Epiphone Valve Junior Crop Top Combo with Celestion Alnico Blue

[Glockenator]

@minpinful You simply mic it. Or I use a Marshall stack when I need volume (and a hell of alot of gain)

[NintendoSinceBirth1]

that amp is loud dude!! great playing

[IIamLUKE]

Im not really a twangy sound person but i really liked what you played, great review on the amp.

[lawrence096]

is this better than the fender super champ xd or the valvetonix 40+?

[howlingpuppy]

@lawrence096 Actually, I just sold this amp and I now use a Champ XD with a custom cabinet to hold a 12 inch speaker. The speaker is a Weber. I really like the XD

[OlazerOfightOshowO]

@howlingpuppy The XD is a good amp, lots of control over the tone

[BrianQ823]

Like the amp! Way to go on thinkin outside of the box. I do alot of EVJ mods for customers and friends. I am probably gonna do one like yours here soon for myself. I use a stock one with voltage mods and a 3 way gain / tone mod for testing guitars before and after upgrades / repairs. I have not replaced the stock celestion speaker or the stock tubes cause they sound great when the tube voltage mods and the 3 way gain / tone mods are done. Thanks again and God Bless bro!!!!

[dyingforastrat]

You have some serious skills my friend. I love what you did and your playing was enjoyable. You sound like a man with some knowledge bout a thang or two. Peace

[biddude]

pretty cool but I think time wise a person might be money ahead if they purchased a combo that was already manufactured elsewhere I mean if you figure all the money you have to spend on power tools and all Not to mention the possibility of grave bodily injury such as accidentally whacking off a finger or two out in the garage at least for the mechanically challenged person I think that this operation might be a stretch It is pretty cool though p.s. I think that they do have a wire that you can c

[BLacKCatB0ne]

Which set of Kinman pickups do you have in this Tele? Amp sounds great and the Kinmans always sound great!

[howlingpuppy]

@BLacKCatB0ne Thank you for commenting. My Tele has the Broadcaster Kinmans.

[BLacKCatB0ne]

@howlingpuppy Nice, I was thinking you would say that. The Broadcaster set are the best sounding Tele pups I've ever heard.  I am putting them in the Tele project I am working on right now.

[c1sumus1c]

totally killer mod! I have a Laney twin cab that's about to totally get violated!! Valve Jr Style!!! Twang on Bro!!!!

[sb6lb3]

beautiful job on that crop! do you think by any chance that this amp might be able to stand up to a drummer? people say you need at least 30 watts,but i hear people saying that the speaker size is what matters, and this seems to have it! what do you think?

[howlingpuppy]

@sb6lb3 I think it did fine when I was using it, but I don't really play loud. It was never really turned up. It was used at a benefit for the Humane Society with a room full of people and it did great. Now I am using a Fender Super Champ XD and if I played a bigger room I would use a Fender Deluxe with 22 watts. I still have this amp, and I kinda miss the cool tone. To answer your question, the Celestion Alnico Blue is fantastic with this amp!  And pretty loud!

[DangerousBastard]

That's cool! :-)

[CliffDiverMusic]

This Guy is GREAT !!!!!

[chaosIsTheOnlyPower]

Yeah man! Righteous all around. Not an expert, but the human ear is non-linear so the power doesn't follow as you might think it would. Also read that a 1 watt amp can be as loud as a trumpet, so 5 watts is pretty dang loud with a good speaker (as you have there!) We live in a fine time when cool, low power amps are widely available.

[jighead81]

Awesome playing and nice build!

[BluesNoobie]

very nice, thanks for the demo

[bvanfossen01]

your twang sounds great!

[funkyjones]

So you gig at that volume without micing it?

[howlingpuppy]

I haven't had to mike it yet but I might if I ever play in a much bigger room. 5 watts with the Celestion Alnico Blue is pretty loud. I read somewhere that 50 watts isn't really 10 times louder than 5, for some reason.

[EnvyInc]

@howlingpuppy @howlingpuppy Honestly, unless you're playing stadiums or arenas, 15-30 watts is probably as much amplification as the everyday player will ever need. For an example, if you were to play out with an 18-watt Marshall 1974X clone cranked, most club owners would ask you to turn the amp down, as you'll be killing everyone in the front row. If you think I'm joking, go crank a Blackheart Handsome Devil combo sometime as an experiment.

[lordieuan777]

@howlingpuppy I can offer a somewhat technical explanation... although it probably isn't all that accurate... basically we hear things in a logarithmic scale, so instead of hearing things like a linear volume scale, say 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. it goes 1, 10, 100, 1000. Basically 50 watts is twice as loud as 5, not 10 times (so 100 watts is twice as loud as 10 and so on and so forth).

[eduf93]

@howlingpuppy 10w is 2x more loud than 1w

[surfco]

Awesome tone, pal!

Great review!

-J

[howlingpuppy]

Thank you. I am also thinking of using a different cabinet and making another combo amp. Maybe an old broken combo amp cabinet might work.

[flip080210]

Cool!

[bmf3oh3]

cool man

[modestvermin995]

From what I've heard, it's not possible to use two of these stacked or, two of these together at all. Is this true?

[howlingpuppy]

I use an A/B box when I run two complete Valve Juniors. I also put a parallel ouotput jack on the back of the cabinet. If I add the other cabinet , I just plug the output jack on the back of the head into the 4 ohm output to match the impedence. You could also use a parallel Y speaker wire if you didn't want to do something permanent to your equipment. If your question meant, can you run two Valve Juniors together, the A/B box works great. Then you can also use different effects on each.

[schue113]

The speakers make a world of difference. I'm liking the celestion, but am currently running a 2x12 with 60's vintage Jensen p12r's.

[StangLX718]

Great Sounds.

Do you have JJ's in pre-amp and power amp?

Also, how did you wire the speaker for the additional parallel output jack.

Does an additional 1x12 cab make a difference in the sound?

Regards,

Stang

[howlingpuppy]

I use JJ tubes in both. The parallel jack is just another output in the metal back plate. I drilled a hole and ran the wire the few inches inside. I think the additional 12 fills a room better sometimes, but lately I have been running two seperate Valve Juniors with the same speaker and tubes. I run different effects into each amp and it sounds like two seperate guitars playing the same thing. The Celestion makes an amazing difference and the tubes smoothed out my tone.

[electroncleanwipe]

did you do any other mods? caps , resistors ,, output trans ?

[howlingpuppy]

I didn't do any other mods at all. In fact I have done the Bitmo Tweaky mod on two of my other Valve Juniors and I have switched one back and the other one will be. With the mods, my amp lost the rough edge I love about Valve Juniors. I admit the Bitmo sounded good, it was just a little too clean sounding for my taste. The one in this video has JJ tubes and the Celestion speaker, and that is all.

[LincTexPilot]

EXCELLENT sound quality of this video, and GREAT demo!!!

[jumper896]

sounds great! It has a real fat tone when driven, I like it!

[diminishedlogic]

amazing tones. What do you think of the celestion blue?

[howlingpuppy]

If I get any other amp, I woud still bring along the Alnico Blue. It has becaome so much a part of my tone. I installed it for the first time with a friend. We expected something good. What we weren't prepared for was something fantastically different. It fills a room.

[777jordan]

I think this has sold me on the Celestion Blue/JJ combo!

[howlingpuppy]

That is one of the very reasons I put the video on here.  I really believe in the Celestion Alnico Blue and the JJ Tubes. They bring this little 5 watt amp to life.

[777jordan]

@howlingpuppy

I just ordered 2 Celestion Blues & will have JJ tubes soon enough for my AC30H2L!!!

[barryplem]

Cool! Thanks, your video is great, and I really enjoyed your style

[stantonshred]

good stuff man!

[Tylersyx6]

nice gutair anyways

[Tylersyx6]

man aswome playing like that needs a gibson not a fender and if you like the single coil sound just get p-90 or mini humbuckers

[BUBBASIMS]

No P-90 or mini-humbucker can recreate the sound of fender single coils.

[scorpguitar79]

cool sound and nice playing!

[leozingy]

Man, when you started playing - I almost got a heart attack! I had my speakers loud and didn't expect such a powerful sound :D Great video and beautiful tone! I'm considering getting a Celestion Blue for my Princeton, but the Blue is soooo expensive in Europe (it's like 450-500$!!!).

[lexist7]

you cut its head off!

[progressivedrums]

cool. good idea haha

[davididutdacoon]

love your style

[stopthenRead]

Man, that crop-top is a great idea! It looks cool and sounds great! Can't go wrong with a little guitars and caddies haha

[alohastewie]

nice man sounds like that celestion really uped the vol on this guy

good job!

[hockey2204]

sounds great good job on the custom work! ive got one in a fender pro junior i dont quite like as much as yours

[achrisisaac]

man!

killer tone man!

can you explain a little more how you did the crop top?

check out my custom amp demo too!

[Seraphmodel02]

Awesome tone man, I can just imagine how great it'd sound with P90's going into it =]

[JazzricMusic]

Nice, nice...I love it...At some point, I might have to follow your lead on this one...thank you for sharing this...

Rick.

[greenfish88]

nice aesthetic mod; inventive.

[forpetessake38]

great sound! that speaker made a world of difference, not that they sound bad before!

[ghettoraid]

Nice little demo. Funny that the Alnico costs more than the rest of the system.

What has been done to the guts of amp?

[superchunk426]

I love it!  Very creative. That Alnico Blue speaker seems so much fuller than the stock Lady Luck. Hmm. Might have to get one of those.