Doug said there should be a pico and 50H headed my way "soon" so we'll see how soon "soon" is.
Anyways, my two cents on the amp is that its biggest strength is in the studio. It has such a well balanced and polished recording sound. There is no abrasive upper end or harsh high or upper mids to have to eq out or fiddle with mic placement with.
- Upgrading preamp tubes helps quite a bit but upgrading power tubes don't do nearly as much (though they do help also)
- It LOVES boost... LOVES LOVES LOVES! The low and lower mids from the amp are most definitely in the classic hard rock school of voicing and as such, have a certain degree of squishiness to them. This is what gives it that nice thick singing lower midrange but it's also its Achilles heel when pushing the amp really hard for metal or high gain work on stage where utmost clarity is needed. A good boost will allow you to lower the amp's gain so there's less compression/saturation from the preamp and use a cleaner boost from the pedal to give it the extra saturation without the compression getting out of hand at really high stage volume.
Observe (avatar 1X12 cab in the bathroom with a couple mics on it) CLEAN CHANNEL w/gain dimed and the OCD pushing it
I chose the clean channel for this clip because it has a bit more bite to it than the lead channel has and I was wanting to see what it sounded like when pushed to the limt.. riiight alooong tha raaazers eeeedddge!
- the gain knobs are very very linear. This is good because you aren't blitzed with saturation just barely cracking the gain like you are on a lot of amps *Cough* SPLAWN/TITAN ... You get a lot of room to really fine tune how much saturation you want so it doesn't make dialing in a lower gain blues or classic rock sound difficult.
- The volume knobs are very very linear. Like the gain knobs, the volume knobs aren't like any other tube amp I've owned or used. Now.. there's no escaping the fact that the amp does need to be dishing out a decent amount of volume to sound its best but it gets to a better sound sooner than most other amps. A lot of guys may be confused with the amp when comparing it's volume knob position to that of most other amps and think that the JCA is a quiet amp. Not so. It just needs to have the volume knob cranked higher. Where most amp's decibel output will start to taper off around 11 o'clock or so, the JCA is still getting louder and louder at that point.
Anyways, using it in my studio is fun because it's so easy to get a good tone from it. Smooth leads are just EFFORTLESS
And one that's the gutiar tracks (all of them done with the JCA100) that were isolated from a full studio recording I did. They're eq'd a bit brighter than usual simply to help them in the mix.
Also, regarding the reliability of the "chinese" amps, My main 2 gigging amps are both chinese. The JCA has been bounced around in the back of a trailer back and fourth from about 12 shows now. The Renegade 5 shows. Neither have had any issues at all. I believe that what these boutique builders are doing is awesome because they care about quality of their products just as much as the tone. Their name is on the product and they all have high reputations for good sound and quality. I think they're doing an admirable job of living up to that compared to some other import amps. I don't think they're alone though. no one seems to be seeing Vox AC30/15's, Peaveys and what not bursting into flames and they're all being built over there.
Anyways, plenty of clips of the amp here (along with all my other stuff)
https://www.youtube.com/fastredponycar
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