epiphone Valve Junior Tube Amplifier Head

First of all, I'm using the valve junior with the matching cab. I'm also using a holy grail reverb in front of the amp, which I would recommend to anyone who buys the amp, if not an even better reverb unit. The reverb really unlocks the potential of the amp. Now, With a telecaster: Awesome, awesome, awesome. People have complained that this isn't the brightest sounding amp, and that's true. But with a really (overly?!) bright guitar like a telecaster on the bridge pickup, it's a perfect match. You can play some really trebly stuff through the amp without getting the screeching. Just a great tube vibe, great for a vintage soul/motown sound with quick upstrokes. With the neck pickup, it's super creamy and sounds great with a bluesy fingerstyle, very responsive to plucks. With a les paul: ironically, the amp is a better fit for the telecaster overall. but turn the amp up a bit, use the bridge pickup with the treble up and you've got a pretty great dirtier blues sound. on the neck pickup things do get a bit muddy with amp at a lower volume. turning up the amp seems to brighten the sound up and you get a fat, softer distortion.

So far so good. Seems really solid and well built. The smaller size should keep this guy out of trouble as well: not as many bangs into the doorframe, etc.

I bought the valve junior after selling a fender hot rod deluxe 2x12. One of the best decisions I've made regarding a musical instrument in years of playing.

 

I wanted to try the smaller boutique amp thing and the price point of the epiphone made sense. It's really remarkable how easy it is to get this amp to sound good. I can't say the same for the fender. It was way, way too loud, even for a band setting. All of that size and power was useless to me, as were the treble, mid and bass, and presence controls. I never even knew what I was looking for, really. Just wanted it to sound good, but it was always out of wack and too loud.

 

Just plug in the epiphone, use a reverb and it sounds good at a volume you can use. For $260 with the speaker cabinet, this is a phenomenal buy.

 

Really the only thing that would be cool would be separate gain and master knobs so that you had a little more control there without going overboard.