Blues Junior or Vox Ad60vtx

[Duff]

Anyone have any practical experience with these two amps? I'm thinking of getting one. Very different amps from one another. I want to have excellent volume and tone and be able to use pedals. I play mainly rock at the house, practicing lessons and jamming to cd's.

I can see where the Ad60vtx could be VERY versatile.

Any input or feedback is appreciated.

[SuperSwede]

The blues junior is one of the sweetest small tube amps ever. I´ve had one one loan for a month, and it worked fantastic in a small blues band.

[Robert****]

I'd go with the Vox, way more versatile. Both are good options depending on your needs.

[duhvoodooman***]

+1 on the Vox, due to its incredible versatility. No knock on the Blues Junior--great little tube amp--but you can cover so much more tonal ground with the AD60VTX.

[Duff]

I'm thinking I would enjoy a highly complicated amp. My other amps are simple two channel set ups: a Marshall vs30r (at least about fifteen years old or so but in great cosmetic shape). I like it but the sound isn't steady on the distortion channel, which is really cool because it has a rotary speaker type unsteadyness and it seems like the reverb is half on when it's all the way off. All of the strings flow together into a tonal blend and chords don't stand out with any definition. Lots of tweaking leads to more standoutish sounds but you have to re mess around with it when you switch channels because the sound level is way boosted on the distortion channel. My other amp is a 120 watt twin 12" that is quite nice and I use a bad monkey and other things like a Boss OD-3 or a digitech Grunge. The grunge is pretty cool.

Evidently you can use lots of pedals with the VOX even though it has many built in effects. I was thinking it might not produce great results, combining the outboard and inboard effects. I like to put together effect chains, getting inventive and finding some tones I like a lot. That would be great if you could then blend in the Vox'es onboard stuff. I was listening to "My Life" from a relatively recent CSN and Young disk tonight, with Steve Stills really getting down with some intense tone using obviously some type of wah pedal with probably other effects included or added. Really intense, almost Hendrix type quality. I doubt if you could produce a wah sound like that with a pedal less wah. I can remember listening to Stills in the old days when he had his own band and played some really rocked up, highly musical arrangements. Remember, "Season of the Witch"?

Any way, enough digression; you guys are providing some great input and are giving me some ideas to think about.

Also, by the way, I'm planning on buying my son a new Epiphone SG bass. It has two pickups - a big bridge humbucker and a mini neck humbucker. Has a cool looking rotary pickup swith and vol and tone controls for each. Thinking about getting him an Ampeg BA-115 for that. It has a tweeter and a hundred watts. It's supposed to hiss but be a great bass amp nonetheless. Supposedly the piezo tweeter hisses as a characteristic of its design. I'm thinking an EQ pedal would moderate that. Some people don't seem to mind the hissing while others either like it, deal with it, disconnect it, or get used to it. I wouldn't disconnect it because the way my son plays, very musical arrangements with leads mixed in with bass lines, the tweeter would definitely lend tonal enhancements to the mids and trebles when he plays the higher notes. He is 16 and took piano lesson for about ten years. He knows where every note is on the bass. One day, shortly after starting bass lessons, the parallelism of the note steps and half steps just clicked. He now makes up a lot of his own arrangements. He is in a band, most often a trio. His current set up includes a antique white eighteen year old Fender Jazz bass, a bass grunge (that he doesn't like), a Ibanez digital delay, an 18 year old Peavey TNT 150, and a really cool black Washburn accoustic electric bass with the diagonal groove cuts instead of a round sound hole.

I'm thinking the Epiphone SG bass and the Ampeg BA-115 will add greatly to his tonal possibilities and there's nothing like some nice new stuff to stoke the musical fire within. He is also looking at the Epiphone Les Paul Studio bass. It will be interesting to see how these stack up to the sound of the Fender when we go down to Harrisburg to test them out. Plan on bringing the Fender along and using it to compare, if the dealer will let that happen.

I hope my long post is not frowned upon by the moderators. I didn't see anything about word count and I tried to stay on guitar/amp topics. My appology if I'm not tuned in to the forum format.

As always, any feedback is most appreciated.

[NPauly]

I hope my long post is not frowned upon by the moderators. I didn't see anything about word count and I tried to stay on guitar/amp topics. My appology if I'm not tuned in to the forum format.

Everyone is allowed one mistake. Yours, staying on topic ...

Don't let it happen again ...

So anyway, I'm trying to plan a vacation. I was thinking of the Caribbean or maybe even somewhere in Europe. Any suggestions?

[Robert****]

NPauly is joking - just to be clear... good to hear your thoughts about gear. And by the way, welcome to the forum! The Vox would be a great buy. In fact, I've been thinking about that amp in a head format for myself.

[TS808]

I used to own a Blues Jr. It's a cool little amp for sure, but I thought it was a little "boxy" sounding for my tastes, but I wouldn't call it a bad amp by any means. In a bigger cab, I probably would have loved it.

I currently own a Vox AD60VTH (the head) that I run through a 212 cab. I love this amp. The tone is better than some tube amps I've owned, the effects and models are very good, and the built in switchable power levels are a plus for sure. Vox IS HOWEVER DISCONTINUING PRODUCTION OF BOTH THE AD60VTX AND AD120VTX...so the "blue" models are going to be gone. I just saw Vox came out with an AD50VT 2x12 that already has reached some stores.

I'd recommend the Vox, but that's just my opinion. The versatility with the floorboard is endless. One word of caution though...the amp takes some pedals well, and others don't sound as good, but the AD60VTX has enough stompboxes to keep most people content.

Right now, I'm looking at purchasing a Vox AC15CC. The cabinet is larger than the blues jr. and the tones are amazing, and it takes pedals very well.
For $599, you can't beat it.

[Danzego]

I just played a Blues Jr. for the first time today. I figured with the talk I've heard about it around here, I may as well. So at Guitar Center, I grabbed a Strat and plugged into the Blues Jr. Let's put it this way: if I had $400 on me at that moment, I would have walked out with empty pockets. I LOVED it. Well, with the exception of one thing: the overdrive is a bit weak to me. But then, I didn't crank it and I would hope an OD pedal would really give it a thicker, fuller, edgier sound (that's kind of a question to anyone with a Blues Jr. Does it?)

Of course, there's the issue of the Blues Jr. kind of being a "one trick pony". I mean, you're definitely not going to get as much variety out of that amp as you would the Vox, but the Vox isn't going to get that kind of Blues tone, either.

I already have a Vox (AD50VT), though had I known about the Blues Jr. when I got my Vox, I think I may have probably gotten the Fender. But then I was looking for one specific tone, that clean blues tone, that the Blues Jr. does so well (and the Vox does good, but not nearly as good). I'd probablyend up with a Vox eventually, though, for versatility's sake.

[SuperSwede]

Danzego, the Blues Jr sounds brilliant when you crank it! And you can hook it up to a cabinet to get a bigger less boxy sound.

[Duff]

Yeah. The HRDlx Tweed with Jensens is really cool. I personally like both of the drive channels and like them more the more I play them. Of course the clean channel is great too. Also I have used a Metal Master and a Grunge in front of the HRDlx and they shade the tone really well, all over the distortion world. You know, I can even turn it down to bedroom levels and enjoy overdriven sounds. It is touchy on the volume knob but not impossible.

Also, I tried out a few Blues Juniors and really liked them. I even liked the Pro Junior. I think these are really great sounding. The BluJr sounds better to my ear, all so slightly. One of these would make a great amp for someone.

Curiously, at first I didn't care for the Fenders, except for my initial preference of testing guitars with a FM 212 at the stores I was checking the guitars out at. I figured I'd use a good solid state amp, the same every time. I later was very fond of the AC15cc1 and still like it a lot, but one day, just after playing the ac15 I plugged into an HRDlx while the AC15 was still ringing in my ears. I thought the HRDlx sounded better. You know, sometimes an amp picks you. Have you heard that? Try enough of them and it might happen to you. Some of them I could tell right away were not for me. I still made the mistake of buying a VOX Cambridge 30 twin reverb though. The Cambridge sounded really, really bad when I got it home in a totally quiet environment. Every aspect of it was terrible except for it's really cool looks. Luckily I got my money back.

The HRDlx Tweed with Jensens is definitely a great sounding amp to my ear. It has taken pedals very well and has lots of practical features. I play some blues type songs and it really does a great job of that. Both of my guitars are humbucker styles.

Also, I think a great deal of the thing with an amp is your interaction with it. First I think you need to really like the amp. Then, with time, you hear things you didn't hear before and you can get better. It is like that with drums and cymbals with me. The longer I play them the better sounds I can get out of them. It is an interactive type thing I think. Your skill at finding the abilities of the equipment can take you into better sounding territory than you at first were able to notice or find. It is like how some talented players can make a walmart guitar with three strings missing reach right down deep into the depths of your soul and show you something you forgot about or needed to hear. It's like Brian May making an amp out of unseemly components. And doesn't Neil Young have some special homemade amp set up that he sometimes uses?

Anyway, I now have a renewed appreciation for Fender amps and would like to get a Blues Jr. or Pro Jr. Isn't it strange how you can find that you really like something that you at first didn't think you liked? That's where thinking about something is one thing but actually trying it out and making an informed opinion is another. There is no substitute for testing things out and comparing the results to your preconceived ideas.

[tot_Ou_tard]

Great! I've got to try out a HRD.

Has anybody tried the new Fender Champion 600's?

[scorona]

I definitely share your appreciation for the Blues Jr. My brother-in-law recently picked one up. He brought it over a few days ago so we could try it next to the Vox. What a blues tone machine!!! It can also be pretty loud. I agree, it does the blues tone a little better than the Vox, but the Vox is way more versatile. With an infant in the house, I'm limited to playing bedroom volumes at best, at least for the next few months. The Blues Jr. sounds better the more you crank the volume.

Regardless, the experience had me GAS-ing for a new amp! Hope to get over it soon. Keep posting your HRDlx experience, I'm interested in that one as well.