Jet City JCA100H Head

“dirt with plenty of tight bot­tom end and tough mids”

For a long while bou­tique amps have often been the unat­tain­able dream for the major­ity of gui­tarists. Whilst not inten­tion­ally omit­ting the per­haps less afflu­ent of own­ers, bou­tique mak­ers have cre­ated amps with price tags that just have been out of reach or not jus­ti­fi­able for some. Numer­ous fac­tors have forced the land­scape to change over the last few years with sev­eral high-end mak­ers now offer­ing bud­get or sis­ter lines to com­ple­ment their higher price tagged big broth­ers. With stream­lined fea­tures and com­po­nents and refined pro­duc­tion meth­ods cre­at­ing lower over­heads the end result has been a lower price for the con­sumer — bonus!

With all good things come haters how­ever and many peo­ple instantly asso­ciate these cheaper amps with lower qual­ity. Well let’s see if we can silence the doubters.

Com­ing from the design shed of the famed Mike Sol­dano (yep, Mr Sol­dano the man behind the SLO100 and other seri­ously famed tone machines) we have Jet City Ampli­fiers — all tube, fea­tur­ing sim­ple con­trols, cool cos­met­ics, and sen­si­ble pricing…doesn’t sound too bad to me so far.

Suf­fre Jet City

Launched in 2009 Jet City had an almost instant hit on their hands with the release of the JCA20H sin­gle chan­nel 20 watt head. This seemed to please the newly invig­o­rated small wattage amp lovers and appease those look­ing for some­thing grand at slightly lesser vol­umes. Well the suc­cess this baby must’ve really put the writ­ing on the wall for the new JC100H two chan­nel 100 watt head.

A two chan­nel head the JC100H’s front panel con­sists of — nor­mal and over­drive lev­els (as part of the pre­amp sec­tion), bass, mid­dle and tre­ble con­trols (mak­ing up your eq sec­tion), ‘mas­ter’ nor­mal and over­drive chan­nel level knobs and a pres­ence dial to top it off. Sol­dano fans will notice the sim­i­lar­i­ties in lay­out to the famous SLO100 head (not a bad thing) and indeed Jet City go on to men­tion ’ The Over­drive chan­nel is the cir­cuit that made Sol­dano famous. It’s been mod­elled and imi­tated, but this is the real-effing-high-gain-deal!’ Sounds like a win­ner to me.
We built this City.…

Adding to the afore­men­tioned SLO esque con­trol lay­out Jet City have gone the no frills look for this first line of amps with min­i­mal­ist colour­ing and detail­ing. The Amer­i­can style logo is sim­ple and effec­tive with a mate even com­ment­ing that it reminded him of a motor oil or rac­ing brand. Solid blue and black tolex and clas­sic black with white dot dials = a sim­ple, rock atti­tude in my books.

Plug­ging in, the JC100H was pretty quiet on the clean chan­nel, even when cranked with the eq sec­tion respond­ing nicely to all sorts of push­ing and pulling. Nice head­room makes sure you could push this sucker pretty hard and then drive it fur­ther with ped­als if so inclined or just bal­ance the mas­ters and level con­trols. Now we come to what I spose every­one wants to know about…the drive chan­nel. Whilst I’ve never played an SLO100, I’ve heard quite a few (both in the flesh and on record­ings) and seen a few clones in my time. Well, the Jet City really seems to recre­ate that dirt with plenty of tight bot­tom end and tough mids. Bro­ken, slightly dri­ven tones bark nicely and react to both your gui­tar vol­ume pot and the chan­nel and mas­ter vol­ume con­trols with the pres­ence dial adding that extra sharp edge if you need.

Sold!

Alright, just to recap for those that didn’t really take it in. Mike Soldano’s amps have been a sta­ple in the session/touring world for years. With their amps firmly placed in the hands of pros/studios/collectors alike yet still remain­ing out of reach for many, the Jet City brand looks likely to bring some of the Sol­dano prowess to the masses (and with­out the hefty price tag). As Jet City says ‘We are on a mis­sion to offer some great gear to gui­tarists at really fair prices.’ Music to my ears.

The multi tap trans­former is a win­ner (allow­ing easy switch­ing between 100v/120v/220v/240v for inter­na­tional volt­ages) and with these tones for this price Jet City have placed them­selves in a good mar­ket for the almost any­one (and not just those that can’t afford their big­ger brother).

Mike Sol­dano couldn’t have put it bet­ter when he says “Our keep-it-simple approach to tube amp design speaks for itself, these new Jet City amps offer my clas­sic Sol­dano tones at a killer price – I’m proud to put my name right on the front”.

Price: RRP $1699.99

Dis­trib­u­tor: Inter­mu­sic IMD

Phone: (03) 9765 6565

Web­site www.imd.com.au

By Nick Brown