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Epiphone Valve Jr - Part 1 |
What I'm trying to resolve
I have a Mid 1970's FenderTwin Reverb. I love its sound, but 90% of the time, its too loud for home practice and small to medium sized clubs. Its great for outdoors work or really large events, however even then it usually needs to have a Microphone in front of the cabinet and that gets fed into the PA system.I won't be getting rid of my Twin anytime soon, but for the most part its not a great fit for what I use it for. I really want the tube/output transformer sound, but it needs to be better controllled for any of:
- Recording
- Practicing
- Jam Sessions
- PA sound mix management
- Live Performance
The Twin is 100 watts and has 2 Altec 12's (8 ohms each, wired in parallel for a 4 ohm load). I do use the reverb on it, but just a touch, so I don't need anything fancy. When I tried a Valve Jr head at Guitar Center, thru a set of the 12's that are matched up to it (16 ohms each cabinet), I found that it actually had a very nice tone at a lot lower volume level than my Twin needs, and yet was quite loud at the same time. I've seen people using them as thier main amp on stage with a live band, but I think it may be a limitiing factor in some situations. My guess is that with a portable Isolation Cabinet, I could work things out for all of the modes that I need to operate at.
I personally prefer Combo packages for Guitar (less stuff to mess with) , so I got a Valve Jr Combo.
I was amazed at just how heavy it is considering its size. Thats ok - its made solid. There are few things I think it needs, but I was attracted to it in the first place because lots of people are successfully Moding these and they are sounding like the tone I like. I play a mix of guitars that have Danelectro Lipstick Pickups, P-90's and Humbuckers. I really don't play any Strat or Tele type of pickup, so I want to work well with the types I do use. I prefer the vintage lower output pickups - so nothing I do will focus on higher output pickups (I play a lot of styles, but don't find high output pickups getting me anything that I need - your tastes may be different).
Goals
Things I want to add/change:- Simple Tone Control.
- Reverb.
- A Real Fuse Holder.
- A few mods to the circuit board to make the EL84 last longer
- A way to switch speaker modes easily, without a lot of cables required.
- Change the 8 inch speaker into a 10 inch speaker (saving the original 8 inch speaker for the Isolation Cabinet).
All this while keeping it as reliable as possible
Epiphone Valve Jr - Part 2 - Isolation Cabinet Switch
Questions? Comments? Suggestions?
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