Jet City kits?

digitalscream

Just spotted on the Jet City Facebook page - they're launching JCA100H kits (everything except valves and solder), probably with Mercury Magnetics transformer options too.

Pricing will be $500 instead of $699, and it looks as though they'll ship the board pre-populated.

Very interesting...they seem to be going after the mod market.

guitargeek62

Pretty neat, presumably they'll end up offering a 20-watt model if these sell well enough too.

ThePrettyDamned

Bloody hell. Cool.

digitalscream

The only problem I can see with this is that there will be nothing visual to indicate that an amp has been built at home as opposed to coming from the factory, and thus there's no guarantee of quality or safety in the second-hand market.

ICBM

digitalscream said:

The only problem I can see with this is that there will be nothing visual to indicate that an amp has been built at home as opposed to coming from the factory, and thus there's no guarantee of quality or safety in the second-hand market.

+1

If this is really what they're offering, it's a very dangerous thing to do, both from an actual physical danger point of view and to the brand name - even if the majority of the work is already done (the main PCB) there's still a lot of potential to screw things up. Or even to literally *not* screw things up (ie tightly) properly.

Bad move, unless they intend Jet City to become *only* a kit brand.

digitalscream

I've had a bit of an exchange with Doug on that very subject - he's going to have a think about how they can solve it, most likely by changing the name of the amp, and possibly finding other ways to make it obvious on the chassis itself.

ICBM

Like stamping into the chassis, in a visible place and in a way that cannot be removed "This amp is owner-assembled and must not be sold without a full safety inspection and PAT", or something…

I said this in the other thread about building and selling amps too, but in today's world of regulations and litigation I would not be at all happy about anyone non-qualified building anything mains-powered (especially not when also containing high internal voltages) and it potentially being sold to the public.

Dave_Mc

^ something external would be even better, so prospective buyers might see it.

But good call, I agree with you.

I mean I don't really ever have any intention of selling mine, but you never know what might happen. I wouldn't really want kits to lower the value of mine, for example.