What Should I Buy?

Low/Mid Power Valve Amp

I’ve finally decided to sell my Vox AC30, which has been housebound for the past 20 years. Totally unsuitable for bedroom use, so I’d like to have one speaker and about half the wattage. I like the Fender Blues Junior and I’ve also considered the AC15. What about the Fender Bassbreaker 15 and Blackstar Artist 15 (the top of my budget)?

My main tastes are The Beatles, Stones, Eagles, Oasis, Aerosmith, AC/DC… I have single-coil and humbucker guitars and the amp must be pedal-friendly. What do you think?

David Francis, via email We think you’re suffering a bit of ‘choice paralysis’, David, because if we read you right and you’re playing solely at home, any one of those amps will do a fantastic job. Rather prosaically, the bigger the box, the more expansive and room-filling bottom-end you’ll get. That’s a boon for big clean sounds, but for a lot of the music you mention, they’re all classic rock and pop tones that don’t typically have huge bass. We’ll take a slight break from the usual Q&A Buying Advice format to try to help focus your decision, in addition to you getting out and playing them, of course – that’s the most important bit of all.

If you go by features alone, the Blackstar is the clear favourite: two versatile, footswitchable channels, onboard reverb and a dual-level effects loop. We’d say it’s the ‘biggest’ sounding of this bunch, too, perhaps thanks to the large cabinet, perhaps those 6L6 output valves. We think it’d suit your rockier leanings very well.

For chime and classic Vox tone, the choice is obvious, plus, of course, you get that magic spring reverb and tremolo on board. We’ve selected the ‘X’ variant for its Celestion Blue speaker. You can save money with the Greenback-loaded version, and some people prefer it. We don’t.

Of the Fenders, the Bassbreaker is more versatile, especially for rock, albeit sacrificing a ply cab for particle board and spring reverb for digital. Those two things alone make the Blues Junior the more traditional-sounding option. It’s a great pedal platform, though like the AC15, doesn’t have the clean headroom of the Blackstar.

It seems your choice is vintage or modern. AC15 and Blues Junior in one camp, Blackstar and Bassbreaker on the other. For us, the Blackstar is the best compromise of all of the above.

A lot of the original PAFs were asymmetrically wound because they were done by hand; the scatter makes a difference as well. Time moves on, Gibson buys a mechanical winding machine, everything tightens up… you get the picture.

As for your 335, our opinion is that it can make it sound a little more ‘vintage’, ‘acoustic’ and slightly more ‘hollow/honky’. All of that is good or less good, depending on what you want. Cleans and low gains can sound lovely, but you might lose some mid solidity and thickness in higher gained sounds. It’s interesting to note that Gibson Memphis puts asymmetrically wound ‘MHS’ humbuckers on some of its latest ES-335 models, so you could go and try some out at your local Gibson dealer. There are 200 winds difference between their coils, don’tcha know!

BRIDGE TONE?

I feel like I’ve missed one of the biggest ‘tone secrets’ of all! For many years I’ve struggled with the bridge pickup of my Fender Stratocaster (American Vintage ’57 Reissue with a five-way switch) as it often sounds thin and bright in comparison with the other pickups. After watching various videos online, however, I notice that a lot of people do a modification that enables the use of a tone control with the bridge pickup. I understand this is a ‘simple’ wiring job – could you explain please? David Craig, via email

Thanks for asking this question, David. It’s such a useful mod if you want to tame that bridge pickup a little bit, especially under low to medium gain. Many modern Strats come wired with a tone control on the bridge pickup, but many vintage-style ones do not… as you know!

If you were to look at your CRL-style five-way switch, you’ll see four lugs on each side (see the diagrams, above). It doesn’t matter which way around it’s mounted, but the ‘classic’ orientation is with the spring side towards the bottom of the pickguard. Two of the lugs (we’ve labelled them ‘c’ on the diagrams) are the common ‘outputs’ and you’ll see they’re connected with a link wire from one end of the switch to the other. They’re connected to the guitar volume pot. The remaining six lugs – three on each side – are where you attach the tone pots and pickups. The hot wires (usually white if they’re vintage Fender-style pickups) from the pickups attach to one side’s lugs, and the wires from the pots to the other side.

If you’re looking at your switch, you’ll see there’s nothing attached to one of the lugs. That’s the lug for the bridge pickup tone pot. So now you have two choices: move the adjacent tone pot wire from the lug next door (leaving the middle pickup with no tone pot), or put a bridge between those lugs (for a shared tone pot between bridge and middle). There will be a slight tonal change from attaching or unattaching pots because of the increased resistance in the circuit. It’s worth saying there are different configurations for a five-way switch, but the ins/ outs/ principle is the same.