A Fender Pro Jr is a good little amp for harp. Don't forget though that Johnny Hewitt's has been all hand wired point to point and modded, so it's no longer a stock amp. A far, far, far better amp of that wattage for harp is the Fender '65 Princeton Reverb Reissue. It is hands down the best harp amp I've ever played through including all the boutique amps I've tried too. If I was going to buy any amp again now, I wouldn't even consider anything else than the PRRI.
I'll tell you what I think, but you probably wont like it much.
Buy a used Pro Jr. Play it. Do not mod it. Sell it for what you paid for it down the road. There is nothing wrong with the black tolex models.
A Pro Jr is a good, inexpensive harp amp. If you can play and have good technique, it will sound good. It is too loud for playing inside the house. It might not be loud enough with some bands without additional amplification.
You don't have to do the mods on Rick's blog to get one to sound good. ---------- The Blues Photo Gallery
You MUST swap out tubes on a Pro Junior in order to control feedback. But, it's supposed to be a decent amp for harp. IMHO, a Princeton Reverb Reissue is a better harp amp. But they are tonally different.
In a previous Johnny Hewitt thread Kingley wrote, "For all you gear heads, the amp he's using is a tweed Fender Pro Junior, which has had some circuit changes and been rewired in point to point style and is putting out around 10 watts."
This being the case, I'd investigate Johnny's amp a bit more thoroughly before buying a Pro Jr to use as a "donor" amp. All the tubes locate into the PCB on the stock amp, input jack is integral with the board, layout is bad, a couple of common issues with the stock amps (most work fine, but it's the kind of amp I'd play until/if it broke, I'd only consider extensive work at a "mate's rate" or do it myself), other than a few tube swaps & tweaking the odd component here & there (clip a cap, add a bias pot?), they are not a good platform for modding. Many guys who "mod" them do so to correct a failure of some sort.
You may buy a working Pro Jr & find that to make it "like Johnny's" requires dumping everything but the cab, chassis & transformers?...Whilst resistors caps & pots are cheap enough, labour costs for wiring them all up & fitting new tube sockets would concern me.
Would a USA market Pro Jr have a UK/EU friendly power transformer? Schematic suggests a seperate USA "Domestic" & EU "Export" version.
If you just want a Pro Jr, then go ahead, they "work" well enough, if a bit on the bright side, but then this helps them cut through, certainly loud enough to play with a reasonably sympathetic electric band. I don't love them, but there's no denying the stock amp is useful & a value-for-money bang for the buck. ----------
The Fender Pro Junior is a loud, clean amp for its size. It does need to be cranked a bit to open up, so it's not really a "small practice amp". I have had one for 15 years, it was the first amp I ever got for amplified blues harp. I initially thought it sucked, too loud and squealy, too thin....but guess what really sucked? My technique. You've all heard this story before. Years later, I can make that amp sound pretty good because I got better. It's a good one for its price. You do not need to mod it unless you are a real stickler for such things. Maybe calm down the first preamp tube by swapping out the cheap 12AX for a 12AY. A larger investment would be to swap in a more vintage sounding speaker from Weber if you like more warm distortion right off the bat,,,you can do that yourself with a screwdriver and a soldering iron. But I know players who don't do a thing to that amp—play it stock— and it sounds great. It's a good value used, I think. Very simple controls, no need to mess with reverb or gain channels and stuff. Volume and a tone knob...that's it! Hope that my opinion helps.
