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I've spent the better part of the past 12 hours tweaking and jamming out with my new Jet City 1/4 stack. After constant tweaking, I decided that I would try a retube to see if I could fix this annoying high end sizzle as well as the ridiculous amount of cycle hum the amp was having. I bought a matched pair of Tung Sol 6L6's and 5 Mesa 12AX7's to slap in.
After the tube swap, this baby came to life! The clean channel covers literally everything from warm jazz to a crisp Queensryche-esque clean. The lead channel is nice and fat and has a stupid amount of preamp gain. However, it's best to keep it below 6...anything over that and it gets fuzzy and loose. I like it between 4 and 5. Pinch harmonics scream and the mids are nice and tight. The high end is a bit much at the low volume I'm running it...it turns to buzzsaw once it gets past about 11:00. However, once I get my attenuator on Monday I'm sure that pushing the power amp harder will cause it to thicken up the top end as well as improve the overall saturation of the amp.
This amp is fucking loud. However, if you're like me and live in a small room, you can still easily get good tone from it. Boosting with my Hardwire Overdrive, the bottom end tightened up and I was doing my best Lynch impression at a volume my roommate could barely hear in our bathroom.
The Jet City 2x12 cabinet has specially designed Eminence speakers. It weighs just under 50lbs, so it's not too hard to carry. You could easily walk with the head in one hand and the cab in your other and not strain yourself. I find the tone of the cabinet to be fairly neutral and is very crisp. However, I don't want to pass judgment on its tone until the speakers have about a hundred hours of use under their belt and are nice and broken in. But for now, it compliments the head very well. I wouldn't believe it was a $200 cab if you were to tell me after just blindly jamming on it.
So far, so VERY good. This was the best $700 investment I've made for my tone in a very long time. It spanks my JVM combo for pretty much everything. Its low volume manners are considerably better than the Marshall and, in my opinion, it looks better.
No, this is not a Soldano, however it is damn close. This amp isn't as tight or as balls-to-the-wall saturated as my Avenger head was, but with a nice OD up front it can do anything from Cream to RIP-era Megadeth. For straight up metal, you're probably gonna want to run an EQ in the loop. Go get an ENGL or a used 5150 if that's what you're after.
I'll post a follow-up review after I get the attenuator as well as after a month to see how it's holding up. If you're curious about picking one of these up, do it. It's not just a good amp for the money...it's a good amp period.
-Dave
After the tube swap, this baby came to life! The clean channel covers literally everything from warm jazz to a crisp Queensryche-esque clean. The lead channel is nice and fat and has a stupid amount of preamp gain. However, it's best to keep it below 6...anything over that and it gets fuzzy and loose. I like it between 4 and 5. Pinch harmonics scream and the mids are nice and tight. The high end is a bit much at the low volume I'm running it...it turns to buzzsaw once it gets past about 11:00. However, once I get my attenuator on Monday I'm sure that pushing the power amp harder will cause it to thicken up the top end as well as improve the overall saturation of the amp.
This amp is fucking loud. However, if you're like me and live in a small room, you can still easily get good tone from it. Boosting with my Hardwire Overdrive, the bottom end tightened up and I was doing my best Lynch impression at a volume my roommate could barely hear in our bathroom.
The Jet City 2x12 cabinet has specially designed Eminence speakers. It weighs just under 50lbs, so it's not too hard to carry. You could easily walk with the head in one hand and the cab in your other and not strain yourself. I find the tone of the cabinet to be fairly neutral and is very crisp. However, I don't want to pass judgment on its tone until the speakers have about a hundred hours of use under their belt and are nice and broken in. But for now, it compliments the head very well. I wouldn't believe it was a $200 cab if you were to tell me after just blindly jamming on it.
So far, so VERY good. This was the best $700 investment I've made for my tone in a very long time. It spanks my JVM combo for pretty much everything. Its low volume manners are considerably better than the Marshall and, in my opinion, it looks better.
No, this is not a Soldano, however it is damn close. This amp isn't as tight or as balls-to-the-wall saturated as my Avenger head was, but with a nice OD up front it can do anything from Cream to RIP-era Megadeth. For straight up metal, you're probably gonna want to run an EQ in the loop. Go get an ENGL or a used 5150 if that's what you're after.
I'll post a follow-up review after I get the attenuator as well as after a month to see how it's holding up. If you're curious about picking one of these up, do it. It's not just a good amp for the money...it's a good amp period.
-Dave
The 50 watt seems to be a bit rarer find as well. My buddy has a 100-watter I might try to "borrow" for a few days, and I gotta say that seeing some of the Youtube vids of the Friedman modded JCA20s really has me thinking about these amps fairly seriously.
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