Blues Junior Overdriven Tones are AWESOME

[zizyphus]

Hey!

I've got a Tweed NOS Blues Junior – basically a BJ III but it came stock with a Jensen speaker and retro vibe – and I absolutely LOVE the overdriven tones.

Does anyone else feel this way about their BJ?

Obviously, its a big seller, so a lot of people use them, but most seem to use them as a clean pedal platform amps. Is there no love for the overdrive tones of the BJ?

I don't know if the Jensen speaker has something to do with it, but to me, the overdriven BJ NOS Tweed has an absolutely wonderful, ruckus, raunchy, classic rock tone! One complaint about the BJ is its lack of low end, which I can definitely see being the case if you were playing it clean only, but it also keeps the overdriven sound nice and tight and gorgeous to my ears.

Anybody? Am I alone here?__PRESENT

 

[beaubrummels]

Those are great amps. Jensen speaker is a good part of the equation also. A lot of the recent era Fender offerings have been really good; the Hot Rod DeVille, the Blues Junior, the Blues Deluxe. I was pretty impressed with the cleans also.

 

[jeremy]

i used a blues jr as my main amp for a few years. no pedals just every knob full up other than reverb and bass which were adjusted to taste. i had an old g12m in mine. it was great for a blues rock tone

 

[Mincer]

The Blues Jr has a weird boxy sound to me. It doesn't have the nice open Deluxe sound, but it might just be the size of the cabinet. I hear this not only when I use one, but when I hear others, too. You hear it really well about 25 feet away.

 

[jeremy]

the stock speaker is part of that but the small box doesnt help either

 

[Ascension]

The Blues Jr has a weird boxy sound to me. It doesn't have the nice open Deluxe sound, but it might just be the size of the cabinet. I hear this not only when I use one, but when I hear others, too. You hear it really well about 25 feet away.

My thoughts on the little amps also ! Never got the glowing raving stuff on the BJ. Now my Subway Rocket which is about the same size and weight is another story!
THIS is the Crunch tone of my Rocket with just a little verb in the loop as it has no verb in the amp.
THIS is the natural crunch tone of my Boogie Subway Rocket with absolutely noting but verb in the loop miced

 

[FuseG4]

I think they are like fenders gateway drug cuz they get you into that fender territory squarely but no mods will ever make it a 5e3, deluxe reverb, etc, and so a lot of people keep chasing what they heard on their fav record or whatever.
But if you accept the blues jr as it's own animal they're cool, Can be scored cheap, that's always a plus

I agree on boxy as a description. Partly the box the speaker is in, partly the circuit and the little more nasal voicing I think they were going for. Does sound kinda bluesy to me with the boxiness.

 

[Mincer]

You see them as backlines a lot. They are cheap and sound reasonably good. The clean sound is my favorite of the 2, though.

 

[SirJackdeFuzz II]

The Blues Jr was my 1st valve amp back in 2004.
I did not know better so i bought it . . . the cheapest valve amp (at the time) in my city.

The overdriven tone got 'generic' very quickly for me.
I tried to like it for 4 years.
Sold it eventually, bought a 1966 black face Bassman (head) and could not be happier.
I still have that Bassman. LOVE the organic crunch i get out of it.

 

[Erlend_G]

My uncle has a Blues Jr, not sure what "edition" it is, but he bought it new 12 years ago.

I think it has a really beautiful clean (and breakup) tone, full of character. With loads of tube chime, and a lovely spring reverb .

Uncle doesn't like it very much, he says . Mostly because he can't get a saturated lead tone without use of an OD pedal. :/

My Blackstar Ht-20mkII sounds so "bland" and "dull" in comparison (but does have an overdrive channel). And isn't as ... "ice picky" as the Blues Jr. can get.

I'd love to own one of each amps...

-E

 

[SoPhx]

Blooze Jr....c'mon. I have heard dozens of them (owned a few) and they all sound like c**p.

 

[jeremy]

thats bs. while they arent the best amps out there, they can be made to sound just fine. even stock, twist the knobs right and they sound fine. i do prefer a speaker change since the stock one aint great

 

[Mincer]

I never thought they sounded bad- I could certainly do gigs with one, especially on the clean channel with pedals.

 

[SoPhx]

I really don't understand the appeal of these modern Fenders. Seriously? Too bright, boxy, no low end, nasty upper mids, but Shane at Fender is laffing all the way to the bank. You can bet that NO ONE at Fender uses these amps.

 

[Kinight Templar]

I prefer the overdriven of Pro Jr, more.

 

[zizyphus]

in retrospect, it was silly of me not to specify that my junior has been modded

A few cap swaps REALLY bring the junior to life. There are many, many caps in the circuit that filter bass, leading to the bassless, "boxy" sound. Pulling a few of those caps out or decreasing their value, and swapping the tone stack caps and the slope resistor make a huge difference, but I guess that's obvious

maybe I should have said that the junior has the POTENTIAL to sound awesome, if you're willing to spend $30 on a couple different capacitor / resistor variety packs and take the time to tweak it to taste__PRESENT

 

[Mincer]

Blues Jrs and the Hot Rod series are the standards for backlines for lots of festival shows. I don't know that they sound horrible, but they wouldn't be my choices. Even reissue Deluxes and Twins would be better, though more expensive, choices.

 

[Rex_Rocker]

I used to play in a band where the guitarist played a Blues Junior with the speaker swapped for a Celestion G12H Anniversary. Great amp. The stock speaker wasn't very good, so the Celestion really did open it up.

 

[donaldr]

Surfing YT recently for Blues Jr IV and they sound VERY good. Fender worked out the eq, the reverb and swapped the speaker on the IV version.
Looking to get one with a Flyrig RK5 in front (and use the sansamp section to compensate the volume when playing quietly at home)

 

[FuseG4]

The BJ4 is a massive improvement over the previous version I thought. First time firing one up in a guitar center I did a double take... Who took the blanket off, the blanket I was used to. Or like there was an internal "congestion" switch that was suddenly now off.

​​​​ the IV is such an improvement over III that I would never pay money for a BJ3 as long as ver4 exists