJr over the last 10 years. I currently own 2 BJr's, one is a Custom Shop Exotic I've owned for 10 years, the other is a newer Tweed with a Texas Heat speaker, neither amp has been modded, except for tubes or speaker. Neither amp had been touched with a soldering iron.

I can agree with the other posters on the results of changing to the JJ tubes. For me, the standout difference between them and the Sovteks was more articulation of individual notes when playing slightly driven chords and a "cleaner" type of breakup, losing the "fuzzyness" that seems to be there with the Sovteks. The bottom end is a little more pronounced and solid sounding and the top is smoother. I found the amp to "sound" a little louder with the JJ's but that may be a side effect of the better clarity, I'm not sure on that.

Just a word on the OD pedals, for this amp try to stick with a fairly transparent OD pedal, one that doesn't colour the mids much or add a hump in the mids, because the BJ already has plenty of that and it will push you further toward that "boxy" sound that some users complain about. This may not bother you though.

I only use a pedal for boosting or pushing the amp when it's already just breaking up naturally, so my advice might not suit your needs but the nicest sounding OD pedal I've found to compliment my BJr's is called a Hotcake, it is made by Crowther Audio and it sounds especially nice with an EL 84 amp, I didn't like using it with my Deluxe Reverb or CVR at all, but with the BJr it is superb, as always that's individual taste. See if you can find one to try out.

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/reviews/ ... index.html

On my BJr's I always max the Master Volume to 12 on the dial and then treat the amp like a non-master amp by bringing up the Volume to where the amp is just starting to break up, usually around 5 on the dial, the amp feels the most dynamic there and will either play clean, or break up, according to picking attack, to my ears the BJ just sounds better running that way. At some smaller venues this is too loud, so I use a Weber Mini-Mass25 to attenuate it a bit and in the context of the band, it still sounds way better that any pedal to my ears, and for the price of a pedal it's a nice tool to have.

If you like to run a cleaner amp and to use pedals, you really will need to experiment a bit and find what you like as there are a million OD pedals out there and someone likes or dislikes every one of them. :wink:

Hope this helps a bit.

Cheers,

Snowy


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Post subject:
Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 4:52 pm
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snowy.

thank you for your reply.
i always look forward to hearing your input on things.
ok as for now, the BJR is a bedroom amp.
given some time, that will change i promise.
the pedals i have chosen are because they sound great at low and high volumes.
you mentioned "transparent" early in your reply.
im not sure what you mean. can you tryt to explain that to me or give a youtube example?.


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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 5:36 pm
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By "Transparent" I mean a pedal that doesn't add much of it's own colouring to the sound and still lets your Guitar/Amp's own tonality come through in the resulting sound. It's like the pedal is not there and that is important if you already like the sound of your amp/guitar. Some pedals really "colour" the sound and if you listen to a few OD pedals you will soon hear this in action.

That's why I don't particularly like a Tubescreamer type pedal with my BJr's, because you can hear it trim off the bass (which the BJ really can't afford to lose) and it bumps the mids quite a bit (again, the BJ really doesn't need more mids). I do love my TS808 but I love it better with a Blackface amp.

With a transparent pedal like the Hotcake you can even set it so that when you switch the pedal on/off you are really hard pressed to hear the sound change at all, if you increase the gain then your amp just sounds like it got turned up, the EQ doesn't change perceptibly, there's no loss of bass or increased mids and compression, the original dynamics are still there.

A nice sounding cheap pedal I suggest should try with your BJ is the Danelectro Cool Cat Transparent Overdrive, it is a direct copy/rip-off of the much more expensive "Timmy" pedal (another great pedal).

http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/I ... spx?Page=2


Like I said this is all subjective, you may noe even like what I like and the best answer will be provided by your own ears and your guitar/amp setup, I'm just trying to let you in on my own findings.

Hope that all makes a little sense.

Cheers,

Snowy


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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 6:02 pm
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oh ok now i got yeah. kinda like my Boss Heavy Metal pedals
colored up my carvin stacks. man they are muddy. sweet for metal music but not so much for a blues rig.


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Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 6:21 pm
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The BYOC Bluesbreaker clone is extremely transparent, they pretty much sent my Tube Screamer back to the closet.

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Post subject:
Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 6:25 pm
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will have to look it up on youtube 63.

what do you guys think about the stock Boss BluesDriver??


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Post subject: Blues Jr
Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 6:28 pm
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Hey way cool jr,

Have you checked out the POD by Line 6? It is a software(I think) based device that has different amp models and different effects in a programmable package. You can have just about any amp sound and effects that you want from the POD. It is extremely adjustable and allows you to save your own combination's as presets for easy recall. It also comes with plenty of factory presets if you don't like to make adjustments. And the best part is some models will connect to a computer for recording and updating the software.

I've really enjoyed mine (POD XT) and the only issue I have with it is that it adds a very low hiss to the amp, not very noticeable but it is there, until I turn it up and play, then I don't hear it at all. I think that most effects pedals will add a little hiss though. Used on eBay, under $150 with shipping. New cost a GC $399.


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Post subject:
Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 8:31 pm
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ive seen these. they have some nice sounds indeed.
if i were into metal still i would probably have one.
i still have tons of rack gear from back when i was into the metal thing too.
now im just using my pedals.
to me, the line6 stuff is pretty cool, yet theres just that something missing.
i just cant put my finger on what it is.
i do want to see that line6 guitar ive heard about. that would be fun to play if it were actually a high quality guitar. roland had a setup like that back in the day. steve stevens used it. man that thing was crazy. did everything.
one of the major problems i have with things like that is if 1 thing goes out, your done. with my stomp box approach you just replace the bad and there you have it, or just do w/o the effect for the moment, and still have everything else.


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