Sort of New Amp Day!
Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2020 3:05 pm
I picked up a Fender Blues Junior III last winter for $300, the deal was too good to pass up and I've heard good things about them stock, as well as as mod platform. First thing I did before I even plugged it it, was change the speaker to a Jensen C12N, as the stock Eminence speakers in the Blues and Hot Rod series amps are muddy, flabby garbage. It brightened it up considerably, but it still had a dull midrange heavy tone and could only be made to sound like a proper Fender amp with aggressive use of an eq pedal. Luckily, I've got a first rate amp shop in town and I dropped it off at http://www.rootbeeraudio.com to have my man Matt work his magic on it.
I had him thoroughly go over the amp and fix a number of the common problems with this amp, he wired the input jack so it wasn't directly soldered to the PCB,cleaned up the wiring, added an adjustable bias pot, checked the tubes (i'd already replaced them with Sovtek EL 84 power tubes, 12AX7s & put a 5170 in the #1 preamp socket to give it more headroom. Then things got good: Matt replaced the filter & tone caps, the latter to the same spec as 60's black face Fenders. the result is pure magical tone
I wasn't done yet, though! A local guy was selling pine replacement cabinets on Reverb, and I jumped at the chance to replace the dead, heavy chipboard cab, with something lighter and more resonant. Voila!
I'm working on an A/B tone comparison video, but it will probably be a few weeks before I'm able to get it done. All I can say right now is holy cow! I see why they crippled their entry level tube amps with a shitty tone stack, rotten speakers and such- this amp sounds as good as any 60's or 70's Fender I've ever owned. Admittedly, it's not as durable as a hand wired boutique amp, but for a total investment of about $600, I'll put my blue collar boutique amp against amps costing 4 times as much. I'm dropping off my Blues Deluxe Reissue next week to have him do the same.
I had him thoroughly go over the amp and fix a number of the common problems with this amp, he wired the input jack so it wasn't directly soldered to the PCB,cleaned up the wiring, added an adjustable bias pot, checked the tubes (i'd already replaced them with Sovtek EL 84 power tubes, 12AX7s & put a 5170 in the #1 preamp socket to give it more headroom. Then things got good: Matt replaced the filter & tone caps, the latter to the same spec as 60's black face Fenders. the result is pure magical tone
I wasn't done yet, though! A local guy was selling pine replacement cabinets on Reverb, and I jumped at the chance to replace the dead, heavy chipboard cab, with something lighter and more resonant. Voila!
I'm working on an A/B tone comparison video, but it will probably be a few weeks before I'm able to get it done. All I can say right now is holy cow! I see why they crippled their entry level tube amps with a shitty tone stack, rotten speakers and such- this amp sounds as good as any 60's or 70's Fender I've ever owned. Admittedly, it's not as durable as a hand wired boutique amp, but for a total investment of about $600, I'll put my blue collar boutique amp against amps costing 4 times as much. I'm dropping off my Blues Deluxe Reissue next week to have him do the same.
I'd almost be tempted to send your guy something myself 
