Today I picked up a piece of equipment from a craigslist deal I had in the works for a couple of days: a Jet City JCA2112RC.

This is the combo version of the ever-popular 20W Jet City head/cab, which I managed to bring home for $175. I wasn't exactly looking for a new amph, but I recently sold my Crate V50 tube amp and had been interested in a smaller tube amp, mainly to provide a decent live Marshall-y sound I've been looking for but unwilling to pay for. I like channel 2 on my TM60, but it doesn't cut quite as well as I'd like.

So we'll see how this goes. Initially, my impression is that this amp is nice, though it seems just a tad dark. That's with everything at 12:00 though, so it's not a problem. Nice crunch out of it, and even with the gain dimed it seems to hold together pretty well. Reverb is OK, but not something that's all that essential, as it seems to get buried fairly quickly and isn't all that necessary on an amp like this anyway.

The presence seems to be either on or off (even though it's a knob), but it's fine without much contribution from that, and I don't even really know what presence is supposed to do anyway. If memory serves, it's kind of like an EQ that comes in later in the circuit, like right before the power section, right?

There's only a few minor scratches on the left side, and all in all it's in nice shape. I'm looking forward to putting this through its paces at my weekly jam night/practice tomorrow. So far I really like having a simple, single-channel amp that doesn't try to have every last bell and whistle.

So yeah, don't let my measured objectivity fool you; I'm very fired up about this amp. Time to rock!