The Hot Rod series of amps are not that bad at all IMO. For under 500 used for a BJR or a HRD you can get a decent clean tone, effects loop (in the case of the HRD and up) and spring reverb.
There isn't a backline or cartage company in the world that doesn't have at least a few of them.
They do have fairly flimsy PCBs. The stock Eminence Legend 1258 speaker isn't great. Amp has a fixed bias voltage that's usually way too hot for the EL84s (for blues Jrs) that causes the amp to get hot, which subsequently cooks and stresses the PCB solder joints on the tube sockets.
That being said, if your familiar with fixing them and modding them, it's not terribly hard to make an OK amp a very solid performer.
The reverb circuit isn't the worst. Vanilla Opamp driven circuit. The Blues Jr in particular suffers more from being in such a small cab. It makes it so very mid-range/honky (or boxy? Idk if that's a proper adjective here). I've actually rehoused a stock BJR into a slightly larger cab and it sounded fantastic. Speaker swaps and potentially larger cabs make them a night and day different sounding amp.
The Hot Rod series amps are all the same circuit with different speaker cab setups...they all share the same PCB. And this makes sense from a manufacturing POV. Much cheaper to make an amp this way and keep the price point down.
Aside from a bland sounding OD, then clean and reverb on the Deluxe/DeVille/etc sound pretty good. Again a speaker swap helps solve some classic complaints (amp sounds too harsh, mid-range is too congested etc).
They aren't bad amps. They are decently priced tube amps with reverb and work great with pedals. They suffer from a small list of well known issues. I probably get 2 or 3 of these in for repair each week. They all have the same problem. After a cap job with good parts, metal input jacks, small tweaks to the circuit and reflow the solder joints they are Rock solid amps that can easily take lots of gig abuse.
These amps are an amp repair persons dream. Easy money to make it a Rock solid performer. I think it's easy to bag on it when you build your own amps...and honestly that's OK. We hold our own work to a higher standard. That being said I have plenty of pro touring clients that have been using them for years and really love them. Working on so many of them, you really learn how to do proper PCB trace repair lol. And the ribbon cables can be problematic, however they only become real nightmares after someone who doesn't have good soldering experience attempts to fix them. I keep a 1200 ft box of ribbon cable in my shop just for these amps. Again not hard if you are deft at soldering or PCB trace repair.
Just my 2 cents.
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