Blackheart vs. Valve Junior

[tunghaichuan]

I finally got a chance to unbox and play my new Blackheart BH5H head and BH5-112 combo. I played the combo first. It sounds very good. Not as much gain as I expected, and not as crunchy as I would have thought. The combo is bigger than I thought as well, it is nicely sized and no hint of boxiness. The 12" speaker sounds nice as well. As I suspected, the tone controls didn't have that much range. The treble makes the amp brighter, the mid does little, and the bass makes the amp farty if turned up too much. The 5W setting was louder and brighter. Conversely the 3W setting was darker and less loud. Overall, the amp wasn't as loud as I expected.

Next I unboxed the Blackheart head I got a few weeks ago and plugged it into my Celestion loaded RSA cabinet, which is a copy of a ported Mesa Boogie cab. The Celestion is a G12M-70 Modern Lead speaker. The head sounded slightly smoother through the Celestion. Since the cab is ported, the bass was more pronounced than through the Blackheart combo cab. The RSA cab beams the sound due to the closed back/ported design.

Next, for grins I hooked up my unmodded Ver. 3 VJ head to the aforementioned cab. Quite surprisingly, the cranked sound was fatter, crunchier, and had more gain. I liked the sound of the VJ better. Epi has really brought the VJ a long way since they started selling Ver. 1. Even without mods, it sounds great right out of the box.

I didn't have time, but I think the next sound test will be to plug in my extensively modded Ver. 2 VJ and A/B it with the unmodded Ver.3 VJ and the Blackheart head and combo.

[also posted to the SEwatt.com forums and the Epi amps forums]

tung

[oldguy]

Tung,
Was the ver.3 V.Jr. noticeably louder than the BH's?
I was surprised at how loud my ver. 2 V. Jr head was when I bought it.
After doing the gold mods it was seriously loud and crunchy.
I played a Fender 600 at full volume and, while it sounded good, it paled in comparison to the volume and crunch of the V. Jr., IMO.
Perhaps the Blackheart shunts some of the input signal to ground, reducing the gain?

[tunghaichuan]

Tung,
Was the ver.3 V.Jr. noticeably louder than the BH's?
I was surprised at how loud my ver. 2 V. Jr head was when I bought it.
After doing the gold mods it was seriously loud and crunchy.
I played a Fender 600 at full volume and, while it sounded good, it paled in comparison to the volume and crunch of the V. Jr., IMO.
Perhaps the Blackheart shunts some of the input signal to ground, reducing the gain?

Yes, the VJ seemed louder than the Blackheart amps. I think the TMB tone stack sucks up a lot more gain than the 1meg/1meg voltage divider in the VJ; that's why the VJ is louder than the Blackhearts.

The stock Ver 3 VJ head I tested has an EH 12AX7 and a Sovtek EL84. The Blackheart has all Chinese tubes. In fact, that will be my first mod: yank the Chinese tubes out of the Blackhearts and rebias the amps after installing JJ EL84s.

tung