Jet City 22H - portable, but good?

bigfuzz

Next up on my stalk of classifieds locally, a Jet City 22H has came up at an attractive price.

2 channels, 22w? What type of cleans/dirt am I expecting here.. also anybody own one? Is it reasonably light, light enough to carry on foot?

I will never stop this search, I'm sure there is an amp out there for my needs

p90fool

I just bought a 20H, which is basically just the clean(er) channel of the 22.

I love it, it sounds like a thousand quid amp tbh, very rich and dynamically responsive.

There are endless cheap mods around if you want more or less gain.

bigfuzz

@p90fool when you say clean(er) can it do a nice clean, or is it really a dirty and extra dirty kind'a thing?

p90fool

It actually has a lot of clean headroom if you use the gain as your volume with the master all of the way up.
I haven't played it clean much yet, I have a Princeton for that, but I think its ok in a Voxy kind of way.

Dave_Mc

assuming it's like the 50 watt head, for the dirt you're talking saturated 80s-type high gain tones. fairly bright. hard to beat for the money, assuming those are the type of tones you're after.

ICBM

I also only have experience of the 50, but it's a loud, bright clean sound - not 'Fendery' really, but still very good. I can't imagine the 22H is going to be very different, since the two amps have similar circuitry. It will obviously be a bit quieter, but the 50 is LOUD. It's also not particularly heavy for a 50W head.

Dave_Mc

Yeah. I didn't really like the cleans at the start but I like them now. I don't really run it pristine clean, though.

Also I'm on the overdrive channel like 99% of the time )

rpr

There's a review /comparison, with video, of the 50 watt and the 2212 in a recent i magazine;

http://view.ceros.com/lick-library/gi24/p/53

IIRC there is a surprisingly big difference between the two (check the vid)

Doesn't @Digitalscream own both?

Quite interested in the single channel 20 watt myself-like the Voxy/Marshall idea, but not sure (i.e hate ) 80's saturation, so a bit undecided.

Don't want to derail the thread, but can anyone suggest a good speaker for the head? 

 

Dave_Mc

rpr said:

but not sure (i.e hate ) 80's saturation,

ಠ_ಠ

rpr said:

Don't want to derail the thread, but can anyone suggest a good speaker for the head?

I like eminence v12s with the 50 watt head, they tone down the brightness a bit and mellow it out a little while still being suitable for high gain tones. V30s or G12H30 (the heritage 55Hz ones I have) sound pretty good with it, too. Depends on the type of tones you're after and also personal preference, too.

p90fool

I hate 80s saturation too, but love the single channel 20w head. I use it for anything from twangy-but-overdriven country to 335-era Clapton.

It works very well with my open backed 2x12 which has 12-75 and Classic Lead 80 Celestions. No fizz or boominess, but with a strong, rich midrange. Best £169 I ever spent tbh.

digitalscream

OK, a lot to talk about here...

I don't have the JCA22H any more due to money pressures, but I have had two of them. Brilliant little amps. Things to note...

1 - Yes, they're loud. They can keep up with a drummer quite easily if you have a 2x12", but the volume taper is such that they're louder than the JCA50H all the way up to about 4 on the volume control. They start to break up between 4 and 5.

2 - While the preamp is largely the same as the JCA100H and JCA50H, the effects loop is in a different place (after the master volumes on the JCA22H, as opposed to before the tone stack on the others) which seems to have the effect of increasing the available gain.

3 - That increase in gain means you can get some very effective metal-like tones out of the clean/normal channel with no pedals, but it still cleans up pretty well with the guitar volume even if you run the channel gain on full.

4 - They can be a bit noisy with the channel gain on full

5 - They're still bright amps. Don't even think about setting the presence control anywhere but 0, unless you get the depth/resonance mod too.

All in all, they're brilliant little amps - if I was in the market for a 20W amp, I wouldn't even consider anything else. When you factor in the price, you simply can't lose IMO.

I use a Jet City JCA24S with a V30 and a G12T-75 in it - works very well for these amps, with a nice balanced sound overall. V30s alone can be a bit shouty.

Babones

Have they ever sold the Jet City 20VH in the UK? (the vintage version, voiced a bit cleaner and darker).

digitalscream

Babones said:

Have they ever sold the Jet City 20VH in the UK? (the vintage version, voiced a bit cleaner and darker).

No, but they're planning to open a UK Custom Shop later this year, which will offer all the different voicings on all the amps.

bigfuzz

So here is what I'd be planning to use it for...

Cleans = as much as I like crystal cleans I'm not expecting that, more like a slightly dirty-clean (if that terminology makes sense). I'll be running teles/jazzmaster through it exclusively (no humbuckers). I've done some googling for demos etc and they all seem to use a double humbucker guitar and play chugga-chugga. That isn't really telling me what I need to know. I'd be running delay and verb through the fx loop to get anything remotely ambient/chordy/mellow then use either fuzz pedal ontop/drive channel/both drive channel and fuzz pedals.

Dirty = I'd not be playing hair metal, that's for sure. Is it a british marshally crunch on these? I played an old 15w mini mofo before and didn't like it too much.

Cab wise, haven't decided yet. Probably be a 1x12 for my flat, then using the 4x12s at the practice space/gigs. I'm aware its a bright amp.. Jazzmasters are bright guitars.. am I going to suffer from ice pick toanz ?

digitalscream

Okay...you can get a very nice slightly-dirty clean from it. It's only totally clean below about 2.5 gain on the normal channel, but it's not really it's forte.

In fact, the way I get my dirty clean from my Jet City amps is to have the preamp gain on full (for my heavy rhythm tone) and then roll the guitar volume off to clean it up. Of course, you can just leave the gain around 3-4 and it'll do the same job.

These amps do a nice sort-of Marshall crunch, even on the drive channel (although you'll have to keep the gain quite low), but they have a kind of "zing" to them that comes from the Soldano preamp design and you won't find that in any Marshall I've tried.

They are miles better than the Mofo amps, I have to say

Be warned that the loops on these amps run at line level - that means, for the most part, using pedals like the TC Toneprint or Hardwire range.

As for the brightness...you can keep it under control pretty well by having the presence at zero and keeping the treble control down below 5 (note that the controls are 0-9 on Jet City amps).

Dave_Mc

^ Yeah I'd say they're a bit more compressed/modern-sounding than a marshall. Not a million miles away, but not really the same, either.

digitalscream said:

5 - They're still bright amps. Don't even think about setting the presence control anywhere but 0, unless you get the depth/resonance mod too.

I have mine on like 12 o'clock ) Treble is back a bit to about 11 o'clock, though.

digitalscream

Dave_Mc said:

I have mine on like 12 o'clock ) Treble is back a bit to about 11 o'clock, though.

Ah, I get it. You're trying to kill whoever's in the front row to stop them spilling beer on your pedals, right?

Dave_Mc

)

To be fair, I only play at home so maybe at the volume levels I play at the brightness isn't so much of a problem. I also use eminence v12s which are fairly mellow-sounding.

bigfuzz

so chaps, any recommendations for a suitable speaker open/closed cab for something like this? i'm relatively inexperienced to cabs

Dave_Mc

You're after a 1x12, right? Are you ok with swapping a speaker?

bigfuzz

yeh swapping a speaker should be fine @dave_mc