Did The Roland JC120 Design Change At All

randomhandclaps

I have toyed with the idea of grabbing a JC120 for the past 15 odd years.  Lately a few have popped up.  Does anyone know whether the year it was made makes a marked difference?  Like JCM800s, is there a particular vintage I would expect to pay more for?

ICBM

There are several different versions of the JC120 which all look more or less identical from the outside, but don't all sound the same. The most obvious external change is when they added an FX loop on the back. (Though why'd you'd really need one on an amp that's almost only used as a clean 'power amp with controls', I have no idea.)

In my opinion the older ones do sound better in general. There doesn't seem to be any price premium to them though, possibly if anything the opposite - condition seems to matter more than age.

1nten5e

There's quite a lot of info here regarding JC's

http://www.ssguitar.com/index.php?topic=2243.0

Gaz

randomhandclaps

Thank you both.

EricTheWeary

I wont start digging up the links cause they are a bit obscure and would take me all day but JC120 aficionados  would tell you they have changed and got worse. The non 120 variants ( I forget now what numbers they were assigned but they made smaller ones and bigger ones) seem to come up quite cheap although how close they are to the 120 experience I don't know.

NervousJohn

I had a JC20 practice amp for a while, bought it in the mid 90s. Clean it sounded great and was remarkably loud for something so small. But the distortion sounded like arse though. I'd pick up another if I needed a small practice amp.

1nten5e

That's ok.....the distortion on the 120 sounds like crap too

ICBM

1nten5e said:

That's ok.....the distortion on the 120 sounds like crap too

Even that varies. OK, none is exactly going to thrill a valve amp user, but some sound a lot worse than others! I've played a few where you can get an acceptable gritty distortion sound - although never with the EQ set the same as would give you a decent clean, which is somewhat counterproductive - and others which just sound dire no matter what you do. I should explain this by saying that I always test it when servicing the amps, but I don't know why!

I actually got a genuinely good overdrive sound out of a JC55, which is the little 2x8" one and is almost ridiculously cool, as well as being surprisingly loud and full-sounding. I had one in for a service years ago, never seen another, and if the owner had been willing to sell I'd have bought it on the spot.