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Post subject: Looking for Blues Junior with BillM mods
Posted: Sun Jul 11, 2010 5:07 pm
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I've been over to the other fender forum, but was curious if anyone here had the mods done, and what you thought afterword.

I'd like to find one already modded to compare, I'm not much of a solderer to do it myself...


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Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 9:07 am
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I had Billm himself mod my amp and the difference is" night and day". It is important to know that the mods don't change this amp into something else, , rather unleash the full potential/tone of this amp. My modded BJ is cleaner, more articulate with fuller bottom and sweeter highs. After mods the tone controls are way more sensitive to dial in the preferred sound you are looking for.


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Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 5:17 pm
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Campfirehero, I may be able to help you out. I have a blues jr. for sale. I can do the mod's for you. I've modified many blues jr's for harmonica players as well as guitar players. I have all the right parts in stock to do all the Bill M mods and then some. I am not a dealer or a reseller. Contact me if you're interested. Post a reply with your email address and I'll contact you.


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Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 5:39 pm
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I have a Blues Junior with BillM mods which I am currently trying to sell. I've decided to move up to the Rivera Venus.

I did the tone stack mod replacing capacitors in the tone stack to move the values closer to the old Princeton amps. I also did the O/T (output transformer) swap. Bill uses a smaller and less expensive O/T nowadays for his conversions but the one I swapped in was the large Trace Elliot model he used to use a few years ago. I also installed the bias pot for the power tube adjustment. The bias numbers now have to be slightly different from stock due to the different O/T. I have them written down somewhere. Before and after numbers for a stock-like setting. This gives me a reference point to start from.

The tone stack mod improves bass and mid response by a significant amount. The treble response remains unchanged although Bill does have a mod for increasing treble as well. I felt the BJ was bright enough as it was and only wanted more beef. The new tone stack supplies that beef quite well. The O/T swap provides more available power for the improved bass response particularly in regard to transient response. The amp now has much greater thump and goes deeper. The chime and clarity of the amp was pretty much unchanged by these mods and is similar to a stock amp but with a little greater depth to it.

The mods I did to the amp made a wonderful improvement. It is now almost acceptable to me but not quite. Being something of an amp snob I am still not 100% happy with the amp and that's why I'm looking at (15 watt) amps in 3 or 4 times the price range of a brand new BJ. However, many people love the BJ and can't afford an expensive pro grade amp and if they heard my Blues Junior they'd love it even more as it is a vast improvement over stock.

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Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 6:00 pm
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BMW, an output transformer change should not be any cause for you to change the bias. Output tubes have a set range of bias that is determined by the tube type.


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Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 6:14 pm
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you can contact me at



for billm mods


Last edited by campfirehero on Tue Jul 13, 2010 8:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 6:46 pm
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grbullets wrote:
BMW, an output transformer change should not be any cause for you to change the bias. Output tubes have a set range of bias that is determined by the tube type.


The BJ Guru himself, Bill Machrone, told me what values to use for a similar-to-stock setting, citing the transformer as the reason for a change from stock values. I may be an amp snob but I'm not a techie-guy so I just followed his advise. I don't know enough about it to argue.

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