General Music Chat

OK well new to me anyway.

Found a Fender Pro Jr at a yard sale this weekend really cheap. As in under $50 cheap. Deal of the week I'm sure...

15 watts, pair of EL84 power tubes, 10" speaker, almost the same size as my Champ but 2" narrower. Fits great on the tilt back stand I built for the Champ too...

I grabbed it, I'm sure I can use a small 15 watt amp for the low volume gigs we're doing, and from what I've read online so far it might even work for louder situations. I tried using the Champ at gigs but the 8 inch speaker just makes it sound too cheesy, this one might do a little better.

Simple controls, Volume, Tone. Not sure I would like that but so far it seems to sound pretty good but I've only played it a couple of hours. So far all it needs is the tube sockets cleaned, I'll have to work on that a little. Otherwise it seems to work fine and sounds good. Nice clean sound at low volume, starts to break up a little just below half volume, which is as loud as I've tried it so far. At half volume it sounds pretty good, can't wait to crank it all the way. Halfway sounds almost like it's running through an overdrive pedal.

I'll have to tinker with it before I have a solid opinion, try it in the practice room and onstage, but if I decide I don't like it I can still sell it for 4 times what I paid with no trouble, and so far it looks like I might be keeping it. Looking up info I found comments that Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks and Jeff Beck have all used this amp for recording, so if it's good enough for them I suppose it might be good enough for me...

Lucky find. I don't even bother with yard/garage sales around here, nothing but real junk (old clothes and baby stuff). Everyone lists there music equipment on craigslist for ridiculous starting prices.

A great little amp. Just dime the volume and use guitar volume and tone to shape your sound. A TS9 works well in front too for a little more bite.

So far I'm pretty impressed. Loud as hell for a small amp, and by the way this one is in near mint condition, sounds pretty good. I guess I'll have to take a while to get the feel of the different tubes, I've always used 6L6 amps, these el84's seem to be a bit more punchy and not quite as mellow as the 6L6 amps tend to be. Not harsh, just not as mellow and bluesy. Still haven't dimed it, have to check that out soon, still looking for my pipe cleaners to give the tube sockets a good cleaning. Wiggle one of the power tubes and it starts up aloud hum, so it has a dirty contact somewhere in the socket.. Got it quieted down for now, but it does need a good cleaning.

I guess I've played it a total of 3 hours or so, not really long enough to make a solid opinion, and still need to try it in band practice and onstage, which will be at least a week, bass player is on vacation. Judging by what I hear so far, I probably won't be able to even hit half volume in the gigs we're playing right now...maybe July 4th, it's outside I think and we'll be getting a bit louder. I'll probably run a dual amp setup to be on the safe side. A/B switch is already there just have to plug in...might work out well though, it seems to be able to get the volume to use this amp for leads and the Super Reverb for cleans...I've been using both channels of the Super lately for different sounds, I'll have to see how it works out.

Wow, that's quite a deal! That's a cool little amp. Congrats!!

My last cheap find in that price range was a '60s Danelectro DM10 on Craigslist for $50. It's no Pro JR but it looked interesting and I've got a few Silvertones I really like so I figured why not give it a shot. The only thing wrong with it was that it had a broken preamp tube but other than that was working fine. I tuned it up and did the typical safety mods to it and put an extension jack in the back so I can run it through a bigger cab. I find little amps like this sometimes are surprisingly good run that way. It's a low volume polite little practice amp on it's own. This one really surprised me. I cranked it up all the way, plugged it into a 212 cab and hit the front end with a SD-1 and this is what came out of it (please excuse the camera mic clipping....it was a bit too much for it):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx1WSmGU65A


I was a bit stunned to say the least.