Epiphone Valve Junior Combo Amplifier

Epiphone Valve Jr Combo Amp Review

I’ve been playing around with this little amp or a while now, and I’m completely amazed. It’s not loaded with whiz-bang features. I mean, it’s a simple 5-watt Class A tube amplifier. It has an input jack, a volume control, and an output jack (in this case, connected to the internal speaker). It doesn’t get any simpler than that. But simplicity has its virtues, and that seems to be the basic tenet of this amplifier.

The first thing I noticed about it when I first plugged in and turned it on (and the tubes had warmed up) is HOW BLINKIN’ LOUD IT IS!!!

Epiphone 5-watt Class-A Tube Amp

5W? Are you kidding me? In a small bedroom, I can’t even crank it up to the point where I start to get that lovely tube-saturation crunch without fear of blowing a window out. This little fellow is way louder than you’d ever expect from 5 watts! Seriously, it’s plenty loud for intimate venues like very small clubs, coffeehouses, and the like. Even before the tubes start to give you a little crunch, there’s plenty of clean-toned volume available.

But it doesn’t stop at simply being loud, not by any means. Just because there’s no tone control on this amp doesn’t mean that there’s no tone. Heck, it doesn’t even need a tone control. At clean settings the tone is quite full and balanced. Very clean, crystalline highs, solid mids, and the lows would really ‘be there’ if only the speaker were larger and in a proportionately larger cabinet. And right there is my one and only gripe with the Epiphone Valve Junior Combo amp.

But in all fairness, when the Valve Jr is cranked up a bit, the low-end begins to assert itself quite a bit more. Let’s just say that if I were to go out and buy this amp, I’d probably opt for the head-only version, and select a separate speaker cabinet to go with it. Now, when it’s cranked up about halfway, it’s still pretty clean… until you really dig in a bit, and then its starts biting off the tops of the waveforms for just a bit of a crunch. It’s very responsive to picking dynamics, as any good tube amp should be. Keep turning it up and it keeps getting dirtier, of course…until at full volume, it’s all-out, all-tube distortion that’s neither ‘muddly’ nor shrill and ‘splattery’. The distortion is very controlled and smooth, and all the tone you put into it is still there, top to bottom.

This little Epiphone Valve Jr amp truly is simplicity defined. It’s got plenty of volume for practice, recording, and intimate live venues. it has well-balanced tone, and an excellent retail price (for an all-tube amp, these days!). Given my leanings toward bluesy rock styles, this would be my choice for a recording amp, I think.

Epiphone Valve Junior Combo Amp Ratings

Tone: 4+ (that one tiny little gripe I mentioned about the low-end…)
Features: 5 Well…what can I say…it doesn’t have many, nor does it need them!
Appearance: 5 retro-ish, minimalistic… very clean and neat-looking.
Build Quality: 5 Quite solidly put together.
Value: 5
Overall: 4.8