The Internet Has Thoughts About Guitar Player's Blues Junior IV Review.
The press called the spring reverb "just delightful." The forum had questions.
Source
“The integrated spring reverb in the amp is classic Fender, and just delightful.”
What the internet actually said
“I always thought the Blues Jr could be a much better amp with a bigger cab.”
Seymour Duncan Forum · m.n.
“I've read the standard Eminence speaker doesn't do it any favors either.”
Seymour Duncan Forum · r.r.
“I mean 25 years, are you sure you don't just sound better?”
Seymour Duncan Forum · c.h.
The Suede Read
Guitar Player ran a review of the Fender Blues Junior IV and called the spring reverb "just delightful." The amp is a $599 tube combo with a 25-year track record. That track record is exactly where things get interesting.
Over at the Seymour Duncan Forum, a thread on the same amp spent its runtime debating the things the review did not. The cab is too small. The stock Eminence speaker doesn't do the amp any favors. And — the killer — after 25 years of the Blues Junior sitting at the entry point of the tube amp conversation, one poster asked whether the amp itself had improved or whether the players who bought it had.
That question is worth sitting with. The press has been calling the Blues Junior an accessible classic since the late nineties. It has not changed much. The buyers have. And the buyers who revisit it a decade in are different players than the buyers who first plugged in. The amp gets the credit the players earned.
We are not saying Guitar Player got it wrong. The reverb is probably delightful. We are saying there is a version of this review that asks harder questions about 25 years of the same chassis, the same speaker, the same cab, and a steadily climbing price. The forum found it. The press did not.
That is what this column is for.
Spotted something the press fluffed? info@suedeai.org