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|  | |  | | | Jet City Amplification JCA20H 20 Watt Guitar Tube Amplifier Head | | | | | | | |
List Price:
| $429.99 | |
Our Price:
| $333.00 | |
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| $96.99 (23%)
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| | | SKU:
45265 | | In Stock | | Availability:
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| | Features | Controls: Preamp, Bass, Middle, Treble, Master, PresenceTubes: 3x 12AX7 Preamp / 2x EL84 PowerRectifier: Solid StateCabinetry: Multi-ply, void-free hardwoodChassis: 16 gauge, cold-rolled steelOutputInput Power: Multi-tapped power transformer at 100v/120v/220v/240v and standard IEC connectorDIMSPower: 20 watts into 16 ohm or 2x 8 ohm speaker outputs
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| | Description | No Gimmicks! Pure, Simple, and Full of Tube Tone. The JCA20H delivers from a single-channel amp with absolutely no gimmick features to dilute the all-tube signal path. The elegance of design both inside and out deliver unflinching reliability in an amp that is good-looking enough to make a girlfriend jealous. With full EQ control and separate Preamp and Master Volumes, JCA20H can deliver anything from a spanky clean to a crunchy overdrive. Jet City JCA20H Features 20 watt head pairable to a 16 ohm or two 8 ohm speaker cabinets 3x 12AX7 Preamp, 2x EL84 Power tubes and a Solid State Rectifier Preamp, Bass, Middle, Treble, Master, Presence controls Multi-ply, void-free hardwood cabinet with 16 gauge, cold-rolled steel chassis Multi-tapped power transformer and standard IEC connector | |
| | Product Details | | Product Length: | 23.0 inches | | Product Width: | 12.0 inches | | Product Height: | 12.0 inches | | Product Weight: | 25.0 pounds | | Package Length: | 20.0 inches | | Package Width: | 20.0 inches | | Package Height: | 20.0 inches | | Package Weight: | 20.0 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 7 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 7 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 The Definitive Rock Amp! Feb 17, 2011
By Slashaholic Anonymous
"Steve"
This amp is the world of guitars' best kept secret. Jet City amps are designed at least in part by Mike Soldano, the mastermind (and name) behind Soldano amps, which are second to none in tone and build quality. Mr. Soldano got together with a few other guys and designed the Jet City amp line to be an affordable but quality line of tube amps. They succeeded. The Jet City JCA20H is a single channel 20 watt all-tube amp, with EL-84's in the power-amp. If you're not familiar with tube amps, then you should know that 20 watts is actually pretty loud; loud enough to play with a drummer, unless you're trying to play clean. On the topic of clean tones, this amp has a fair amount of clean headroom. If you turn up the master volume and keep the drive low you can get it pretty loud with very little breakup. Despite not having reverb, the clean tones still manage to sound full and rich. Add a little chorus or reverb and you've really got a great sound.
Now lets talk about the overdrive. This amp plain and simply rocks. The overdrive is very gritty and crunchy, and it's as British sounding as they come. But to be more specific, it's more of a 70's British sound as opposed to the 80's and on, in that it's not particularly high-gain. You could call this amp a poor-man's Marshall Plexi and you'd be in the ballpark. There's a surprisingly wide tonal range available, with powerful bass (partially dependent on your speaker/cab situation), smooth mids, and sweet yet cutting highs all at your disposal.
A lot of people want to know if this amp can do metal. My answer: Yes, but it needs a little help to get there. This amp responds very well to overdrive boosts, including tubescreamers. My guess is that if you're a metal player, you probably have a plethora of distortion and overdrive pedals already, so this shouldn't be a problem. If not, go buy a Boss SD-1 or the Behringer TS800 and you'll be set for 80's and 90's metal.
In conclusion, this is a very simple, affordable amp. Combined with the great tone and build quality, you just can't beat it, especially for the price. There's plenty of options in the low-wattage tube amp market, but the Jet City JCA20H deserves a first, second, and third look from anyone looking for great tone at a price to match.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 JCA20H - Best Amp for $250 Apr 06, 2011
By Ed
This little thing has a bark! It is a ton of fun to use. The controls are very simple, and you can get a lot of lo- to mid-gain use out of it.
Keep in mind, this amp does not have the best of glassy cleans, but it is easily moddable (even some available direct off of Jet City's website for additional $$$).
I found the best and most fun way to play this single channel amp is to set a good lead/rythm tone, and then just roll back the guitar's volume knob for cleaner sounds. It has a lot of range and sounds great - and the price is 100% unbeatable. This is my low-wattage choice for a single channel amp for everything. Even good metal tones can be hit with a mild overdrive/distortion pedal
The only other amp I've played that compares is the Blackstar HT-5 which is 1/4 the power and $50 more for the head (it also has a bit more modern sound to it).
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Great little amp Oct 25, 2011
By tgg168
I bought mine about 8 months ago used for about 200 bucks or so. Ripped out the stock tubes and dropped in some JJ's. This did wonders for the tone. I have also experimented with some 12at7 and 12au7's in the preamp so if you want to lower the gain and allow more clean headroom drop in some 12au7s. It will have a nice ctunch at 7-8 but 2-3 will give you a fairly clean sound, not sparkling, but with just a hint of grit which is a very nice sound.
Also there are some mods available that are a fairly cheap and easy to do. I installed a bitmo sufra mod for about 30 dollars that allows 2 seperate voicings so I now have a 3 channel amp, 4 really because I can have the 2 alt chanels engaged at the same time. This mod also recognizes the clean headroom issue so one of the channels is dedicated to that. Now I have clean headroom to spare.
Again, it is not a crystal clean like "Lenny" sound, that sparkling fender type clean, more like a bassman turned about halfway up.
There are a number of other mods that can be done on this as well. In that sense it was very well designed and left somewhat open for people to experiment with. I love it when an amp manufacturer does that. In this case jet city has given you the starting product, it works fine out of the box, but there is the ability to mod this amp slightly so it rivals amps 5 times the price. Wicked.
The PERFECT transition from Solid State to Tube May 17, 2012
By D. C. Moore
First off, I want to explain that I have been playing guitar off and on for many years. For more years than not I played solid state amps because that's what I could afford at that time. The day finally came where I went shopping for a tube amp. And I am a massive stickler for reading reviews, both professional and consumer/youtube. I narrow my choices down and head out to get some hands on time with my selections. After trying out several different heads ranging from $300-$600 in price (had my doubts about the cheaper in that range), I narrowed it down to two choices. An Egnater 15W Tweaker and the JCA20H.
My very first concern when I just started to look in to tube amps was the fact that they seemed to be offered in MUCH lower wattage than solid state amps. Unless of course I wanted to sell my car to get a high wattage version. But I wondered, is 15W or 20W going to be loud enough for certain gigs. In a quick answer to that, yes. Both of these options are plenty loud and I have no problems keeping up with the volume of the drummer. You will do just fine in clubs/church if you gig there. If you gig bigger than that, then its going to get mic'd anyway, just like everyone else in the band. A little tid bit I learned about amp wattage. It works in multiples of 10. So in order to get twice as loud as my 20W amp, I would need a 200W amp or I would need 100W to be twice as loud as a 10W amp. So the volume difference between a 20W and a 50W is somewhat minimal. Not to mention, you can crank up a tube amp louder/farther and still get great sounds out of it, whereas a solid state amp would start to get muddy and sound like crap turned up to the same level.
So between these two amps. They both sounded amazing in my opinion. The clean, the crunch, and everything in between all sounded amazing. The main difference was the pricetag and even that wasn't a huge difference. $400 for the Egnater or $333 for the JCA20H. Both had amazing reviews. So really it came down to sound. Which did I prefer. The JCA20H, not to mention I would save $66 on it as well. I play blues/classic rock/metal. Straight out of the box with stock tubes the JCA20H will do 2 of those 3 insanely well. Warm, creamy tones that put solid states to shame. Where had this amp been all my life? About the heaviest you are going to get just playing with knobs is classic Van Halen (just an example). That was even playing through my Schecter with active EMG's. So you will need some assistance if you want any good metal sounds out of it. I happened to own an RP500 multi-effects pedal from Digitech so it was time to see what sort of metal tones I could find. To say the least, I was BLOWN AWAY once I dug my heels in with some various overdrives. I was getting sounds from Pantera to White Zombie to Slayer to Tool. Just crazy warm, smooth, perfect distortion. The RP500 was good on my solid state half-stack but nothing like this.
The other thing to consider is this amp does not have reverb built in, so if you want that (I assume you do), you will need an effect pedal of some sort. I am so freakin' impressed with this amp so far. I think I will throw some JJ tubes in that I bought along with this, because I hear the tone gets even better (how is that possible?). Also, my Fender Strat is a whole different world of amazing sound coming from this amp. I could not be happier. I will NEVER go back to solid-state.
Sound: A+++
Simplicity: A+++
Bang for the buck: A+++++++++++++++++++++ (this thing should cost WAY more than it does) Get one before they realize how much they could charge.
Any questions for me just add a comment to this review.
Budget-Conscious British Crunch Feb 14, 2012
By Ian M. Mcclintock
After struggling for several years to get the sound I wanted out of an amp which was, quite frankly a poor fit for what I was after, getting this little amp was a revelation. Upon firing it up for the first time, I was able to dial in the tone I wanted within minutes. Of course I've constantly tweaked it since, but I'm a guitarist; we're never happy unless we're fiddling with knobs. And, perhaps blessedly so, there aren't too many knobs to fiddle with. A single input jack, a preamp gain knob, a three-knob (and apparently Marshall-style) tone EQ stack, a master volume control and a presence knob. The power and standby switches used to be silver toggle switches with a separate LED-lit power light, but on newer versions they're plastic rockers with the light integrated into the power switch. I have and prefer the older style, but...eh.
Generally speaking, the 20H doesn't have much clean headroom, though it can clean up acceptably by turning the gain knob almost completely down, and the master volume up. The cleans in this way are functional but I wouldn't call them noteworthy like the shimmering ones you would get from a Vox or Fender. This amp is designed to be played dirty. With that said, I wouldn't say that it quite reaches metal range either, though it's not a genre I play so I'm in a poor position to judge. I'd imagine with the right stompbox pushing it harder, it could get there.
In terms of voicing, it's pretty versatile. I've seen some people say it has a "modern" voicing, while others say it's got "70s British" voicing. I'd say it can reach those territories reasonably well. I primarily play garage rock, punk, and 90s-ish alt rock. It's perfect for my particular sound. It's my opinion that a big part of finding one's individual tone, in terms of equipment, is not just having the right amp but pairing it with the right speakers for the sound you're looking for. I haven't personally tried this through a wide variety of speakers, but I think doing so would probably prove to be very worthwhile.
It's also worth noting, as far as voice is concerned, that this little amp responds quite well to tube changes. The configuration I finally settled on: a matched pair of JJ EL84 power tubes, a JJ 12AX7 Long Plate Gold Pin in V1, Tungsol 12AX7 in V2, and a NOS GE 12AT7 with balanced triodes that I had lying around in V3 (the phase inverter). In this particular configuration, I found that the Tung-Sol added a grainy quality, being a higher-gain and overall rougher-sounding tube. This sound works well for me and probably for more raw, aggressive types of music in general, but it's not quite as smooth as I'd like for, say, blues. However, I don't doubt that I could easily coax that kind of tone out of this amp with some knob tweaks and, if necessary, a tube change.
Having been a gigging musician, I've learned that it takes less amp than a guitarist might think to fill a venue. Again, dependent upon the speaker cab it's paired with (my personal preference being a 2x12), I would feel plenty confident gigging with this amp. It's a loud twenty watts. If what you're looking for in an amp fits with what I've stated here, you should definitely pick it up.
EDIT: After having some time with this amp and purchasing the matching speaker cabinet, I've found that speakers do play a very important role. I've only found one set of speakers that I like the sound of this amp with, and I'm hearing what other people are saying about it being very bright. It's still not a bad amp, but sadly I don't think it's what I'm looking for either. So my search continues.
See all 7 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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