don't buy a Fender Blues Junior .....

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ranjam said:
So there's a brittle top end to Blues Junior amplifiers. Thousands of people still bought them. And then there's those people who have no issue paying $1K or much more for a guitar they'll have to 'fix up' so it's usable, but get their full ***** on about an amplifier that costs $499 that is too bright or doesn't have 'character'. I guess I didn't spell that out, and it looks like I have a hankering comparing apples to oranges. But what I was really saying is don't buy an apple and ***** it doesn't taste like that orange you bought last week.

I think ranjam makes a reasonable defence of the BJ, as does Marcus. Fair point. The amps must have their good points or nobody would buy them.

I think the original point of this thread was to point out that, although many people love the Fender BJ, many other people (myself included) find them over-rated & tone-free. So many of the BJ reviews praise the amp very highly, so I was hugely disappointed when I bought mine a few years back, & I wasn't sad to see it go. People need to be aware that the BJ is not a typical sounding small Fender amp, & it's a bit of a "love it or hate it" beast.

But if you love it & can get good sounds out of it, great.

8)
 
ranjam said:
And for many BJ fans, a relatively cheap speaker was all it took to make the amp quite usable. A speaker that cost less than a set of decent pickups :wink:. All I'm saying is either see the potential, or look elsewhere.

To be fair here, isn't that often the case? My early 90s Fender '63 Vibroverb RI is a superb amp, but it's considerably better since I replaced the stock Oxford re-issue speakers with a pair of Jensens costing less than ?100. They transformed the amp.
 
stratman323 said:
ranjam said:
So there's a brittle top end to Blues Junior amplifiers. Thousands of people still bought them. And then there's those people who have no issue paying $1K or much more for a guitar they'll have to 'fix up' so it's usable, but get their full ***** on about an amplifier that costs $499 that is too bright or doesn't have 'character'. I guess I didn't spell that out, and it looks like I have a hankering comparing apples to oranges. But what I was really saying is don't buy an apple and ***** it doesn't taste like that orange you bought last week.

I think ranjam makes a reasonable defence of the BJ, as does Marcus. Fair point. The amps must have their good points or nobody would buy them.

I think the original point of this thread was to point out that, although many people love the Fender BJ, many other people (myself included) find them over-rated & tone-free. So many of the BJ reviews praise the amp very highly, so I was hugely disappointed when I bought mine a few years back, & I wasn't sad to see it go. People need to be aware that the BJ is not a typical sounding small Fender amp, & it's a bit of a "love it or hate it" beast.

But if you love it & can get good sounds out of it, great.

8)

I have three now - all the Limited Edition tweeds with the birch cabs and the Italian made Jensens... side by side, they each had a little bit of a different personality.

Then I loaded one of them I put into a handmade, dovetail joined, solid pine cab and it has a totally different character than it's cousins - much warmer and less punchy. Kinda like it:

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015.jpg
 
leadguitar_323 said:
And aren't pickups the heart of the tone? Even the P90's in any Junior I've had were microphonic. So there's a huge flaw with the guitars in my mind.

I don't wish to argue either so just a few points. Pickups are NOT the heart of the tone, the wood is and as far as pickups being a "huge flaw" well thats just rubbish, a misaligned neck or a broken headstock are "huge flaws" and i must say that there are piles of people that love the Tokai pickups so thats more your opinion than "a huge flaw". Wax potting pickups is extremely cheap and easy to fix so i think you are being a little melodramatic with your examples. I understand what you are trying to say but you are misinformed as to where "tone" is developed in a guitar. For example, i showed Ozeshin my RR-65 greco, unplugged it has a harmonic feed back on the "D" string at the fifth fret, which is only coming from the wood, granted it sounds better plugged in but this guitar is very resonant and feeds back acoustically, the pickups are just a vehicle for transporting the tone to the amp, they do not create the tone, although they will alter it to a degree and this comes down to,personal preference. Also P90's are single coil pickups and single coils are known to scream under volume. Just a thought, pickups prematurely feeding back is totally different to a pickup going micro phonic..... Which are you referring to? Someone else may like to elaborate on this one...

Mick

Aaaaahhhhh! I know I'm not eloquent, or well spoken. But how do I get misunderstood so often? Ah well, maybe I'm just not clever enough to get a simple point across. Here is a loooooooooong and boring story. Maybe it'll make sense.
I wanted to be a little different, so I started buying Tokai Les Pauls years ago. I bought from eBay, I bought from 'koiz', I bought from 'tokaijoe', I bought from US sellers, I bought from Canadian sellers. You name it. My idea was to buy 'a few', pick the best one or three, and flip the others back to recoup as much of my money as possible. I wasn't out to make money, but not to lose my shorts either, Many I resold I lost $100 or so on, and I considered that rental fees.
I ended up with about twelve guitars. This cost me a lot of money. But some guitars were 'Reborn', others plain 'Love Rock' models. Some had nice tops, some didn't. A few weighed seven or eight pounds, others weighed closer to ten pounds. Some had the circuit board for the controls, others didn't.
The one thing they all had in common? MICROPHONIC PICKUPS!!!!! Unusable. At that time I was still playing hard rock with a pair of Marshall half-stacks. No pedals, not even a tuner in front of the amp. No JCM2000's either. Either a JMP and a JCM800 mixed or two JCM800's. Just a guitar, a cable, and the amplifier. Nothing crazy. And any volume on the amp past '2' resulted in squealling feedback. I could talk into the pickup if I held the guitar close to my face, and I could hear my voice from the amplifier louder than the PA! It was not tubes, it was not the guitar cable. IT WAS THE PICKUPS!!!!!
Undaunted, I just thought about.....Well, with better pickups, this guitar would be cool. I can't play this guitar right now. Maybe the next one will have better pickups, I'll swap them, and flip the squeally guitar over! It didn't turn out that way.
At least with a Blues Junior you don't like, it is still usable to record, or do some coffee house gigs with. It doesn't hiss, spit, go snap, crackle, or pop and ruin a performance. That amp has no real flaws other than not appealing to you (or whoever). The Tokai guitars I bought? Useless as is. For me anyway. I did plug them into low gain amps, and they worked. You could still use the guitar as a microphone if you wanted, but at least they didn't squeal away. The guitars were really useless for me, but I saw potential, especially when I saw what Gibson was charging. I didn't go for Seymour Duncan Hot Rails, Invaders, or Full Shred pickups either. What did I get? Low output Gibson '57 Classics, that are advertised as being double wax dipped. Problem solved. I could crank two Marshalls, stand right in front of the amps, and not have any squealing. And I had a cool Les Paul with a killer top that cost me well under what Gibson wanted at that time. The Juniors I had were also bad. Jason Lollar fixed that up in a hurry. Now with that Tokai I have Leslie West tone on a budget. It's really nice.
The point is also reinforced when I mention I turned a few friends onto Tokai, and they ordered from some of the same people I did. To my utter shock, they also got microphonic pickups :roll:. We just accepted it.
Does this make sense? I couldn't take a stock Tokai Love Rock and play it out. I could take a stock Blues Junior and play out with it right now. And the Tokai guitars dated from the late 70's up to the late 80's, so I didn't get a bad batch.
 
I understand what you are saying, its just funny how someone elses experience can be totally different. You shouldn't assume i play at lower volume or on clean amps or what ever because i am metal through and through, just ask Ozeshin... now correct me if i am wrong but premature feedback and microphonic pickups are different animals, pickups that feedback early in the volume range are usually cheap ceramic or non wax potted or non hum canceling single coils. The issue you have relates more to squealing feedback which has more to do with shielding and earthing related issues or wax potting the pickups, all of these issues are relatively easy to fix. If the pickups have "died" and become microphonic then maybe new magnets would help. It seems that it depends on where you are in the world as to what the definition is of microphonic so we will stick to feeding back here as thats what i think you refer to. All the early Gibbo's had no wax potting so a lot of the earlier LP's made by Tokai were the same so thats why they feedback, there is actually nothing wrong with the pickups and in fact they sound excellent when used properly. They are NOT unusable its just that you don't use them properly. Look into wax potting, its cheap and fixes your problem easily, shielded wire will make an improvement as will shielding paint in the pick up cavity, remember these guitars are made to replicate the early Gibbo's and they do it very well, its horses for courses. :p
I have a Greco that has "to die for"tone and its pickups are not potted, i have no trouble with squealing as i use my volume control and tone control just like lots of guitarists do , i will never pot these pickups because i don't want any changes in tone and i don't have any problems with squeal as i control it with the controls or a volume pedal, i never stand not playing my guitar with the volume control open, thats just asking for trouble. I play Black label stuff and sevendust and my originals are along similar lines so yes i love it loud... :wink:

I hope this doesn't sound too argumentative at all, just trying to discuss your problem.....Happy new year

Mick
 
leadguitar_323 said:
I have a Greco that has "to die for"tone and its pickups are not potted, i have no trouble with squealing as i use my volume control and tone control just like lots of guitarists do , i will never pot these pickups because i don't want any changes in tone and i don't have any problems with squeal as i control it with the controls or a volume pedal

Mick, you are, of course, quite right that non wax-potted humbuckers are period correct for 50s Les Pauls, Tokai are merely copying Gibson. It's not just humbuckers that get microphonic & then squeal, I've had it happen with some Strat & Tele pickups, & it's easily & cheaply cured by wax potting - usually around ?10 per pickup.

What I don't understand is when you say you won't pot the pickups on your Greco in case it changes the tone - why should it? Potting pickups has never changed the sound of any of my pickups & I have never heard of anyone else complain that it changes tone either. Wax potting (when needed) seems to me like one of those rare win/win situations.

And you don't get many of them in life.

:wink:
 
I googled "wax potting" and read quite a few articles where some said that it takes a bit of top end sparkle from the pickup after wax potting and my Greco is already a very warm sounding guitar so i didn't want to risk taking more highs away. I haven't actually experienced this myself but it made me a bit more cautious..

Mick
 
I really believe that is just one more example of the myths and hype that gullible guitar players fall for. I know I'll take a beating for saying that, but I'm used to it. I mean, we live in an age where we thought cloth covered wire sounded 'better'. Complete BS, but come on now; how many of you fell for it? And how many miles of the stuff did AES sell?
I graduated from college in 1979 (am I that old? Yep.) with my degree in electronics technology, and I was lucky that we still did some tube theory, but those new-fangled transistors crept into a lot of my book learnin'. After college I worked a lot in the TV repair business before I got lucky and landed with a few Peavey and Fender repair depots in town. My point here is that I was mentored by a lot of old-timers who were servicing tweed Bassman amplifiers when they were new. Me being gullible, I asked a lot of these same questions, and I always got a smack upside the head with a ''Why would ask something that silly? Don't you know better?' I got to hang around some very brilliant repair men, and they taught me to question a lot of the myths. If you cannot show a formula for why it is so, then it ain't so.
I called Seymour Duncan years ago and asked if I could custom order a PAF or a Seth Lover humbucker and have it potted. Seymour went on to tell me it would change the tone. How? I asked. Will it change the DC resistance of the windings? No. Does it change the inductance? No. Well, how? If you pot just the coil, maybe not at all. If you pot the whole pickup, and pot too much, it can kill harmonics and overtones. So the winding capacitance changes? I don't know, and anyway, the point of a PAF and a Seth Lover is to recreate the original, which was not potted. After that I bought the Gibson '57 Classic pickups (double potted!), and gave up on Seymour Duncan. I don't think my Love Rock with doubled potted humbuckers lacks top end or 'sparkle'.
Any pickup becomes microphonic because the coil is wound too loosely around the pole pieces, and will actually vibrate, where this is coupled to the amplifier. No, it isn't shielding or grounding, it's in the windings themselves, so no amount of lipstick can make the pig attractive. You have to pot it, period. Me being lazy and not having a proper pot and/or wax, I just figure it's more fun to try different pickups, and learn about those. I have tried potting my own pickups in the past, but if you aren't super careful you can melt the bobbin of a humbucker (don't ask how I know :oops:). It's an art, and one I don't feel like learning when pickups are repatively cheap. Single coils are easier, since the vulcanized fiber really won't melt or warp with 'a little' excess heat. Still, trying new pickups is more fun, with less mess.
 
ranjam said:
If you cannot show a formula for why it is so, then it ain't so.

Just to muddy the waters a little more here, may I quote an old song title? - It Ain't Necessarily So!

Logically, you're correct. But (and it's a big but...) to follow your logic, all CD players would sound the same, after all it's all merely zeros & ones with digital isn't it? And even getting back to analogue, hi-fi amps of similar or identical spec. should sound the same. But they don't. If you have good ears, if you're in tune with music - and I assume that many of us will have this - there are distinct differences that you can hear. Many of the differences are subtle, many of the differences would not show up on graphs or as part of scientific analysis, but they can be heard.

Why? I have no idea! It's just something that I have found out to be true over the years. So it's quite possible that small changes will make a difference that some people can detect. I accept your point about cloth covered wire, I can't see any reason why it should change the sound. But if you're attempting to make a 50s type pickup it makes sense to make it like the original as far as possible, doesn't it? It was detailed (and badly thought-out) changes that ruined Fenders & Gibsons throughout the 70s.
 
I agree cloth coloured wire makes little or no difference to tone, but some things which aren't measureable do. Build an amp with metal film resistors and it'll sound different to building one with carbon composition resistors, use an ohm meter to measure them and there won't be a difference, and it's not just the way they drift over time either, cabon comps sound warmer when they are new.

Capacitors make a difference too, albeit a subtle one, but mallory caps definetely don't sparkle like orange drops.

As for pickups, I've had plenty potted in my time, and could not tell the difference before & after :D
 
Metal flim resistors are temperature stable, and carbon unfortunately isn't, even brand new. That's the sound we like, and engineers don't understand. Here's how I measure that; take a simple 100K Plate load resistor in metal film and an old carbon composition type. Measure them, and leave your meter leads clipped to the resistor. If you hold your soldering iron very close to or on the body of the resistor, the metal film stays at 100K, and the carbon composition resistor goes up in value. Now put that resistor in an amplifier that heats up, and the value can fluctuate. The gain goes up and down (very slightly), and the current goes up and down (very slightly). It's a cool 'effect' that makes a cool sound. Not hard to understand, but definately not written in books. I like experimenting with this 'stuff', so I have a basement full of signal generators, decade boxes, and oscilloscopes.
Capacitors make a difference, but not in guitar amplifiers that I can 'see' or measure. The old types can be wound or rolled like a cigarette, and can act as an inductor at high frequencies. That you can measure. But ceramic types aren't wound, and any spec sheet claims they aren't inductive until about 500KHz. I think for low frequency the inductance won't matter, and guitar amplifiers fall into the low frequency catagory. That's why I have never drank from the Kool-Aid that makes me buy a designer capacitor.
Do I have an answer for CD players sounding different? I don't know. Maybe the A/D converters are better in some players. Sure it's just 1's and 0's, but if the buffers and converters are cheaper/better, the CD sounds different. That's the only BS explanation I can come up with on short notice. Amps are easy to explain; different OPT's are a good place to look. Different primary impedance, difference core material, different winding resistance and/or inductance. I don't think anyone sources the same parts. An Ampeg SVT and a US Marshall can both have 6550's and sound completely different. That's not very hard to figure out.
Oh, well. That's enough poop disturbing for one day. If you ever want to open a huge can of worms on any guitar topic, I'm your boy. I have just enough college electronics training and carnival barker experience to make any sane person want to knock me out in ten minutes.
 
".....Blues Juniors are Marmite/Vegemite amps - you either love them or hate them. A bit like Texas Special pickups...."

Uh oh stratman!!!! I play my japanese 52 tele with texas specials THROUGH my blues junior! That's like having marmite AND vegemite on the one piece of toast!!!!!
 
craigyh77 said:
".....Blues Juniors are Marmite/Vegemite amps - you either love them or hate them. A bit like Texas Special pickups...."

Uh oh stratman!!!! I play my japanese 52 tele with texas specials THROUGH my blues junior! That's like having marmite AND vegemite on the one piece of toast!!!!!

I do like Texas Specials, but only on some guitars. I think they work better with ash bodies, not sure why though. They can sound terrible in some guitars.
 
stratman323 said:
I do like Texas Specials, but only on some guitars. I think they work better with ash bodies, not sure why though. They can sound terrible in some guitars.

I don't like them in Strats but the Tele versions are quite nice. I like the Tex Mex pickups in the Jimmie Vaughan Strat
 
marcusnieman said:
I don't like them in Strats but the Tele versions are quite nice. I like the Tex Mex pickups in the Jimmie Vaughan Strat

The Texas Special bridge pickup I have in my US ash-bodied Tele measures 10.2k! That's humbucker territory. But it really fills out the sound of what was a slightly thin sounding guitar before. Great for playing live. Not the most subtle pickup I've ever heard though.
 
After declaring my love for the Blues Junior not long ago, I have to make a concession: I've always played strats or p90-equipped guitars through it. This weekend I played a LP through it and it sounded terrible. Playing on only the plain strings sounded okay, but the wound strings just sounded like farts. Especially the E. Not a problem with the guitar either - sounds amazing through my Boogie. I was amazed - it sounded like a different amp: a really awful one!
 
blake375 said:
After declaring my love for the Blues Junior not long ago, I have to make a concession: I've always played strats or p90-equipped guitars through it. This weekend I played a LP through it and it sounded terrible. Playing on only the plain strings sounded okay, but the wound strings just sounded like farts. Especially the E. Not a problem with the guitar either - sounds amazing through my Boogie. I was amazed - it sounded like a different amp: a really awful one!


Fender for a Fender - last gig of 2009. Still love my Juniors:

Mambos.jpg
 
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