Marshall or Jet City

[Re_e_ve_s]

Hey... deciding between a Marshall DSL 20H or the Jet City JCA22HR... for hard rock metalish sounds, with once in a while clean play, what are your thoughts?

[daddymack]

The Marshall sound is legendary, the Soldano sound is as well, but not as distinctive or classic as Marshall's. The two are, feature-wise, reasonably similar in many basic respects. The Marshall has built in reverb, a half power setting [10W] and fx loop. The JCA has a tube driven fx loop, but no reverb or power option. Both are switchable 2 channel, both are heads. The JCA is rated at 16 ohm or 2x8ohm, so a 2x12 cab is your better option, and for speakers you'll want Creambacks, Vintage 30's, G12T75 or G12P60, to let this thing breathe the fire it was born to...same with the Marshall...

 

So, you say? Well the Marshall is more expensive [~$500 street new] than the Jet City [~$350], but when I looked, the JCA22H is not currently in stock with most of the major sellers...and not expected until July...and there is no JCA22HR, btw...

 

So to you: are the 'extras' available in the Marshall worth the extra $150 to you? If not, wait for the Jet City head.

[WRGKMC]

I been buying and selling amps all my life plus I spent many years as an electronic technician repairing them.

I always look at things like Cost, Gear Reviews and resale value before buying.

 

Between those two manufacturers its really not a balanced comparison. Marshall has name recognition and can charge anything they want. Jet City has only been around for a few years and sold as one of the lowest end budget amps on the market when it first came out. They sold them through Musicians Friend for practically no profit just to grab some market share which seems to have worked out for them. They were selling 50W Tub amp combo's for less then $200 which either meant they were the cheapest crap made or they weren't interested in making a profit, simply buying popularity. Those amps have retained their original cost because no one else makes a 50W tube amp for that cost.

 

How good they actually wind up being? I've never owned one so I cant tell you first hand. They seem to be very popular with kids but the amp competes with many other bargain basement makers. They are following the business model of other companies like Peavey in that respect. they are doing it with tube amps however which is a good thing. Most tube amps are way over priced. The only expensive item in a tube amp is the transformer and there's no shortage of companies in the orient that can wind a coil for peanuts.

 

Marshall on the other hand is charging a mint for cheap solid state amps. They really are cheaply built too. Amps that should sell for $50 are selling for $200, $300, even used. they have the name recognition and they use it to their advantage. They do an excellent job emulating their tube amps in low wattage SS amps that are at least affordable by most musicians. I own 3 of the Valvestate amps myself. Bought 2 of them used for very low costs and use the small ones as practice amps. The 100W head does a nice job emulating a clean plexi tone too. The driven channels produce a Modern Marshall drive which was fun for awhile but actually becomes quite boring in no time at all. Even with the separate EQ the saturation is pretty much a one trick pony. at least with the clean channel you can use pedals to get your saturated tones.

 

From what I read the Jet City produce a Solando type tone. If you know what that sounds like then it may be your cup of tea. I've read some stuff on the Jet City getting a Friedman Mod and sounding really good. If the design is simple enough there may be others you could do. I probably wouldn't mind having the 50W Jet City so I could run it at lower volumes and use pedals for my drive tones. The lower wattage junk with no clean headroom wouldn't interest me much.

[Xxflat4faxx]

I would take the jetcity it's a good value for the money! I love Marshalls but jet city amps are pretty damn good.