A Review: Jet City 20HV

darcym

while being away from home I read a thread that sparked my long stood curious interest in the sheer value for money that Jet City seems to offer.

I decided to take a wild stab on  20HV as it seems to be the best amp that fits the amp I was looking for.

to clarify my test criteria this is not a main amp, not even a backup, I needed an amp for some recording that is a good over driving amp in the stylings of the classic marshals overdrive.

Previously I'd been using Kemper profiles which where really really good, and borrowing a Suhr badger, which was also excellent but for the few times per year I use it, didn't warrant the expense of buying my own.

I used this as an excuse to see if the Jet City 20HV could get in the ball park for what I was after as for £209 it seemed something that was worth a blind punt, based on peoples opinions, reviews and some shoddy you tube videos.

I hadn't planned to be back home as soon so when the amp arrived today (1 day after purchase) I wasn't quite setup for it and had a large work back to get through. I also had totally the wrong guitars around and the wrong cab, but I at least had to try it to see if it worked or not.

I tried it through a Zilla 1x12 ported cab with an EV 12L speaker. Tried it with a strat, a vintage 335 with proper PAF's and a Duesenberg double cat.

I'd planned to use this through a closed back cab, with something a bit more greenback styled speaker in, with the 335 or a les paul, for more ringing power chords or long ringing open chords with natural overdrive on.

First impressions, really well put together head, light, and solid put together, a nice looking thing too, the white pannel is a bit too bold and would probably benifit from a darker colour such as black, not massively loving the plastic logo on the front either, but then again, it's not really about what it looks like.

I don't normally play amps without a good quality reverb, so this is quite a hard thing to get used to.

Playing the amp with a strat, didn't work at all for me, it's not that it sounded bad, it's just that I have my own strat sound through my own amp that I love and basically anything that's not that is a "lesser" sound for me, so that was really an unfair test.

Playing the 335 or doublecat, well, ok, this was good. I couldn't crank the amp as hard as I'd have liked due to being at home, but I got the master up to just after 4 and the gain around 5.5 - 6 using the EQ to balance out the guitar I managed to get a really really good natural over drive that rang out well and to be honest was pretty much what I was getting from the Suhr Badger, I really struggled to tell the difference. I think the badger would stand out a lot better as more gain went on, but because I'm not after a ton of gain it was a really well mirrored sound.

Warm and big sounding, even with the wrong cab and speaker, the PAF's really had a good bite to them and the double cat was a much smoother sound. The depth switch really brings up the lowers and almost makes it a bit more gain, but smoother.

Very very impressed for £209, I'm curious what getting the right speaker and cab together would do for it, and I'm curious about the valves that are in it.

the only thing that I found a little disappointing was, once the master gets to 3 - 4 it starts to get a bit noisy, move the gain up to 5-ish with that and you can certainly hear some idle noise, using the badger, I didn't get that problem.

It's only a very quick review as I wasn't prepped for it, and it's not the most objective with the wrong gear, but it's a starting point that I thought I'd post to share and then compare when I pull the right parts together have more controlled time to sit down with it.



 

Lodious

Nice review, very useful!