duhvoodooman
Addicted to solder....
Some of the recent discourse here about the Valve Jr. prompted me to start fooling around with the amp some. I took a tip from Tunghaichuan and changed out the tubes to see how I liked a different set-up. I took out the JJ 12AX7 preamp tube and installed a Westinghouse NOS 5751, a lower gain variant. I had a JJ EL84 power tube in it that was rated for early breakup and I replaced that with another JJ that was rated for more clean headroom. I made these changes because I wanted to hear the amp running in a "cleaner" mode. In my little back room, the only way I can open up the amp is to run it through the little L-Pad attenuator I have, and that's rated for 16 ohms, not the 8 where I run the amp, so I'm wary of cranking it way up for extended periods. So I figured why have the amp set up for maximum breakup, when I rarely run it that way?
I've been playing it with this new "cooler" tube setup for a couple of days, and it sounds GREAT! If I want crunch, I kick on one of my umpteen OD/Distro/Fuzz pedals. In particular, using the Marshall Guv'nor Plus with it hooked up to the 2x12 cab I have generates a very convincing mini-Plexi tone. The huge bottom end on that pedal really gives that 2x12 a stack-like feel and makes the Valve Jr. sound a lot bigger than it is.
I was listening to some old Cream clips on YouTube and came across the famous Crossroads live recording from the Fillmore East, which got me playing around with that. So I found a backing track for the tune, set up the VJr as described above and recorded a bit of the beginning of the song using my Epi Elitist LP Std. played through the bridge pickup, which is a Duncan Custom 5. Sounds pretty "big" for a little 5W amp with the volume set to about 8:30! Here's the clip link:
I've been playing it with this new "cooler" tube setup for a couple of days, and it sounds GREAT! If I want crunch, I kick on one of my umpteen OD/Distro/Fuzz pedals. In particular, using the Marshall Guv'nor Plus with it hooked up to the 2x12 cab I have generates a very convincing mini-Plexi tone. The huge bottom end on that pedal really gives that 2x12 a stack-like feel and makes the Valve Jr. sound a lot bigger than it is.
I was listening to some old Cream clips on YouTube and came across the famous Crossroads live recording from the Fillmore East, which got me playing around with that. So I found a backing track for the tune, set up the VJr as described above and recorded a bit of the beginning of the song using my Epi Elitist LP Std. played through the bridge pickup, which is a Duncan Custom 5. Sounds pretty "big" for a little 5W amp with the volume set to about 8:30! Here's the clip link:
