Are Fender Valve Amps over priced?

Axe_meister

Just checking the Andertons Website at the moment.
You get the Bassbreaker at £399, which is not really a Fender Sounding amp, but ol from a price performance point of view
Then you get the Pro Jnr (just Volume and tone) at £499, then the Blues Jnr at £569.
You get far more amp for your money from the likes on Laney/Blackstar/Vox
You can even get a Koch for £439 and PRS at £599

Having owned a Pro Jnr in the past (which I now regret selling), I thought about getting a new small amp with 10" or 12" for dem pure tones when I can't be bothered to with Helix.

DrCornelius

I’ve really enjoyed my little Morris Tweed which I picked up new directly on ebay for £300. Really warm Fender cleans and seems well put together . It sounds a bit like a cleaner champ - think it’s 7w with a 10” celestion

ICBM

The Pro Junior and Blues Junior are overpriced in my opinion - not compared to the Bassbreakers so much, but compared to the Hotrods which they are more closely related to.

Pro Jr - 15W, one basic channel - £489
Blues Jr - 15W, one channel, basic boost, reverb - £589
Hotrod Deluxe - 40W, two channels, proper boost, reverb, FX loop - £749.

The Hotrod is even built better. Aside from pure portability I have no idea why anyone would spend three quarters of the money for about a third of the amp.

longjaw

ICBM said:

The Pro Junior and Blues Junior are overpriced in my opinion - not compared to the Bassbreakers so much, but compared to the Hotrods which they are more closely related to.

Pro Jr - 15W, one basic channel - £489
Blues Jr - 15W, one channel, basic boost, reverb - £589
Hotrod Deluxe - 40W, two channels, proper boost, reverb, FX loop - £749.

The Hotrod is even built better. Aside from pure portability I have no idea why anyone would spend three quarters of the money for about a third of the amp.

Size - I bought a Pro Junior specifically for rehearsals because:

- I can easily carry the amp in one hand and my guitar in the other
- it has a very small footprint, which is a big bonus in some of the smaller rehearsal rooms I've used

p90fool

The Pro and Blues Juniors are big profit makers for Fender, the development was done in the 1990s, they're very cheaply made and they're so popular among people who don't look beyond big brands they can charge many times what they cost to produce. 

I actually quite like the Pro Junior, but really it's a 250 quid amp at best.

Wazmeister

In my very humble opinion, the Blues Junior is a complete waste of floor space...

Danny1969

In terms of what they cost to produce and what they sell for fender valve amps are pretty tame in terms of profit margin. It's never cheap to make things with large linear transformers and bulky through hole components, let alone valve bases and valves. 
Their big margins will be on their DSP and class D amps as this tech is mass produced very cheaply. Probably cost more to make the cabinet than the electronics. 

chrisj1602

I don’t mind the Blues Junior but I think it is a bit overpriced, and buying a new one for £589 when you can pick up a used 68 Princeton for £600 would be madness.

Mudcrutch

Personally I think all Fender and Gibson products are overpriced .
Joe Bonamassa stockpiling of equipment is driving up the prices of used kit.

earwighoney

I struggle to comprehend why anyone would the prices in the OP when a HRD/BD can be bought 2nd hand for anything from £300.

I had my USA made BD for less than £300, and had no takers!

Pabcrane

I've never been enamoured of the Blues Jr, I've used the HotRot Deluxe gigging and a few friends have one and it's a solid amp but I've got a Classic 30 which fills that space for me, so I'm actually considering a Deluxe Reverb because it has a different flavour and the reverb and tremolo is nice I believe.

I imagine that some of what one is paying for though is the iconic looks of the amp - I think that they're all made in the same factory with the same labour cost and with PCBs. Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

JohnCordy

Yeh go for a second hand princeton....
I tried a blues junior when they were on offer and it sounded pretty gross in comparison to the 65 prince reissue

Whitecat

Pro Juniors are often in sales... sometimes limited edition versions that might be in a weird colour/finish but will probably have an upgraded speaker. Probably not impossible to grab a new one for well under £400 if you time it right, I know I've done it.

They are nice amps, but I could never get along with them, found them much too noisy for me and at the price they are I didn't feel it was worth putting the work into modding them to work a little better, but a lot of people will do that. Even stock though they have a decent enough tone.

fretmeister

The Blues Junior is a boxy sounding pile of arse. Can be much improved by putting the amp in a bigger box.
Still over priced.

menamestom

JohnCordy said:

Yeh go for a second hand princeton....
I tried a blues junior when they were on offer and it sounded pretty gross in comparison to the 65 prince reissue

I had one fore a while on loan, and did a back to back with a '65 reissue, it was definitely night and day.

But the Princeton does cost twice as much.... 

ICBM

Whitecat said:

Pro Juniors are often in sales... sometimes limited edition versions that might be in a weird colour/finish but will probably have an upgraded speaker. Probably not impossible to grab a new one for well under £400 if you time it right, I know I've done it.

They are nice amps, but I could never get along with them, found them much too noisy for me and at the price they are I didn't feel it was worth putting the work into modding them to work a little better, but a lot of people will do that. Even stock though they have a decent enough tone.

I have to say I find them rather boring and ordinary... not positively bad, and the basic tone is at least better than the Blues Jr, but I don't really get why they're so highly rated. They also have a common fault with a cap failing in the power section, which from a design point of view is something of a band-aid anyway and shouldn't really be necessary - the fact that it fails when it's rated for 1KV shows that rogue voltages are being generated, which otherwise might cause the OT to arc. (But why? The output section of a properly-designed valve amp shouldn't do that.)

The best I've heard is actually a Blues Jr with a replaced 5E3-sized pine/tweed cabinet and Jensen speaker, in fact - but those have design faults too... the worst of which principally causes a tendency to set fire to themselves .

By comparison the Hotrod and Blues Deluxes have very few faults - Fender have actually made improvements to them over the years that they haven't with the smaller ones.

Whitecat

ICBM said:

Whitecat said:

Pro Juniors are often in sales... sometimes limited edition versions that might be in a weird colour/finish but will probably have an upgraded speaker. Probably not impossible to grab a new one for well under £400 if you time it right, I know I've done it.

They are nice amps, but I could never get along with them, found them much too noisy for me and at the price they are I didn't feel it was worth putting the work into modding them to work a little better, but a lot of people will do that. Even stock though they have a decent enough tone.

I have to say I find them rather boring and ordinary... not positively bad, and the basic tone is at least better than the Blues Jr, but I don't really get why they're so highly rated. They also have a common fault with a cap failing in the power section, which from a design point of view is something of a band-aid anyway and shouldn't really be necessary - the fact that it fails when it's rated for 1KV shows that rogue voltages are being generated, which otherwise might cause the OT to arc. (But why? The output section of a properly-designed valve amp shouldn't do that.)

The best I've heard is actually a Blues Jr with a replaced 5E3-sized pine/tweed cabinet and Jensen speaker, in fact - but those have design faults too... the worst of which principally causes a tendency to set fire to themselves .

By comparison the Hotrod and Blues Deluxes have very few faults - Fender have actually made improvements to them over the years that they haven't with the smaller ones.

I think the "highly rated" thing possibly comes from an age when they were a lot cheaper... the price on them has definitely gone up along with everything else Fender makes. As a simple circuit with as you say "not positively bad" tone they have a market. I've seen a few reasonably credible pro guitarists recommend them as solid workhorse tube amps for those who can't afford much more.

I put a Celestion Blue in a Blues Jr once, had to take the bell off the back of the speaker to make it fit but it was a pretty significant improvement. A lot of that amp's issues are in the stock speaker IMO. I mean, there are more problems than just that (I have since moved it on!) but the difference was not small.

RickLucas

Enormously.

Sassafras

I wouldn't have a Blues Jnr for free.

HAL9000

If I wanted a low wattage amp that has that archetypal Fender sound I wouldn't buy a Fender.

DrJazzTap

earwighoney said:

I struggle to comprehend why anyone would the prices in the OP when a HRD/BD can be bought 2nd hand for anything from £300.

I had my USA made BD for less than £300, and had no takers!

Same here, I ended up shifting my blues deluxe (wish I hadn't) for £300. Started off at £400 and then no bites until I hit £300. Even at £320 no sniffs, really odd. It was a mim one, but even so in really good nick.