Guitar Gear Forum

This is a Limited Edition Tweed Blues Junior that sounds just as close to a 1950s Fender Tweed Amp as you can get with a Blues Jr.

Below I list all modifications which have been performed.

-Mercury Magnetics Power and Output Transformers. (The Stock Blues Jr. Transformers are total shit!)
-Fromel Supreme Mod which upgrades quality caps and a few resistors as well as other caps were upgraded such as the "brite cap"
-New Old Stock Sprague Orange drops replaced the stock tone caps in the circuit. The values were also changed to increase bass response and give a fatter sound while retaining clarity. NO THIN SINGLE COIL STRAT SOUND WILL COME OUT OF THIS AMP!
-Input jack has been completely replaced with metal parts.
-Reverb Tank has been upgraded with the Fromel Electronics mod tank.
-A switch at the top of the amp allows you to turn off the "brite cap" to get a darker tone when overdriving the amp hard.
-A tube rectifier was added which really gives it that vintage warm bluesy tweed tone!-Gotta love that tube sag.
-All tubes are JJs tubes. (Waiting for a REAL NOS Mullard Blackburn tube for the V1 slot!)
-The stock speaker was replaced with a real Celestion G12H.
-A solid state effects loop kit from Iron Sounds was added and doesn't color the tone whatsoever. In the pictures you will notice the location of the effects loop is away from the transformers and electronics and therefore is not a noisy effects loop.

I uploaded a video to youtube. Take a listen and check it out. I'm interested in any modifications you might have done to your Blues Jr.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdzMq3D_N3k

So, does that make it a Blues Senior?

I've never understood the idea of a Celestion in a Fender combo - seems you would get closer to 'tweed' with a classic Jensen.

Well you are correct if my goal was to use the same sort of parts that Fender used back in the day. The amp came stock with a Jensen C12N. The Celestion is a superior speaker to the stock one, but I don't think a speaker has as much to do with the "tweed sound" as the quality of the parts in the amp.

The capacitors that Fender puts in their amp stock are pretty much the cheapest shit you can buy. Upgrading the caps made a much bigger difference than the speaker did. The tube rectifier is also much more important than the speaker because vintage Fender amps had tube rectifiers and not solid state like the Blues Jr has stock.

Even the Mercury Transformers aren't exactly vintage Fender has they seem to give a sight bump in the mid range. Don't get me wrong. They're very nice and a lot better than stock Fender, but if you're trying to clone vintage Fender I would recommend Magnetic Components out of Chicago. They are made to vintage specs.

My goal wasn't to get that sound when I started out modifying this amp. Once the tube rectifier was complete, many people stated it had the old tweed type sound.

It turned out to be a very good amp! It's not the best in the world by any means. Just better than most of what guitar center sells.

I'm not doubting that you have improved the sound of the amp - it was just this statement that (with the speaker choice) threw me a little:

jjsmith324 wrote:sounds just as close to a 1950s Fender Tweed Amp as you can get

...as you can get with a blues jr. I'll stand by that comment unless someone can post a better modified blues jr. that gets that sound. (I'm sure I'm not the only one who's done this to their amp.) That's partly why I posted this too.
Ya, putting a Jensen in it won't make it sound any more or less like a tweed. It will just be a different speaker which may or not be the best for this amp. The Celestion G12H is not necessarily the best speaker for the Jr., but I bought it because I liked the Bill M review of it compared to the others he reviewed.