Epiphone Valve Junior Head

one volume knob and that's it!! It's a simple as it gets! 5 watt el84 power tube...damn loud for just 5 watts!! one 12ax7a. Nicely constructed and looks really cool also.

very sweet class A amp for just 100 bucks! You don't come across many tube amps within this price range that is new and accessible to the public whether you're a begginer or amatuer to a pro. This amp is alot of fun to play with. There are some weaknesses. But you can expect alot for 100 tube amp. THe cleans are very nice. Dynamics are good. Crank this little bastard and it's got some killer distortion! You can certainly use this for rehearsal and jam with a drummer or band. Since it doesn't have any eq features. you're stuck with the tone unless you get a good OD and EQ pedal. I have my VJ running through a Fulltone OCD and Boss GE7. It sounds amazing! The Ge7 has certainly help taken this amp to new heights along with the OCD!! I'm going to test drive her in a band situation and see what my ears tell me. So far I'm very happy with this setup and saves alot of the tube life on my Laney Vh100R head.

No need to reiterate. I really wish it had a standby swtich. Bought a mod on e-bay; which will naturally void the warrenty. I use this at home as my main practice amp which I alternate between a valve Crate. This amp pumps power. For the life of me, I don't see how a nighlight only carries 2 more watts. I barely crank it past 9 o'clock. I have it plugged through Boss ME 50 and ultimately this amp subs for my Peavey 120 W Deuce combo. I don't want to overuse the tubes on the vintage Deuce, plus 120 W is too friggin loud living in an apt complex. The only thing I find fault is the on/off button which seems like cheesy plastic from a child's toy, IMO. Not a top quality switch.

I am a 25 yr amateur hobbyist. Played a brief ciruit. I think I know what sounds good. I play rhythm, blues/classics. The amazing thing is that when I play with the stereo, I am unable to distinguish between the produced sounds of Aerosmith/AC DC, like I do with the Crate Taxi valve. The tone is natural. Pure tube classic. I also accentuate with BBE Sonic and Aphex Exciter, GE 7. The GE 7 works well with a lack of tone knob. I only play with distortion and humbuckers, Ibanez 540S.

I was absolutely amazed at the size of this amp and it's weight. For $99 I was expecting something mediocre in size and weight, but this amp speaks volumes of quality right out of the box. No cracking issues with tubes. Just takes a good 3-5/10 minutes to warm up. It took me years to conform to Japanese products until I've realized Japanese quality surpasses US. (God help me) I've totally resisted anything Chinese, until now. The power chord is detachable, like the Marshalls. Believe it, this baby takes up quite a bit of space on top of your cabinet, for 5 W.

5 yr warrenty.

This amp is an answer to my prayers. For the past 3-5 years I have sought high and low with the low-watt tube amp market. Last year, I bought a 1980's Marshall Lead 15 W head and I thought that my search ended there. The 1 W Bumbox and a few others are way too expensive. For the life of me I couldn't understand why there wasn't a low-watt tube market, but for $99 this exceeded my expectations 3-fold. This product is a watershed in amplification. Don't let 5 W fool you. It probably sounds closer to 40 W. I know, I A/B switch it with a 30 W. I am able to play right along with AC/DC, Eagles, Aerosmith seamlessly without alarming the neighbors and police.

This amp has NO features...it's not supposed to! It is a tube amp, these days that should be features enough.

When I first got this baby home, I plugged it into my Marshal 4x10 and strapped on my 72 Les Paul. What came out was the loudest 5 watts you could imagine. I then played with different effects pedals until I could tame/warm the tone. Next I strapped on my strat and without much tweaking, I got THE PERFECT Strat sound out of it.

Don't know...Too soon to tell

again, too soon to tell

I love it. The only complaint I may have is that it is too loud, but even that I found a remedy for.

Any simpler and it would operate itself.

This is a follow up to an earlier review.

Swapped out the Sovtek el84 for a JJ Tesla. It wasn't as pronounced a change as I expected but still better. Swapped the chinese ax7 with a number of nos tubes I had and ended up with a ge 12at7. Tone was already good but this combination really brought it out.

Had been playing through a 12 but just last night my buddy dropped a black widow 15 that another friend had given me into a cabinet. Definatly more punch and to my suprise very clean.

He also did a mod for me which was an added bonus.

I don't know much about how stuff works but my friend who does know can't get over how well these are built especially for the money.

Not worried about it.....

Like everyone else here I have the sickness. Other amps are:

Fender Twin Reissue
Mesa DC-5
64 Bassman Head
Musicman RD50
Kustom Lead II Head

All have their own tone and I'm happy with each but this little guy is definatley in a leauge of it's own. Can't seem to get away from it. By far the best 99 bucks I've ever spent.

You'll find more reviews of this amp in the Guitar Amp Database. Am I the only person out there using this as a bass head? Anyway, on to the review: A 10 for features? But this little, low-watt amp has only one knob - volume. And 3 outputs - 4, 8, and 16 ohms to match your cab. The versatility of this amp resides in it's infinite modifiability - if you never open it up and fool around inside, you're missing the whole point (and all the fun) of the Valve Junior. First off, experiment with swapping out tubes (the stock tubes - 1 12AX7 preamp and 1 EL 84 power amp - are either Chinese or Sovtek - mine had Sovteks - perfectly servicable, but pretty prosaic.) A tempting selection of tubes can be found online. I've purchased from tubedepot.com and tubestore.com - had good experiences with both. You can spend a fortune on NOS Mullards and the like, but you'll also find lots of reasonably priced goodies (check out Electro Harmonix and JJ Tesla.) Another tip for the preamp section - you don't need to use a 12AX7 - try a 5751 for a 30% gain reduction or a 12AT7 for a 40% reduction (result: expanded "clean" headroom and smooth, creamy tone.) I get all worked up just writing about this stuff!

Another option which, I must warn you, will void your warranty is "moding." Characteristics of gain and tone can be altered by adding or replacing various resistors and capacitors. I could never do that, you say, I don't know squat about electronics. Never fear. An inventive gentleman named Bruce Hutcheon has created a series of clever mod kits that are easy to install and realy tweak the Valve Junior in groovy new directions. Go on ebay and search "bitmo" to find him. If you order from him, be sure to tell him you're a bass player and ask him to include the "Spanky Bottom" capacitor! One final note - be careful of voltage when working inside your amp - always unplug it!

Rated 8 for its stock tone. Good, but a little bland. So start swapping tubes, and if you're feeling brave, do a little moding. You can turn that 8 into an 11!

This is a head, so you'll need to get a cab to drive. Choose carefully so that you don't sabotage the amp by playing it thru a crappy cab. Right now I'm using a Carvin 805 (2 way cab with 10" driver, sold as a PA speaker.) I like it because it's compact, lightweight and sounds really full and punchy. Cheap, too at about $150 direct from Carvin.

You won't generate gobs of volume, and the amp doesn't have a line out, but I just mic it (I use an Audix kick drum mic) and send that to the house.

Haven't really run it long enough to say for sure, but seems solid.

Haven't needed any.

When you consider price point, quality, and modifiability this amp really is an unbeatable value. Isn't it time you got tubular?

The features this little amp has can be described in one word. "SIMPLE"

What impressed me the most about the sound quality was how quiet it was the minute I plugged it in! No hum at all! So far I have only played my American Standard Strat thru it since I only got the amp yesterday. Will try my Heritage LP tomorrow.

I had no sooner set it up on my speaker cab and powered it on when my clumsy roomie came trudging along and tripped over the power cord!! My new little toy came crashing to the floor (about a 20 inch drop) I picked 'er up and went on playing.....didn't seem to bother it a bit!

duno....who cares, for $99.99 buy another one when this one fails.

I have two custom built cabs that I did not have a head to use with. One is a 2-12 slant cab with Celestion Greenbacks. The other is a 1-12 with a speaker from one of the late 70's early 80's Yamaha amps (can't remember the model) I was going to sell both of these cabs but now I have a reason to keep them! I am thinking about buying another Valve Junior Head so I can play around with some "stereo" stuff.

This is a tricky one. One knob.

What I discovered is my guitar volume controls all aspects of my tone through pick attack which I like very very much. Home levels are more than adequate and I'm anxious to mic the jr on a live gig.

I could have probably made this rating a 10 since I love the simplicity but in all fairness I think this category is dedicated to bells and whistles and there are none. Perfectly ok by me.

I can't quit playing this little beast. Great blues and rock tones.

I've tried all my guitars and the two that sound the best to me are a 70's hardtail strat and a SX goldtop with p90's. The strat is very bluesy and the SX has that Brit tone. Clean tones are good but I almost wish I could get just a little bit more volume before the sweet spot. Two o'clock seems to work best for me.

Up front I have an Art digital reverb, danelectro trem, Ibanez ad-80 analog delay and a 70's mxr90. After hours of experimentation this set up seems to work the best. I tried a number of od and eq pedals and didn't like any of them. No need for distortion anyway because the amp gives me all I need and sounds class A great!

Appears to be built amazingly well. I always keep a sansamp classic around just in case. This would not be my choice for clean tone and I will run it in tandem with my twin or musicman rd-50 for gigs. The jr has a distinctive A class tone that deserves it's own place on stage.

Tubes 90 days, workmanship 5 years. I think that's fair. Another $99 epi wonder is the lp jr which I own and have recorded with.

Haven't needed their support so far so I'll leave this one alone.

Playing 42 years. Actively gigging for 34 years. I played a valve jr a friend had and was amazed at the tone. After doing my research here and throughout the net I decided I should fork out the 99 bucks and give it a try. I strongly agree with reviewers who say this is money well spent. I do have the JJ's coming as this seems to be the icing on the cake.

I'm not going to get into the gear thing. It's a sickness and I'll bet 98% of the reviewers here are afflicted. Let's just say my addiction is out of hand and to get sweet A class tone for $99 is simply a sin.

on off input output 4 8 16 ohm combined volume tone two in one knob 5 class a watts.i believe they were made in 2005 and i really believe they could raise the price a bit and add tube driven reverb those transformers are near the same as i have in our 120 watt all tube rockmaster head that has no reverb as well thank electro harmonix hollier grail sounds awsome with this eqd properly.

basic clean to blues overdrive very loud and distorted when wide open a guitar has treble cut for tone fine tuning as well as higher biased tubes if one hundred bucks is alot to you dont buy it till you try it dont forget drive pedals have equilizers as well and start at twelve dollars or so i love this little bugger its light and very responsive i run it through a e/v twelve 16 ohms speaker it screams i bought two more to run in stereo but ones plenty loud in this house.

it gets very warm quick have had no trouble at all its light and no need to cool down before moving at this price you can afford to carry a spare or two large transformer is probably worth sixty bucks alone well built metal corners nice tolex nice price.have left it on overnight more than once falling asleep while playing.

if the company can give two tubes and all this in a well built attractive cabinet for under a hundred bucks im pretty sure they can give excellent customer service.

there truly is nothing to hate about it no crummy speaker no painted black lightweight brittle box that would chip easily.we run a mxr pedalboard and an electro harmonix board through em if they were stolen we would buy four more they are a true value they sound great with our solid body guitars no internal mods at all we have our pedals outside so we dont have to go inside these little amps.

OK.....I'm a bitl ate ot the party, but what the hay. May as well chime in with my thoughts.

First of all, it's $99 stinking dollars! Less than most pedals. I've heard tell it is cheap, junk, save your money, build your own, buy a tweed, save up and get areal amp...blah, blah, blah....

Heres the deal, I like this little gem. No cleans to speak of, but what do you expect for 5 watts? Through a variety of speakers,
( vintage C12 Jensens, JBL, EV, Emmenence ) the Valve Jr puts out a great rock tone. It also responds fairly well to the guitars controls and seems to love any dirt pedal you throw it's way. all this with the ( gasp ) stock tubes and no mods!

It's pretty darn quiet too. Seems to like single coils as well as humbuckers. For me, it's a terrific little amp that not only loks very cool, it sounds very cool. I must say it beats the crap out of the Champs I've had come my way! In fairness though, I never ran the Champ through a larger or better speaker.

? who cares!! It's $99.00!!

Whoc cares! It's $99.00!

I'm old, set in my ways and have been playing since time began. How they can put this amp out for a C note is amazing. It's a great time to be a guitar player. The amount of good quality off shore guitars and amps for cheap is amazing. Wish I had these bargains back when I was starting out. Thanks Epi! Keep em coming.

Purchased last April (06) and have already submitted a full review. This follow-up note concerns the Epi head with JJ tubes - $30 delivered thru TubeDepot. I read a few reviews recommending the JJs. I found that they smooth out the tone - definately a difference. I'm using the head with a 12" Weber and a touch of the delay pedal. The clean tone is nicer and the overdrive smoother, with and without an OD pedal.