NAD - Jet City JCA22H

gubble

Well i've gone from a 6505 combo to the Jet City head, ok i had a marshall ma50 - but that was for a week.

I honestly prefer this to the 6505. However it's horses for causes and you will need the two side by side to find out which you prefer. 

However i'd personally get the Jet City head, a HB Cab with the V30's in it and spend the money you save on biscuits (or pedals).

ThePrettyDamned

gubble;298889" said:

Well i've gone from a 6505 combo to the Jet City head, ok i had a marshall ma50 - but that was for a week.

I honestly prefer this to the 6505. However it's horses for causes and you will need the two side by side to find out which you prefer. 

However i'd personally get the Jet City head, a HB Cab with the V30's in it and spend the money you save on biscuits (or pedals).

I'm a bit of a gain fiend though... I wonder whether the jet city has enough of tap.

The 6505 just saturates into a great rhythm crunch tone on the lead channel with the gain at about 3 or 4. I worry the jet city can't match that with the gain maxed!

My friend is planning on getting one and at some point I'm going to try to get to a gearfest or something with one though. So far, 6505 is winning but only because of the familiarity with it. Used, they're about 350-4)0 quid for the USA head, too, which is good value.

Still works out about twice the price of a jet city including the cab. Unless I can shift my digital piano, I won't have room for a 2x12...

Drew_TNBD

I think they sound pretty farking good. I had 100watter at one point. Was a bit limiting for my needs, but a perfectly servicable high-gain tone. Loads of gain on tap.

They have a "design quirk" which means you get some bleeding of channels. So if you keep the gain low on the 1st channel and whack the volume up to get a nice clean tone, and whack the gain up on the 2nd channel and the volume too... the 2nd bleeds into the 1st by quite a bit. This didn't suit my tonal preferences, so the amp went back.

But cracking sound. If I was just recording, would've been perfectly happy with it.

ThePrettyDamned

Drew_fx;298927" said:

I think they sound pretty farking good. I had 100watter at one point. Was a bit limiting for my needs, but a perfectly servicable high-gain tone. Loads of gain on tap.



They have a "design quirk" which means you get some bleeding of channels. So if you keep the gain low on the 1st channel and whack the volume up to get a nice clean tone, and whack the gain up on the 2nd channel and the volume too... the 2nd bleeds into the 1st by quite a bit. This didn't suit my tonal preferences, so the amp went back.



But cracking sound. If I was just recording, would've been perfectly happy with it.

Hmm... That might be a deal breaker. Gain will definitely be whacked up on the second channel!

Wonder if the 'quirk' can be fixed.

Fez

I have the 50w head and I have been really pleased with it. I had been wondering about the footswitch so thanks to Digitalscream  for clearing that up (better not plug my Blackstar FS into it then).

Drew_TNBD

ThePrettyDamned said:

Drew_fx;298927" said:

I think they sound pretty farking good. I had 100watter at one point. Was a bit limiting for my needs, but a perfectly servicable high-gain tone. Loads of gain on tap.



They have a "design quirk" which means you get some bleeding of channels. So if you keep the gain low on the 1st channel and whack the volume up to get a nice clean tone, and whack the gain up on the 2nd channel and the volume too... the 2nd bleeds into the 1st by quite a bit. This didn't suit my tonal preferences, so the amp went back.



But cracking sound. If I was just recording, would've been perfectly happy with it.

Hmm... That might be a deal breaker. Gain will definitely be whacked up on the second channel!

Wonder if the 'quirk' can be fixed.

It cannot. I checked at the time, and as lovely as they were to deal with both the distro and the manufacturer told me it's just the way it is. Apparently the SLO100 does the same thing so they said!

ThePrettyDamned

Cheers @drew_fx ;

6505 it is then!

p90fool

I've done three gigs so far this weekend with my 20H, two outdoors and one on a big indoor stage, and have another outdoor one at 5 this afternoon.

It's holding up well so far, with plenty of volume on tap, even though yesterday's street gig was unmiked.

Considering I just bought it for my living room it's doing pretty well!

digitalscream

For what it's worth, I've never really noticed the channel bleed - when Drew was testing it, I tried to reproduce it and only succeeded getting a faint bleed with the drive channel's gain and volume maxed, and played through the normal channel with its gain and volume down low at about 1.5. Given that's not a situation I'd ever find myself in (I play with the normal channel's gain maxed and the drive channel on about 6.5, with the volumes on 4.5 and 5.5 respectively), it's never really bothered me.

I'm clearly less fussy

That said, I got all sorts of compliments on my tone at this afternoon's gig - which is a blessing, since my playing was atrocious. The guys were absolutely floored when I told them the price...they thought it was a special-run Soldano.

ThePrettyDamned

Nice.

This demo is making me want one again.  

Dave_Mc

ThePrettyDamned said:

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 wonder if that guy tried it with decent speakers?

Also agreed. The schematics seem to be pretty close. Obviously parts on the Soldano ones will be better, the transformers etc.. But you're getting 90% (remember, 87% of statistics are made up) of the way there for a little over 10% of the cost. Others may disagree, but in my book that's a score, and makes it very hard to justify the more expensive one, at least for my situation (not gigging ) ).

It's sort of academic since these weren't available when I got my Engl, and admittedly my Engl is way more versatile, but for the tones I use most, had the Jet City been available I'm not sure I could have justified going up to the price of the Engl- or even wanted to spend that much, considering how good the Jet City is for the money. In fact, for those type of tones I may even prefer Jet City/Soldano type tones to Engl (unfortunately I wasn't able to try a Soldano before I got my Engl, grrrr).

JMP220478

JMP220478

My 20H - i tried to get a USA grill but werent available when I was looking - sorry about poor pic but the mesh  cost about £12 from a car grill specialist on ebay .. 

measure up - wire cutters - 20 mins max  .. I think its a huge improvment 

Octahedron

They certainly aren't "budget" amps here in Australia, dear lord it set me back a fair few hundred sheets! The few hundred sheets it set me back isn't even like an equivalent based on the exchange rate... it was a shitload more!