A graphic eq is that little epiphone's best friend. OD and distortion kinda always sound the same thru this amp because it has hardly any clean headroom. I've heard of people getting it less noisy by adding some extra filter caps and switching the filament supply to dc instead of ac, but that wont change that it distorts so early.

One time I was testing a pile of preamp tubes to see if they worked at all with the little epiphone, drastic difference in distortion sound from tube to tube. Wish I had a pile of el34s to do the same.

I like this amp, I only use it with the volume up all the way. Maybe I should take the knob off so all it has is an on/off switch.

hbc wrote:A graphic eq is that little epiphone's best friend.

Yeah, you can shape the sound (distortion) quite a lot by knocking off some of the bass before hitting the input. The same can be done by changing the cathode bypass caps for smaller values to reduce the bass level early on to avoid farty-ness.

If you are interested in the Valve Junior this site can help with the hum issue and other ideas.

http://duhvoodooman.com/VJr/VJr_mods.htm

My room/bandmate has a Valve Junior in the basement. I dig it, especially since I'm favoring Filter'tron and p-90 guitars these days. (I think I've stated on the PRF before that I don't like the way EL84s break up with humbuckers.)

Anyway, the Valve Junior sounds really good. Or at least I think it does. It's pretty bright, so I probably wouldn't use it for basics, but I think with a extention cab with decent speaks it'd probably be the perfect overdub amp.

I'll let you know in July if my theory is correct.

If you are considering going direct and are recording to pc or mac, then the Guitar Rig plugin might be the way to go. way more tweakable than a cheap amp, and perhaps comparable in price. worth a shot perhaps?

Rodabod wrote:Laney LC15 is nice.

The Epiphone is ok, but stock it doesn't do much more than simple clean sounds and Rock N Roll overdriven sounds. The ones with the little speakers sound crap too unless you use a cab obviously.

I've played one here in LA, somebody had swaped out the trannys for mercury magnetics trannys. It sounded pretty good in the store. The RNR overdrive was pretty tight. But they wanted $500 bucks for the upgraded version. I'd rather buy something vintage that will hold it's value at that price.

In my experience, the Fender Pro Junior records pretty well.

I have a Valve Junior stack, and I can't decide how I feel about it recording-wise. It makes some interesting noise when I run bass or keyboards through it.

Not really a guitar amp but, Line6 Pods can get somewhat close to the tones that you might be looking for cheaply.

That being said, they'll never respond like a real amp, but if you need versatility, and quiteness for late nite recording w/o torturing any neighbors, this is a good route to go.

D'Piucchstre wrote:Not really a guitar amp but, Line6 Pods can get somewhat close to the tones that you might be looking for cheaply.

That being said, they'll never respond like a real amp, but if you need versatility, and quiteness for late nite recording w/o torturing any neighbors, this is a good route to go.

I hate mine but it has saved me several times when amps were not an option. Actually I don't hate it I just have a lot of contempt for it.