[OWEN PLAYING SOME LICKS]

OWEN O'MALLEY: Welcome back to Gearwire.com. I'm Owen O'Malley. Today, we're going to be taking a look at the Ampeg Jet J-20.

The J-20 is a 20-Watt 1 x 12 combo. It is an all-tube combo. It's got three 12AX7's in preamp stage. It's got two 6V6's for power stage. It's even got a tube rectifier, so it's really an al tube combo. The J-20 was originally introduced by Ampeg in the early 60s. It is a one-channel amplifier. As you can see along the top here, it has very simple controls. We've got volume and tone, and then speed and intensity fro the onboard tremolo. There is a footswitch included with the amp but it just turns the tremolo on and off so if you want this thing to distort, you really got to crank it.

This amp is really best suited for jazz, so like really barely sort of like distorted like Wes Montgomery style sort of jazz guitar or country, like really clean but not sort of like harsh digitally clean sort of country licks. Let's just listen to it with the Strat on the neck pickup and just hear some jazz chords here.

[OWEN PLAYING SOME JAZZ LICKS]

You can hear the difference that 6V6 in the power tubes make. They don't distort as easily as EL4's or EL34's which you'd find in like the Fender Blues Junior or most of the smaller combo amps. This one has a higher output and doesn't distort in the same way. It's a very subtle distortion. You can hear it when you push it. It just kind of adds a nice little sort of warm burr to the edge of your notes.

[OWEN PLAYS A COUPLE OF JAZZ LICKS]

It does really good for little country licks.

[OWEN PLAYS A COUPLE OF COUNTRY LICKS]

You can hear when you really push it, it emphasizes that click on those country licks that [OWEN PLAYS STACCATO] in a really nice musical way. It never sounds overly harsh but it really it cuts in a very pleasing way.

Here's your basic volume and tone controls. You can see right now the volume is at three; it is already pretty loud. [OWEN CRANKS THE VOLUME HIGHER] When we're at that eight, we can hear it starting to distort [OWEN PLAYS A RIFF]. Bring it back down lest the neighbors complain. Our tone control is really just a high cut [OWEN PLAYS A CHORD], so our highs are all the way up and let's cut them out here [OWEN PLAYS A CHORD], very bassy but it also kinds of bring the volume down quite a bit.

And now here's the tremolo section. We'll turn it on with the footswitch.

[OWEN PLAYS SOME LICKS WITH TREMOLO SWITCHED ON]

We got our speed control which, obviously, controls the speed of the tremolo.

[OWEN TWEAKS THE TREMOLO SPEED CONTROL]

Here's pretty fast.

[OWEN PLAYS LICKS WITH FAST TREMOLO SETTING]

Turn down the intensity [OWEN PLAYS A CHORD] and it's off. Turn up the intensity then you get [OWEN PLAYS LICKS WITH HIGH INTENSITY SETTING ON TREMOLO] pretty deep-sounding tremolo.

Now, there is a normal input and a bright input. Right now, we're on a normal input. Let's switch it over to the bright input just to hear the difference in the sound.

[OWEN PLAYS SOME LICKS WITH GUITAR ON BRIGHT INPUT]

Quite a difference.

[OWEN PLAYS SOME LICKS WITH GUITAR ON BRIGHT INPUT]

You get a much brighter-sounding amp. You can use it for nice, cool, clean funk tones...,

[OWEN PLAYS SOME FUNK RIFFS ON BRIGHT INPUT]

...and it also sounds to distort a little bit earlier when you're on the bright channel. Let's hook up a guitar that's got some humbuckers, a little bit of a higher output to see what this thing sounds like with a different guitar.

[OWEN FLIPS A SWITCH] Ooh, there was a click.