The Internet Has Thoughts About Guitar Player's Blues Junior IV Review.

The Suede Read

Guitar Player's verdict on the Fender Blues Junior IV is a value argument before it is a tone argument: if you want classic Fender tube tones, the amp remains among the cheapest ways of achieving them. Connor Godfrey saves his warmest sentence for one component. The integrated spring reverb in the amp is classic Fender, and just delightful. Launch price is printed as $789.99, £749.00 and €755.

Five entries sit in the pros box, and they are better than the usual mood words because they name parts: the tones, the reverb, a footswitch included rather than sold separately, the giggable size, the money. The reverb praise is comparative too. Godfrey rates it an improvement on the previous generation's spring reverb, which he says had a slightly harsh quality. A reviewer who tells you what changed and why he noticed has already done more than most launch coverage.

Against that, two cons. No effects loop or attenuation. And there is a lot of competition at this price point.

He names the competition rather than gesturing at it. The Blues Junior IV has always faced pretty stiff competition, he writes, namely from cross-Atlantic contemporary, the Vox AC15. The verdict that follows is also more equivocal than the headline sitting above it. Some may wish for a few more mod-cons, Godfrey allows, but you have to respect that Fender has stayed true to the recipe that made the Blues Junior a fan favorite since its release. Then he puts a clock on his own recommendation: in a few years, maybe this will change, but right now, and as has been the case since it launched, the Blues Junior is best in class, even if that class has a lot of competition.

Now the part that never reached either box.

Twice in the body Godfrey qualifies the amp in language the summary does not carry. For home use, he writes, it does edge towards being too loud, at least if you want to get it properly singing. On the missing loop he is specific about the consequence rather than the absence: the lack of an effects loop means your time-based effects can get muddy when you start going for more overdriven sounds. Put those side by side and a shape appears. Fifteen watts RMS through a single 12-inch Celestion A-Type at eight ohms. One channel, seven controls counting the fat switch, one quarter-inch input, a one-button footswitch in the box, no attenuator, no send and no return. Thirty-one and a half pounds, built in Mexico. The amp wants to be pushed, cannot be turned down without giving back what pushing bought, and will smear a delay once you get there. The cons box records that the loop is absent. The body records what its absence costs.

The price line rewards a second look as well. The spec block prints $789.99, £749.00 and €755, while the retail links on the same page run from £559 at Thomann to £749 at Scan, with Amazon at £689 in between. That is a spread of nearly two hundred pounds on one amp on one afternoon. Cheapest way in is a claim about a number that will not hold still.

So to the receipts, with a caveat about them stated up front. The Seymour Duncan Forum thread is about the Blues Junior IV Limited Edition Tweed rather than the standard model Guitar Player reviewed, which makes it adjacent evidence rather than a direct rebuttal. What it is good for is the long view, because the people in it have owned this circuit across revisions.

Their complaints are structural, and the review does not go near them. One member always thought the Blues Jr could be a much better amp with a bigger cab. Another has read the standard Eminence speaker doesn't do it any favors either. Set that second one against the spec sheet: Guitar Player lists a Celestion A-Type in the amp it plugged in, so the Eminence in that sentence belongs to a different Blues Junior. Worth flagging plainly, because a receipt naming the wrong speaker is a receipt about the model line rather than about the unit under test.

Then the question that gives the thread its edge. After a quarter century of the Blues Junior holding the same slot in the same conversation, one member asked: I mean 25 years, are you sure you don't just sound better?

That lands because the review's own structure invites it. Staying true to the recipe is offered as a virtue, and the same paragraph quietly attaches an expiry date to it. The forum is asking a blunter version of the same question: what is an unchanged recipe being credited for, and does the credit belong to the chassis or to whoever is standing in front of it.

Split. The reverb claim is specific, comparative and untouched by anybody, including the people picking the amp apart. What the boxes left out is the pair of caveats sitting in Godfrey's own body text: too loud for the room most of these amps live in, and muddy time-based effects with nowhere else to put them. Those are the two lines that decide whether a 15-watt combo works where you play. They are in the review. They are just not where anyone skims.