What's Wrong with My Blues Junior?!?

OK, I should probably come clean here for a minute. I have just started this blog by professing how great the blues junior is, goddamn I actually named the blog after it, but all is not well...no in fact my blues jr hasn't actually been working for the last 2 months and I have only got round to leaving it in to get fixed now (mainly due to being skint) and so I have been using my fender pro junior as my main amp in the meantime.

Basically, I was setting up for a sound check for a gig (supporting the excellent Richmond Fontaine, if you havn't heard these guys check them out) when my guitar tone just went. I mean it started to sound really bad, like a series of farts and the volume kept cutting. I knew it was the amp and I wasnt worried and I'll tell you why in a mo...So it was a quick grab of the amp, stick it it in the car boot, fly home, grab the pro junior, throw it in the boot, get back and get playing.

Now the reason I wasn't worried is cause I knew it was gonna happen. It happened before..to the pro junior. Now, my pro junior is older than the blues, by maybe a year or so. It was my first amp. I spent most of my life until 2 years ago as a solo acoustic player/singer-songwriter or whatever you wanna call it, I was never a lead player. I played in a few bands when I was a kid but that was usually as a bass player, back when bass was pretty much my main instrument - apart from acoustic guitar...and piano, but I was never really an electric player.

So when I decided I wanted to rock it up a bit I went out and got myself a telecaster and a pro junior. I decided on the pro junior cos it was cheap, it was small and it was valve. Now, some people my scoff at 15 watts but this baby is loud and sounds great, and I figured if a 15 or 18 watt Fender Deluxe was good enough for Neil Young then a 15 watt pro jr would do the job for me.

But I digress...one day at rehearsal my pro junior starts farting and the volume is cutting in and out and I'm freaking out, so I leave it to a reliable amp technician I know. I don't see it for a few weeks but thats OK as luckily I had just saved the money to buy myself a lovely shiny new Blues jr (why have 1 amp when you can have 2?)

Now I'm definitely no expert on amps or electronics but I'll try to describe as best I can in lay man's terms what was wrong.
Now valve amps, have valves obviously, and a current runs through theses valves at a certain voltage. If the voltage is too high or too low it will alter the sound and performance and probably kill the valve. So therefore the amp needs to be 'biased' properly, don't ask me what this means I dont know, I just play. Here is a link at wikipedia which might explain it better. But anyway it turns out the pro junior has a fixed bias. Some amps have an adjustable bias that has to be adjusted when the valves are changed, but the pro junior has a fixed bias, and the valves are running HOT! Too hot to handle it seems. The current running through them is set way too high, Fender apparently does this on purpose, don't ask me why either. But this seriously shortens the lifespan of the valves.

Well I got my pro junior back with a new set of valves and my genius amp tech also modified the amp so it now has an adjustable bias.
And here is the hidden bonus, with the valves biased properly the pro junior sounds better, not just a bit, but seriously better, I mean I couldnt believe the difference when I got it home and plugged it in.

So, I think this is whats wrong with my Blues jr. The Blues jr also has a fixed bias. My amp guy said that it was likely in the future that the Blues jr would go the same way. I have left it in with the same guy who is gonna mod it in the same way and I am looking forward to getting it back and hopefully I'll see the same improvement as I did with the pro jr.

Ok, the pots seem to be a bit messed up too and a bit loose so I think it must have maybe taken a knock in the boot of a car, but we'll find out when I get it back.
I'll keep you posted...