Love the Pro Jr but it's too loud for practice. Would a Champ do the trick?

Allen Amplification Chihuahua. 10w, Treble—Mid/Raw—Bass tone stack for BF to Tweed range of tone. Master Volume bypassed at full. I've even played small gigs with it.

“Loosely based on the blackface Champ™ with AB763ish reverb added. Beefed up transformer set and power supply for use with 6V6/6L6 power tube* and addition of a foot-switchable RAW control. Master volume control.” *you choose when ordering. Choice of speaker sizes in combo.

Best Fender style small amp ever ; ) I have the head, use w 12” speaker(s);

 

Yes, What Capgun said

 

I absolutely second this. Aside from that, I would strongly advise against trading pro jr towards something. You’ll likely regret it, and what I’d expect you’d get for it would only enhance that regret down the road. They’re so good.
Just a thought... would a less efficient speaker help here? Lots of talk of speaker efficiency relating to headroom/breakup.... could you go in through the back door that way?

Good luck!

 

How so?

 

Get a acoustic guitar.

 

I second the idea of using amp placement.
Lay it face down on a pillow or put it in a closet with the door slightly ajar perhaps. Get a low efficiency speaker. Put the speaker in a box with a microphone
and run the microphone output at low volume on your stereo.....

 

Anything you do will change your sound, hopefully you'll find a new one you like. I like warchol's suggestions, and have done similar. I use a Champ 600 (5w) and it's easy to play with its placement. I also sometimes bypass the internal speaker and output to a Music Man ported 15" guitar speaker, the little signal into the heavy speaker re-balances and smooths the sound in a good way.

Do you ever play into a DAW with an amp/speaker emulator and decent studio monitors? One trick is to stick your guitar so close into the face of a monitor speaker so some sound still feeds back into the strings, but getting most of your listening volume not from the speakers but from your headphones.

 

Dirt pedal or if you really like the tone of the Pro Jr., I'd recommend a Swart Night Light Jr. It's a tiny attenuator and you could put it in the back of the combo.

I bought one that splits time between a tweed Deluxe and an an STR-Tremolo. It works like a charm!

 

I got a 57 Champ last month and it was too loud for home use in the evening even though I have my own man cave, etc. After some research and a recommendation from a user here I ended getting a Night Light Jr attenuator and it did the trick for my situation.

http://swartamps.com/swart_night_light_jr_news.htm

 

Vibro Champ XD if you can find one.

 

I love my Blues JR and it's great for almost any application. I have a boost pedal I keep on when I use it so I can really drive the amp w/out blowing it up or people ears out.

 

Boy_Narf...

You’ll likely find your answer in all these replies, but in the end, is this all really necessary?

Put a compressor on the amp, set it at a useable level and work on your chops. You’ll be ok.

 

I understand the desire to not do pedals. I'm kind of there too. But I keep thinking an EQ or pre amp pedal could help with this.

I want to try a Benson Pre amp pedal but it's not cheap.

 

IMO, for practice, no - none of it is necessary. Why anyone would go to such great lengths to simulate a cranked amp - for just practice - is beyond me.

It's almost like a solution for what isn't actually a problem.

If you really want to practice with a cranked amp, for whatever reason, it would probably be easier to rent a space in a non-residential area. The money you might spend experimenting with attenuators, iso-cabs and mics and such, you could just put towards rental costs.

 

I second the idea of considering a Yamaha THR10 for home noodling. Those things so good for what they are and take so little space up. A Boss Katana is also a good option at a cheap price for this.

If you want to keep the Pro Jr, an attenuator is a good option. The little Swart Nightlight Jr. is really nice for this application. I have one I easily installed in my Swart ASTjr (similar to a Champ, but better build quality and great tube reverb) that works good for taming volume. Like a Pro Jr, it sounds best at 3-4 on the volume but drives my family nuts. The Nightlight was a fantastic workaround for this and it's easy to remove if needed.

 

I have an '83 Rivera-era Super Champ. If you can find one, get it. They are getting more $$$.

While I've used an AC30 plug-in, I've never had a physical Vox amp. There's an AC10 for sale locally that I'm fixing to try out.

 

Do you see that "V" knob on your control plate? Turn it down... and keep your Pro Jr.

 

I say this all the time, but get an attenuator, get an attenuator, get an attenuator. People talk trash about them, but I think that's because no one uses them correctly, they try to over-attenuate. From https://www.tdpri.com/threads/am-i-...security-blanket.1055844/page-6#post-10277722:

You can even build an adjustable attenuator that'll work well with the Pro Jr for like 20 bucks if you need, look up L-Pad attenuator on Google. Or you could build a non-adjustable one out of a couple of resistors for like 5 bucks: https://robrobinette.com/Generic_Tube_Amp_Mods.htm#10%_Power_Switch

 

Seems an attenuator is a simple solution. Weber makes reasonably priced ones.

 

Not sure why anyone needs to overdrive an amp for low volume "practice".

But, that's none of my business, to each his own, etc.

I'll repeat the aforementioned thought of using a pedal.