Why am I not digging my Jet City half stack

[budg]

Have owned a Fender Bassman , Hot Rod Deluxe , Blues Jr, Blues Deluxe and have owned a Deluxe Reverb for the last 2 yrs.I play classic rock like ZZ Top, Skynyrd, Tom Petty ,EC and alot of blues like SRV, BB, Freddie King, Etc. Bought one on a whim without trying it (20 watt head) mainly because no one carries them , and they are cheap.Retubed it with some tubes I had and added a 12at7 in V2 to give me some head room.Mostly I play my strats and 335 , occasionally break out the LP for some Allman Bros.Not really digging the Jet City at all, very uninspiring.Wonder if I am a Fender guy after all.Any ideas? I was all ready to like it too dammit.

[SelLuap]

Maybe it's just not for you. Not trying to be funny but sometimes you just don't "gel" with an amp.
Jet City tends to excel more in the high gain territory from what I've heard so maybe that's why?

[budg]

Originally Posted by SelLuap

Maybe it's just not for you. Not trying to be funny but sometimes you just don't "gel" with an amp.
Jet City tends to excel more in the high gain territory from what I've heard so maybe that's why?

I have a suspicion you are right.High gain isnt my thing . My main amp is a drri with a ts9 .

[singlecut]

i play alot of the same style as you for music.
i own a bunch of amps.

ill tell you only that the 1's in my sig finally gave a go to sound out the door
no pedals , no tube swappin.
plug in and go

skynyrd, srv, allmans, outlaws, molly hatchet, blackfoot, zz, georgia sats.
she does it all
blues too

of course there are a ton of great amps, excellent amps out there.

i've got a 64 BF deluxe.74 princeton, alot of clones, old 50's gibsons ect.
but these suckers do it all .i will sell these last if a sad day ever comes
1 word
phaez

[SelLuap]

Originally Posted by budg

I have a suspicion you are right.High gain isnt my thing . My main amp is a drri with a ts9 .

That's most likely the issue, even if you changed some tubes to increase headroom it wasn't designed for that. If you can make it work for you then good stuff but I highly doubt it will with this particular amp.

[jay1williams]

I've found that the Jet City (i have the 20 watt combo) can be very touchy to dial in, especially when going between single coils and humbuckers.

I dial in my sound for each and write the settings down, that way I can easily dial it to the other fiddle when I switch.

Have you tried putting the 12ax7 back in and pushing up the master and leaving the pre / gain on 1 - 1 1/2? I find that clean tone can be had that way.

Good Luck!!

[Scooter2112]

IMO, any amp that doesn't have a decent clean tone with at least some headroom is probably worthless overall.

You can always add dirt/grit/fuzz of one form or another if necessary, but no such option with an amp that doesn't do clean well.

[TheDevice]

Yeah they are definitely a marshall kind of thing, not fat smooth fender. Depends on what your into but it's sounds like a fair assessment of the amp. I happen to really like my egnater tweaker into my jet city 2x12 or 1x12, maybe you should give that little guy a try.

[budg]

I almost bought a tweaker instead of this.Nice little head.BTW I run my master all the way up on my amps.A trick I learned from my blues jr I had.Max head room and pedals for grind.I must admit I always come back to Fenders it seems.I have tried a few others over the years and love their tone.My drri is a workhorse of an amp and sounds good with any guitar I have thrown at it.

[Escher]

Definately try some lower gain preamp tubes... the thing was designed by Soldano for goodness sake!!

That and research the choke mod here:
Dig it! Jet City JCA20H Choke Mod

That gets rid of flabby bass response...

Its super easy - clip 1 resistor and solder in two leads from a hammond transformer... Costs under $20...

[jay1williams]

Hers a quick clean of my Jet City Combo - I had the treble on 6 and Bass on 8

Jet City Clean - YouTube

This is what I think of when someone says clean... YMMV

[Steinmetzify]

There is also a guy that mods the crap out of these........his name is Brian something, and his company is called BFG Amplification......I think he actually has a contract with Jet City for amp mods....you can order one, and they'll send it to him first before it gets to you.

Mostly he does high gain applications, but he's done some other mods as well.......might be worth looking into. Dude has a GREAT rep for getting exactly the tone you're looking for, and being easy to talk to/good with examples of what you need.

Here's his YT channel......see if something fits you.

briango2000 - YouTube