Sound Garage Tales

Welcome to our first video on modding the Epiphone Valve Junior guitar amplifier. I ordered a head version from Musicians Friend specifically for this. It is a very exciting project to me and hopefully will make your life easier modding it by watching these video tutorials.

I don’t know how many times it happened that I spent so much time on trying to guess how to open a unit just to be able to get to the heart of the problem and fix it. Yes, even pulling the chassis out of an Epiphone Valve Junior can be intimidating for the first comer.

Tools Needed

Really there is not much science to it. I used a chisel to extract the plastic chassis screw caps, masking tape to protect the tolex and cabinet metallic corners, a phillips screwdriver for the chassis screws, a flat wide screwdriver to pry the rear panel out and a piece of wood to protect the rear controls while I was doing this. But it really comes down to whatever tools can do the job after all.

The steps

Just as seen in the video tutorial, the steps are very simple to remove the chassis from the Epiphone Valve Junior head. I suspect that similar steps can be taken in the case of the Epiphone Valve Junior guitar combo amp.

1. Remove the plastic screw caps: Use masking tape to protect the tolex or metallic corners, and with a chisel (or a similar tool) gently go under the screw cap edge and pry it up until it can be grabbed with your fingers and popped out. Use common sense to work with the chisel, you don’t want to cut your tolex, or worst, your fingers. The plastic caps will come out very easy. Then, partially remove the screws since we don’t want the chassis to dangle and slip out as we or turn the head around.
2. Remove rear panel screws: That’s pretty much it to it.
3. Pull out the rear panel: This was the trickiest part since the rear panel was stuck and I wasn’t able to remove it by hand, so I needed to use the flat screw driver to pry it open (one side first, then the other one). To protect the control from scratching, I used a piece of wood. Once the sides were partly out it was very easy to open and remove the panel.
4. Pull the chassis: Place the head face down and remove all the chassis mounting screws completely. Then gently grab the chassis by the transformers and pull it out slowly.

That’s it! Next, we’ll start talking about identifying the board version of your Epiphone Valve Junior.

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