NAD - Jet City JCA22H

gubble

After everyone's excellent help and input decided to order the Jet City JCA22H which has arrived today. I'll post some pics later on when i've got it set up and given it a test ride at home. 

I'm sure the 20 watts will be loud enough for the usual pub gigs i do. 

Took it out of the box and the build quality looks rather good and the panel, switches look much higher quality than they do in pictures. It's also heavier than i expected. The only thing i don't like is the blue panel on the front. I'd prefer it if it was black or a see through grill of some type, but that's obviously subjective to us all as individuals and won't affect the tone.

I'll be using it in anger on Friday and Saturday night so will be able to give a bit of a review as to how it copes in a gigging environment through a 2x12.

not_the_dj

Nice one. I'm very interesting in these after they were mentioned in a "what back-up" thread a few weeks ago.

bobblehat

not_the_dj said:

Nice one. I'm very interesting in these after they were mentioned in a "what back-up" thread a few weeks ago.

Me to, looking for a small head to take to rehearsals and occasional gigs.

gubble

Well it comes with a nice free sticker - which looks rather funky on my guitar case already and the instruction manual is rather humorous too !

p90fool

On the 20H you can put the back grill on the front, don't know if the 22 is the same.

gubble

Now that sounds a good idea ! I'll have a look this evening.

Dave_Mc

Nice

digitalscream

p90fool said:

On the 20H you can put the back grill on the front, don't know if the 22 is the same.

Not only that, but for something like £30 you can get a replacement front baffle - including a Soldano-style black mesh one - and white chickenheads from Jet City in the US. It's not an official thing (at least, it wasn't last time I checked), but I can have a word and find out the ordering process for 'em if you want?

Curious as to how you get on with it. It's already a matter of public record that I love these amps, but it's always (well, nearly always) good to get other people's opinions

bazxkr

I looked at these on their site too & look one hell of a value for money pc of kit. Be interesting on yr thoughts once you have gigged it.

Cheers
Baz

gubble

Morning

So i unpacked the amp and had a good play with it at home levels. I used a Harley Benton 2x12 (standard not v30's) and a Les Paul with P90's.

The build quality on this is higher than i expected. I was worried from the pics on the website that the switches and the controls would look and feel a little cheap, however they do not ! The power and standby switches are big and chunky. The Control switches are nice and big and feel quality. They remind me of the controls on an Orange Amp.

Firstly a downside with this amp is it will not do a sparkly clean. The best i could get in a home environment was a verge of breakup clean. This may be different with 'proper' single coils such as on a strat or tele however i've not put those guitars through it. For what it's worth the 'clean' sound i did get was big and warm. Backing off the volume on the guitar gave me a perfectly useful clean sound and to be honest that's how i normally achieve my clean sound in a live situation.

Crunch Channel.: To my ears this is a classic british crunch. Nice and gritty. The gain starts to come in nicely at around 9 O'Clock and by 12 O'Clock there's enough gain on tap for it to be what i would consider a great lead drive tone. 

Overdrive Channel: With the gain set to Low it essentially takes off where the crunch channel ends. From there it really goes into a nice lead tone. Big saturated overdrive is readily on tap and I felt it responded really nicely to my playing dynamics. 

Tone Controls: Nice and responsive. Started off with everything set to 12 O'Clock and went from there. Usually with 3 Band EQ i find I have the treble at 12 O'Clock, The Mid at 3 O'Clock and adjust the bass to suit. No different with this amp. Of course it's 100% subjective and we all have our own sound but i'm confident most people would find a great tone very easily. Did have a quick go at scooping the mid's to see what that was like, it's not my preferred tone but i think it's decent if that's your bag.

Presence Control: I've always struggled with these. To my ears they usually don't do much and I'm left wondering if I'm missing a trick. This one however actually does alter the sound ! I set it halfway for the majority of my playing however the more you turn it up there's certainly much more top end frequencies coming through. In a live situation where you need an extra bit of cut through the mix i think it's going to be great. I'm assuming this is what the presence control is meant to be anyway? 

I only had about 20 minutes to play with the amp last night but during this time I think it sounded excellent. What was really noticeable is that there was always a big gutsy low end to the tone. Something i personally like and have missed with previous amplifiers. 

OK I've not used it live yet and when i do (Fri & Sat this week) I'll be updating my thoughts however so far I am very pleased with it. For the money both the quality and the tone beggars belief. I personally feel it knocks the socks off the majority of the modern marshall designs, especially their entry level valve stuff. 

I'd pitch it against something like an Orange Dual Terror and the Blackstar HT-20 in terms of it's real rivals. Value for money wise it trumps them (and then some). I'd love to side by side them all together.

My only areas of concerns are the effect loop that requires line level FX and the Footswitch. You can only change channels with a footswitch, which yes is included but what happens if this goes down mid gig? Ok i could carry i spare but I would like the option of being able to change with a switch on the amp itself.

So far - very impressed. I'd heard good things and purchased this on the recommendation of the guys from this forum having never played or heard the amp other than online reviews. For just shy of £200 it's astonishing value for money. If it holds up both in tone and reliability for gigs i'll be more than happy and become probably their biggest fan.

A couple of questions arise for me though. How come you can't get them through the usual dealers? If Andertons, GAK etc stocked these I'm sure they'd sell like hot cakes. I understand that they'd probably be more expensive with a dealer markup on them however if people like us had the opportunity to go out and try them we would end up buying them. I'm sure i'm not the only one who thought "not seen many of these around, they look amazing value, but are they just really junk, what's the catch?"

So today is thursday, if anyone wants me i'll be out trying to sell a kidney, because if the Jet City is anything to go by i'm now going to really want a proper Soldano. 

bobblehat

Sounds like its just what I'm after . 

Thanks for the info  and report back with your thoughts at gig levels.

bazxkr

Looks terrific so far....

Plenty of options on these....

You don't like the fascia...take a look at this....typical (I can get one for you from US w/o having to pay the crazy ship costs)

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/jet-city-jca20-jca22h-replacement-faceplate-baffle-2014-design-/141314347101?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20e6fdd05d

And mods..typcical

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BITMO-SUFRA-JET-CITY-MODS-MOD-KIT-4-JET-CITY-JCA20-AMP-/140383014520?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20af7ace78

Check around as there will be ways to improve the JC to make it exact as you want

digitalscream

gubble said:

A couple of questions arise for me though. How come you can't get them through the usual dealers? If Andertons, GAK etc stocked these I'm sure they'd sell like hot cakes. I understand that they'd probably be more expensive with a dealer markup on them however if people like us had the opportunity to go out and try them we would end up buying them. I'm sure i'm not the only one who thought "not seen many of these around, they look amazing value, but are they just really junk, what's the catch?"

So today is thursday, if anyone wants me i'll be out trying to sell a kidney, because if the Jet City is anything to go by i'm now going to really want a proper Soldano. 

Well, definitely glad to see you like it - I swear by Jet City amps, and the 22s that I've had were excellent.

The main reason that the main dealers won't touch them is that they used to sell for about twice the price, until the UK distributor decided to sell off all their stock at trade prices; suddenly, the dealers were left with a bunch of stock they couldn't sell because the distributor had reset people's price expectations waaaaaay downwards. Lee Anderton did some complaining about them all being totally unreliable, which is odd because I've never had anybody mention a broken one (except me - I bought one from the US and it arrived with a damaged bias pot; the guys at Jet City sent me a replacement and paid for my local tech to fit it, and you can't say fairer than that).

There really isn't a catch, as far as I can tell. There are always going to be some consequences of prices this low - in this case, it's the transformers (you can't use EL34/KT77/KT88 because the transformers can't handle it) and the stock valves are really cheap Chinese ones (although I happen to quite like them) and yes, the lack of front-panel switching is an irritation.

Regarding the switching, I got Bright Onion to send me an unassembled footswitch and soldered it up according to the one I got with the amp. It's not like your average switch, mainly because the amp is on the drive channel by default (closing the switch engages the normal channel), and the resistor for the LED is 62k.

Dave_Mc

^ Also I think they weren't really selling that well even before the prices went south- I know a guy on another forum worked in a guitar shop and said they weren't. Also they look kind of lame. Just because something is popular online among the "knowing" online community doesn't mean anyone gives a crap in the real world. )

Don't get me wrong, I agree they're killer (and current prices are awesome if you want to buy one ). But I can sort of understand why what's happened has happened, too.

Octahedron

Sorry I missed out on the chance to convince you about your purchase before you made it @gubble - but good choice. I've got the single-channel version of this, but the 2 channel version didn't come out in Australia 'til after I'd got my hands on the single channel version. 

Cranked one up in a booth... my word. For the price range you really can't go wrong with them.

Joe Perry (Aerosmith) also uses a 20H on stage, I think it may be his talkbox amp I read somewhere (either that or he was using it for a clean sound - I can't remember, one of those two things). But they are cool looking amps. I didn't know you could switch the grille and have that on the front?! That's pretty neat. That said I like my leathery front face with the whacking 333 badge on it! 

Good amps, good - very good. And plenty loud too. Very rock. Love their work. Picked it over a Marshall I did. 

Dave_Mc

Yeah I think I saw a Youtube vid where Perry's tech said he used the 20H for a talkbox amp.

digitalscream

Dave_Mc said:

Yeah I think I saw a Youtube vid where Perry's tech said he used the 20H for a talkbox amp.

He also uses it as his main studio amp...

It's extremely weird to see a £169 amp on stage in the middle of about £30k of vintage and boutique amps, though

Dave_Mc

Yeah )

gubble

OK I have gigged with this amp twice now. Both Pub gigs which were quite standard in terms of venue and volumes used.

Guitar wise i've used a Vintage V100 LP style guitar and a LP with P90's.

The cab is a standard Harley Benton 2x12

On the pedalboard i'm using a standard Crybabr > Boss SD-1 > Boss DS-1 > Belcat Delay > Phaser

Now having used this properly i'm still very impressed.

I was a little worried initially incase there wasn't enough volume on tap. However there is for sure. I'd say much more than the Marshall MA50 i was using before.

Both channels on the amp sound really big and warm. I preferred using the humbucker equipped guitar, this may just have been down to my personal preference on both nights as it also sounded great with the P90's. I've yet to put single coils through it.

I used mainly the crunch channel using the SD-1 as a lead boost with the Overdrive channel as a solo boost. It's interesting that the amp reacted with the SD-1 much better than other amps i've had. Mainly the level of the drive, it genuinley boosted the volume not just the drive if i needed. 

I thought i would miss the reverb, however the natural reverb in both venues was more than enough.

I'm not really sure what else to say. The amp is really very good. It sounds great, reacts well to my playing and after 6 hours live use I've not had a single moment where i miss my previous amps.

Would i recommend the amp? Absolutely. For me it ticks all the boxes.  Quite often when i buy a 'budget' bit of gear - especially amps i often feel i'm missing that certain key ingredient i've had with high end models. Not so with this. If i'd have spend £500 on the amp rather than £200 i'd still be loving it and thinking it's great value for money. For someone who needs a good amp for rock tones in a live enviroment it's perfect. Even my drummer commented on how nice it is

So there we go.

Now how do i get an endorsement so i can have one of each model?

digitalscream

gubble said:

Now how do i get an endorsement so i can have one of each model?

PM incoming shortly

ThePrettyDamned

I saw a demo on YouTube of the 100 watt head and some dude commented saying 'the only thing this has in common with soldano is the name, it's a cheap Chinese pos that sounds like an AM radio'.

This serves to illustrate the ignorance and snobbery that can exist in this world! Everyone who uses one says it's not quite as good as a soldano, but there is a good price difference between them.

I think it was @icbm who posted the schematic compared to a real one, and to my untrained eye they look pretty close to identical. Just an amazing amp.

I really need to work out if I want a 22h and cab, or whether I want a 6505 head and cab next year. Hmm.