So many of the comments seem to be people reading the title without watching the video. Of course tubes amps should be fine left on overnight. Or for longer periods of time. Nowhere in the video do I say "it failed because it was left on overnight." It was oscillating, which might have been exacerbated by being left on. It's the title because that was the owner's problem description. Given how hot Blues Juniors can run, it was not an unreasonable concern. But I am not saying that leaving an amp on overnight should be any worry. I routinely test amps for 12 hours.
Regardless of how the owner mislabeled the problem deciding to use those words as your title certainly suggests that leaving your tube amp on overnight will cause problems. And nowhere in your video do you ever address that leaving your amp on all night should not cause problems. By neglecting to do so the comments are entirely reasonable and should come as no surprise. The comments came from viewers who watched the video and were left scratching their heads.
But for those skeptical about "amp was left on" as issue, have a look at Stuart's UK Amps *non-repair* of a Bassbreaker left on for a few weeks (yes, weeks). ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cX6vtCLoiP4.html Ouch.
I got a blues jnr IV my first tube amp, should I keep it out of sunlight? I have it near the window and the sun beams on the back should I move it? Also just wanted to know if a sans amp pedal would sound good on one of these?
i went to chicago for a week and left my 1954 tweed champ on...got so hot the tubes fell out...put em back in ...still using it.....btw...that was 1987 !!!!
Same tubes all these years later? If so, you may want to at least order some backups while the technology still exists;) I’ve heard talk lately of people gutting amps just to sell the tubes!
That makes it tough. I accidentally left an old 50watt vintage Fender bass amp on in my music room for a week. The room got about 95 degrees. Still works…
No shit,man. I have a tendency to have a whiskey or five when I play. I have left every fucking amp I ever owned on overnight,if the amp can’t handle that shit ,sell it and get a good amp.
The only downside to leaving your amp on is the life hours on the tubes and perhaps your hydro bill. But considering I’ve done this countless times on my 60’s fender with original tubes, after 50 years I’d say 24 hours of burn in is negligible 😅. My uneducated guess here might be that it got warm enough, long enough that those ribbon cables plastic might have softened and shifted position from the wire’s ‘memory’
So many times with so many different amplifiers yeah I leave them on all the time. That’s happened with a couple that I built and when I came back I was all the more happier-plug-in and play maybe give it a couple light kicks to see if anything makes noise and keep on playing. My little home studio stuff stays on all day sometimes, even my computer-then when I shut it down it’s sort of bad because it does all the stuff that it was supposed to do when It was supposed to be shut off because I don’t have it programmed right…Can’t get back into it for a couple hours ha ha
Back in the day all audio equipment was tube powered and some of that stuff ran 24/7. Shouldn't be a problem but with how cheaply things are made today...
the issue is, and always has been that the tubes lie under the chassis rather than on top pointing to the sky...heat rises and degrades the other components
By accident you started a conversation , no many conversations about leaving amps on ., that’s ok though Let them squak ., Thanks I learned a lot and enjoyed your sharing your knowledge with us
I played one of these one day, and i really liked it, kinda dissapointed to see the pcb and the ribbon cables. Thats awesome how you eliminated all the noise by tightening stuff up and moving stuff around....awesome!
@@joeltunnah It only makes it more difficult if your retarded, It doesn't really cause any issues, and they are more reliable that a point to point amp. the use of a pcb as a medium instead of coated wires doesn't make it a computer,. It means that its going to be consistent,
Yeah, with the cap removed it sort of sounds muffled and midrangy in comparison. But everyone's got different tastes. Generally I prefer darker sounding amps, but agree that especially with the clean stuff he was playing, the bright sounded OK.
As nice as these amps look/sound. The Poor PCB and layout always stirs me away from them and made me save up for a nice handwired amp that will be easy to service if/when something fails. Had a blues deluxe have terrible PCB burn marks. Got rid of it and got a 57 twin with 0 issues since I’ve gotten it.
Ive had 3 BJs and 2 Pro Jrs. Great concept but cheaply made. I now own a Yerasov GTA15. The Rusdian answer to the BJ/Pro. So much more headroom. BJs start to compress after 4/5 on volume. The Rusky just gets angry and starts sonding more like my JTM 45. This makes me happy.
Removing that bright cap literally changed my mind on the B Jr. it was an amp I recommended and knew was good, but personally avoided as I felt like Fender phoned (a good tool but uninspiring palette) it in to stay relevant in the low watt tube amp craze, it sounded too hifi for me. But take away that crisp high end and hello traditional Fender flavour.
Exactly why I got one last month....love it. The Roland Blues Cube is supposed to be a tip-top solid state amp...and mine is great by any standard...but my Jr sounds a bit more 'real' to me if that's even a thing.
The chassis screws were not even finger tight when I bought my Blues Deluxe second hand. It was so new that it still smelled like glue. I’m sure someone bought it and traded it in immediately afterwards. It’s a great amp after a speaker change and 10 mins with a screwdriver
Yeah to be fair the stock eminence speaker is a bit harsh I found. And the volume pot is a bit touchy but used an attenuator in mine and put in a celestion alnico cream and it turned into a full blooded blues machine, such sweet tones I haven't been able to replicate even with an EC twinolux
This is fascinating to watch especially your reflection in the chrome. And your playing is excellent and tasteful. Track some music for ambience during your videos.
Thanks Mark! Sometimes I use previously recorded bits from other videos in the background, but I don't have time to make essentially an album's worth of BG music for the videos. I looked into the free backing tracks available, and they suck hard. Tried to use a friend's music and his publisher struck the video, even though my friend gave me permission.
My hearing isn't very good. I can do without the background ambience, and prefer clear annunciation during informative vids like this one. Nice job, great audio and video. Excellent troubleshooting approach!
Bright cap - C3 - too bad you couldn't have drilled a hole somewhere for a mini toggle to put it in/out of circuit. On your Guitar playing - I'm a bass player and I've become pretty proficient at it over the last 50 years. I own a six string Fender Mustang that my parents bought for me used in 1967. To this day all I can play on it are simple chords, and finger picking is out of the question for me. Your playing is very nice. 🙂
paul.....i would love an original mustang -or any instrument from the 60s ....just cos its part of that era ......if you ever want to sell it -let me know !
you would be right, i have seen a lot of them break, not in amps because i don't work on those much. i service automation equipment and believe me i have had to hand wire with individual wires so many devices because these dogshits break where the insulation stops and it creates a stressing point there, disconecting from the pcb. imagine the grid wire to fail, RIP tube, worse yet if you have a NOS in there.
Wait, how did the ribbon cable move from being left on over night? I just bought one yesterday and now I think I may need to hire security or ghost busters.
I had a Tweed Blues Junior years ago. Great sounding amp but it had some component failures. I had to get it fixed twice. After the 2nd time I sold it. I guess I just got a bad one. I'd probably buy another one as it's a great amp.
The tone controls on my Blues Jr. III work, but they’re…..subtle. Is that common with these amps? I'd recently installed a Fromel 'Supreme' kit, and I didn't really take notice of how effective the tone controls were beforehand..... Thanks!
not exactly the same type of amp but i left my hifi tube amp one day 24hours (max volume and i was working in the same room, got to give it credit the thing has absolutely 0 hum and noise). Absolutely nothing happened, i noticed exactly the next day when i went to turn it on but i realised it was on the entire day because i got a call at that point and i forgot to shut it. PCBs can work in a tube amp (mine is P2P) but this just looks cheaply/poorly designed.
My father was a nuclear weapon Specialist in the air force with 33 Years service after WW2 who Supervised and oversaw the Maintenance and repair on Weapons carried by B-52 Bombers. Whenever possible Electronic testing and analytic Devices in the shop were left On. And yes, in the early days Of nuclear weapons both the Weapons and planes relied on Tube technology. Always on Was preferable to on and off.
Overnight? Big deal. My brother accidentally left his Blackstar club 20 combo on for 5 days straight. That was a year and a half ago. Still works, still original tubes. I think the B's Jr will survive.
I almost always use a brightcap, because thenI can turn down the treble a bit which gives a thicker sound on Fenders. But........very low value mostly, about 47pF-80pF and old 50's mica caps. And weather I use one or not will be very independent of what speaker is in there. For instance my 68Custom DeluxeReverb I just bought lacks the brightcap and I need to one because of the Celestion speaker that is not as bright as a Jensen, and not bright enough for my taste(I am used to old Fenders)
curious if you've ever done a bias mod on one of these and cooled it down a tad? If so, what are your thoughts? I tinker on amps, and have a friend that has 2 blues juniors. He's had me do all sorts of mods to one, and left the other stock. Some people don't care for it, but I think cooling down the bias a tad helps get a bit more of that signature fender spank. I think I also did some sort of tone mod that really "opened up" the sound. Been in and out of it quite a bit over the years, hard to remember what all I've done to it now, lol... Edit, just got to the point of the video you talk about the bias and tone mod.... it really does make them "feel" like a bigger amp. I always called those "bright" caps, "thin" caps instead, heh. Also another thing I've found. Never push the little "fat" "drive" "whatever" buttons these series of amps had.
The "Fat" engages a cathode bypass cap for the second triode stage. It can make the amp have less hum if you engage it and keep the volume pot lower. But run it any way you like the sound. I have a video on an easy way to cool the bias. Look in the Hot Rods and Blues playlist.
I would have liked to see you move the ribbons back closer to the blue wire to confirm your suspicion and rule out an intermittent connection at the ends of the ribbon cables.
I have a question. I have an old Ampeg Reverberocket and if shine a flashlight in the back, it excites one tube and it makes a clear tone (a D note). Only one tube and only one led flashlight. Weird.
This is useful and helpful for the tube amp modiers like me. If I increase the value of the C3 capacitor, would it brighten up the amp, as oppose to what you did?
As the value of C3 increases it won't be a bright cap so much as an upper mids cap and then as you go larger a partial bypass where you'll have crazy gain. Experiment - won't hurt a thing.
@1:38, it is evident that some manual soldering happened. There is a pool of flux between two very shiny joints. Shiny solder joints with flux pool-manual soldering (probably purple and red wire [maybe white wire instead of red?]) Wave solder joints are cloudier (but still effective) and are not cold-solder joints. You skipped over that observation, but it tells me that something else was swapped out, either at the factory, or by a user. I only thought this was significant because later, you moved the ribbon cable away from the purple wire and the hum went away. I’d research that purple wire mod a little more closely.
I've looked at this spot a bunch of times and I can't tell if my eyes are playing tricks! The little electrolytic cap next to D-5 at the end, is one side of the lead broken?
Where are you located? I may want you to look at my Stageright 15 watt, see if there is a tube bias that can be done or anything to improvement it that little bit more like you did here in the blues jr.
I’m fairly new to your channel. Great and informative videos. When replacing the 3 large filter caps would it be beneficial to add some smaller high quality film bypass capacitors Just curious on what your thoughts are? Thanks
I have the very same amp. I always thought it was too bright sounding. Is the task of snipping the the C3 cap something a non amp tech can do safely or does it require the service of a pro? Thanks!
Please read up on safely discharging capacitors before reaching in and snipping things. Capacitors can store voltages, sometimes for long periods of time, large enough to kill you. A couple alligator clips and a resistor between them is all you need to do it safely, but it is critical!
In this case the function of the capacitor is filtering frequency’s, so yeah it’s safe if touching nothing else. but i agree in other cases a capacitor can be storage high voltage as a smoothering cap. Mostly the cap is than big and can tell you the voltage it’s written on it
In winter 2017/2018 from December through March I left my new Fender EC Vibro-Champ on for 3 maybe 4 months continuously! To slowly burn in every component so that they last longer. I actually used it as a small space heater by our bed. No damage, never any problems ever. The very idea of making a video like this video makes me laugh my ass off. - Peter 72
This one had a problem after being on overnight. I found/fixed the problem. PS burn-in isn't real. Speakers change with use. Caps/resistors don't. At least not in that time frame.
@@PsionicAudio Well when I made the comment above I was addressing the situation regarding the Fender Blues Jr. being left on overnight. I was just making a point that in no way could that damage the amp. Guitar Center leaves all their floor model amps on every night until it's sold so people can play on them and demo them to hear how they sound. Most , if not all appliance stores leave their floor model TV's on 24/7 until someone purchase it. They do that to allow people to see the picture quality. So do you see now that I was making the case that leaving the Blues Jr. on overnight is not something to be concerned about?
Overnight = three or four playing jobs = shouldn't be an issue. Amps in venues, that get used by everyone, get a major hammering and most in my experience are Fender.
So, one time someone left my egnater rebel 20 on for 4 days straight, and then I instantly had multiple problems. It would over heat and stop working: had to keep an exrernal fan on it for it to play more than 20min. And the other issue was the wattage knob had to be at least ~15 (it should be able to run 1-20watts) or else it wouldn't produce any noise, or it would be extremely staticy.. contacted customer support, they guessed the bias was off. Ended up being to expensive to fix and I sold it. Still not sure what really went wrong.
