My Jet City JCA20H – 4 Years of Tone Soaked Bliss

My Jet City JCA20H – 4 Years of Tone Soaked Bliss

My little tone monster’s 4th birthday!

It was 4 years ago today that I hauled ass to G.C. here in Phoenix to grab a Jet City JCA20H. I say “hauled ass” because I had been watchinig the news feeds for an indication that Jet City had shipped their first amplifiers. It was 3 or 4 months previous that I found out about this new company that boasted Michael Soldano as one third owner and that he designed the flagship model JCA20H. With promises of “100{c30863b33595577c5ed4837af2f5c015c450d3942ad00dad7003b8bc2d2ae483} Tube Tone and 0{c30863b33595577c5ed4837af2f5c015c450d3942ad00dad7003b8bc2d2ae483} Bullshit” at affordable prices they had my undivided attention! Then I got wind that they had shipped the first units. I called G.C. and found out that they only had one left, which explains the “hauled ass” statement. I also grabbed a couple of the JCA12S cabs to complete the package. Just for reference, over the years I’ve used a bunch of different amps (all tube of course). From MusicMan, Kustom, and Peavey, to Fender, Marshall, Mesa, and Ampeg. All good amps for sure. I never had one that I would call bad, they’re just all different. Like most of you I’ve been on a quest for that elusive “tone” the entire time. The Ampeg came the closest, but it was a 300 watt monster SVT with the 8×10 cab (I paid $275 for it in 1975). Not very practical for an apartment dweller. I gotta say even though the sound pressures were freaking brutal (I think the term “ear bleed” was coined for this very amplifier), the “tone” was unreal. Fast forward a couple of years (33 years actually) and I have my little tone monster and I couldn’t be more pleased. It nailed that tone in my head spot on. I bought it without trying it in-store simply because I had convinced myself that if Soldano put his name on it then it had to meet a certain level of performance and quality and I love his hand built creations, so with a WTF attitude I bought it and here we are. It’s gone through a few modifications here and there. Started with the cosmetic stuff like the steel baffle, LED accent lights, and burghundy snakeskin Tolex, then the internal stuff like the tone stack mod, a depth mod and a choke. It goes without saying that I went through some tubes to really dial in the tone like we all do when we get a new amp. So after 4 years what’s my opinion of this little beast? Put it this way: I never hung on to ANY amp for more than a year,  maybe year and a half because I had to keep looking for “the right one”. 4 years on and it’s still with me. On a scale of 1 to 10 the Jet City JCA20H scores the coveted “11” in my book. And just like everything else “tone” related, YMMV.