Valve Junior all BitMo Spankied up!

[Twinfan]

I ordered a BitMo Spanky kit for my Epiphone Valve Junior - wow, what a difference!  Anyone with an EVJ combo or head needs to get one of these kits.  It removes the mud and fartiness of the original amp and clears up the tone a treat!

Bargain for about £16 quid delivered from the US.  The installatin manual even gives handy hints/tips as to what the mod does and how you can change things if you're not quite satisfied.

Totally recommended!

[dave_mc]

far as I hear, changing the OT makes the biggest difference. the one in the VJ has the wrong impedance, it's aimed at a 6v6 instead.

the 18 watt thread is amazing, and it has links to the s2 amps mods (which lists all the components and tells you what they do). EDIT: the bitmo dude posted there a couple of times too.

:drink:

[Adam.M]

18 watt thread? :S

the VJ with mods looks to be the perfect amp for me...

is there a big difference between the Spanky and Trio mods? in the demo on the ebay page, they use a Spanky moded VJ for the clean and a Trio for the lead...

http://demos.dovetailsystems.com/bruce/Bruce%20Hutcheon%20-%20Night%20of%20the%20Dogmen%2006.mp3

spot on!

God i need one of these... and hey, i can actually afford it! :)

Did you mod the combo? i'm thinking of modding the combo with the spanky, and getting a head for the trio. Perfect for my jamming sessions...

[Twinfan]

Yep, I've got a combo.  Unlike Ratrod here on the forum, I've fitted all four capacitors as supplied in the kit.  It's so much clearer than standard, which is mushy and a bit farty.  I got round this by using an EQ pedal up front, but with the mods it doesn't need it now.

Sounds great with pedals up front too - I've been using an Ibanez RG with a Marshall DriveMaster and got a reasonable EVH tone for practising out of it.

I also used my Epi Casino straight into it and got a nice bluesy/jazzy tone.

The most impact £16 has ever made to a guitar tone!

[Adam.M]

Oh! origional drivemaster? i spotted one for £60 the other week, but i figured it'd be better to get an origional guvnor

[Twinfan]

Yeah, I'm after one of them at the moment - hopefully collecting it next weekend.

[dave_mc]

18 watt thread? :S

http://www.18watt.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=9053#140530 (you might have to register to read it, but it's worth it)

http://forums.birdsandmoons.com/forum/showthread.php?t=32385

[Ratrod]

The BitMo mod is highly recommended, indeed.

Now I'm looking out for the matching cab.

[BadMonkey]

I installed the BitMo Tri Mod on my EVJ combo & have been really impressed with the results.
The 2 stage gain switch it adds (as well as a very useful tone knob) means I don't have to put an overdrive pedal in front of it to get a real rock crunch.  I'd never soldered before doing this so am very surprised it works.  Drilling the amp was a bit hairy though!
But it is still damn loud.  There's a UK based guy on EBay that's selling a pentiode/triode switch to get the amp down to 2 watts.  He also sells a standby switch, HT fuse & line out mod.  I'll probably get that next.

BM

[Twinfan]

What valves are you guys using?  Yesterday I tried a few different ECC83s:

Electro-Harmonix
Marshall
Mesa
JJ

The Mesa/Marshall tubes sounded very similar, probably the same tubes.  Quite thick and bassy.

The E-H had the highest gain and lots of bass/treble but sounded a bit harsh in my EVJ combo.

The JJ had the best balance and is the one that's stayed in.

I'm using a Mesa EL84 which is much clearer than the cheapo Sovtek that was in it originally.

[dave_mc]

I installed the BitMo Tri Mod on my EVJ combo & have been really impressed with the results.
The 2 stage gain switch it adds (as well as a very useful tone knob) means I don't have to put an overdrive pedal in front of it to get a real rock crunch.  I'd never soldered before doing this so am very surprised it works.  Drilling the amp was a bit hairy though!
But it is still damn loud.  There's a UK based guy on EBay that's selling a pentiode/triode switch to get the amp down to 2 watts.  He also sells a standby switch, HT fuse & line out mod.  I'll probably get that next.

BM

a lot of these mods you can basically get for free from that 18 watt thread- obviously you have to buy the parts. But I suspect it's cheaper to buy the parts.

also, what the 18 watt thread gives you is a discussion on the relative merits of various part swaps, how to voice your amp to what you want, etc.

I'm not trying to complain about these kits or anything, but a lot of these mods seem to be pretty simple, i think the parts for the "gold" mods are something like $10 (excluding the upgraded OT, which these kits don't include anyway). EDIT: and according to that thread (and I believe them, it makes sense) the OT is the one best component swap you can do.

[Twinfan]

I agree, the parts themselves are low cost but it's sometimes nice to have a bit of direction first as a "starter for ten".  That's what the kits give.  Wading through 200+ pages of the 18watt thread was not my idea of a simple start to amp modding.

The BitMo Spanky manual explains what each of the 4 capacitors is doing and how you can tweak their values to get different results if you so desire.

£6 worth of parts and £10 for the guy's time in developing the kit is a fair deal to me.

[dave_mc]

^ true.

(though you don't have to wade through the entire thread, there's a semi-index now)

:drink:

[BadMonkey]

I agree, the parts themselves are low cost but it's sometimes nice to have a bit of direction first as a "starter for ten"

I'm totally in agreement with you there!
I'm a complete novice when it comes to electronics. I looked at a few VJ mod sites and was totally confused.
The most important part of the BitMo kit was the instructions.  Using those it was basically like assembling a model from an Airfix kit & then sticking it in the amp.

[zigmund]

...sheesh, sometimes I think you guys are waayy ahead of me...good stuff!