REVIEWED JET CITYJCA100HDM
Jet City Amplification prepares to boost your playing into the stratosphere with this fearsome new 100 watt tube head...
US-based amplifier brand Jet City claim to provide so-called ‘boutique’ style guitar amplifiers at competitive prices, using the now common practice of building their products in China to help guarantee that their prices remain affordable. The extra attention to detail that high-end boutique manufacturers routinely lavish on their products is typically reflected in their seriously heavyweight price tags but Jet City add a fascinating marketing twist that goes beyond just shaving several quid off the price. So what makes
JET CITY JCA100HDM
JCA100HDM JCA48S
ACT
£877.27 £489.19
All prices include VAT CONT
Source Distribution T:
020 8962 5089 W:
sourcedistribution.co.uk
Jet City so special when there are already several popular US and British amplifier brands offering competitively priced tube amplifiers that are manufactured offshore? Jet City are probably unique among their competitors in that they have secured the services of two of the best tube amplifier designers in the business, Andy Marshall of THD Electronics (who designed the Jet City PicoValve micro-sized tube head) and Mike Soldano, the legendary amp guru who designed the circuitry in the powerful new Jet City JCA100HDM featured in this review.
The JCA100HDM is based on Jet
City’s JCA100H amplifier head; the ‘DM’ nomenclature stands for ‘Depth Mod’, one of several extra features that differentiate the DM from the original JCA100H. Whereas the majority of Jet City’s amps appear fairly conservative the Depth Mod looks every inch the serious rock and roll amplifier. The main components lurk behind a perforated steel grill, illuminated by a bright blue LED when the amp is switched on. A quartet of 6L6V6 power tubes are flanked by a huge mains transformer and everything
26 3pickup
is mounted on a heavy duty steel chassis. One nice extra touch is the LED socket that grants the user the opportunity to swap the standard blue LED for another colour, or even string a daisy chain of LEDs around the amp’s chassis if you are feeling particularly festive! Multiple 4 ohm, 8 ohm and 16 ohm speaker output jacks and a pair of effects loop send and return jacks on the back panel complete what is a fairly austere but no less practical way of making this head as versatile as possible.
Pre & Power Amp The JCA100HDM is a twin channel tube amplifier with foot-switchable clean and overdrive channels.
Words: Tim Slater
A conventional three-band EQ is common to both channels, as are the Depth control and a rotary Presence control that can be employed to add an extra sprinkle of sparkle or else tame some of the amp’s overall aggression if the circumstances demand. Regarding the control layout, the amp’s description of the clean channel as the ‘crunch’ channel could be construed as slightly misleading even though there is still plenty of overdrive available from the clean channel – just crank up the preamp gain knob! The delineation of the separate channels might also seem a little bit confusing at first glance. Whereas many channel switching guitar amplifiers tend to
The JCA100HDM is no shrinking violet, it really barks at you and you definitely to need to be prepared to work to tame it…
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