Anyone here got a JCA20H?

p90fool

Er, that's it really, I'm thinking of picking up a Jet City head just for fooling around on and was wondering what the general consensus was.

I like the look of it and the YouTube clips sound ok, but I'm unlikely to be able to try before I buy and was wondering how loud they are and whether they're generally reliable.

Cheers, Julian

digitalscream

They're plenty loud enough for gigging over a loud-ish drummer, but I doubt you'll manage a clean tone at that volume. I've been gigging Jet City heads for about 3 years now, and never had a problem (well, not strictly true - I had a valve failure that wasn't related to the amp).

At £169, they're brilliant - although I'd be tempted to spend an extra £38 and get the JCA22H for the extra channel and effects loop.

p90fool

Cool thanks for that, I'm actually looking at it as a kind dirt-only jamming amp, so that sounds ideal. Super cheap too, I'll just have to see what my old Tubescreamer brings in, money-wise

Valendom

I quite regularly gig a 22h and have had zero problems in 12 months of ownership.

For the money I don't think they can be beaten. Like digitalscream said, once the volume is up the clean tone is almost non existent but the crunch and dirty tones in my opinion are great and they sound better the louder they get.

My advice would be to definitely spend the extra and pick the 22 over the 20.

p90fool

Hmmm, I'll look into the 22 then, it obviously makes more sense. I am attracted to the simplicity of the 20 though and it really would be a just-for-fun purchase  - I have a Princeton for clean reverb-type stuff and I'm not sure the extra channel could compete.
I've never used an FX loop and have nothing to put in it!

p90fool

Ah, just realised that the second channel on the 22 has MORE gain, I assumed it would be a clean channel as the single channel on the 20 has more than I'd ever use anyway!

I probably will stick with the 20 then

spaceman_inorbit

I've just picked up a 22h. An awesome amp for the cash. As mentioned above, its not a clean amp. It either crunch or overdrive.

digitalscream

p90fool said:

Ah, just realised that the second channel on the 22 has MORE gain, I assumed it would be a clean channel as the single channel on the 20 has more than I'd ever use anyway!

I probably will stick with the 20 then

Not only that, but the different position of the effects loop means slightly more gain (on both channels) compared with the JCA50H and JCA100H. The crunch channel - I believe - still has the same amount of gain as the JCA20H, though.

There are people out there (Dan Gower's one) who'll mod the JCA20H for a proper clean channel. When they were £300+ it was a bit of a question mark...if you really like the idea of a clean channel, though, it might be worth it.

There are also mods for the JCA22H to have a vintage clean channel - Mike Soldano does it for Jet City's Custom Shop in the US. I suspect that the same thing might be coming to these shores this year...

samzadgan

I have a 50w head and got it modded very cheaply...the clean mod is a very simple mod so you could get the 22h and mod the clean so you get a proper clean channel and a gain channel.

If you type jet city mods into google, there is a really good thread on harmony central which has the popular mods and instructions and diagrams.

And yes, great amps...not just for the money, they are just great amps.