USAPatriot
New member
My JCA22H had to make an emergency trip to the shop and the expert hands of Robert Perales.
A few weeks back the wife was out of town and as is my habit, I drag all my gear downstairs where the TV and computers are, that way I can play at will without having to go upstairs and miss whatever's on the tube. So I drag one cab down...I use dual JCA12S's...then grab the head and gently place it on the cab, correctly hooking it up in the 16 ohm configuration. I add the GT-10, the Gibson and 120v and the amp sounds like it's FARTING! :shock:
If I was playing Spirit in the Sky it might have been okay, but this was just bad bad bad. The volume was iffy, fading in and out, so I pulled the power tubes and they appeared to be just fine. They didn't have any scorch marks, the flashing was normal, they lit up as per normal...so I pulled the preamp tubes and they looked okay too, but as I had an unused set of Tungsol 12AX7's, I put them in, flipped the switch and....THPTHPTHPTHPTHPTHPTHPTHP! You can guess what sound THAT is!
SO I emailed and talked to Robert Perales at Global Audio, we verified that I was still under warranty (By about a month...whew!) and I shipped the amp off to him. It arrived back here yesterday afternoon, looking good as new and I swear sounding better than new too. It turns out that the bias pot was faulty...a pot I never touched when I took the chassis out and photographed everything. According to the warrant service invoice that came back with the amp, he replaced the bias pot, cleaned the other pots and contacts, tightened and adjusted the sockets and tested it overnight. Between that and the Tungsols, this amp sounds amazing...and it was GREAT before!
I've got 2 Retrovalves here courtesy of Mayor Doug that I'm going to hopefully test drive this week. One's a blue...mild...and one's an amber...normal distortion...if I understand their color scheme correctly. I'm thinking I'll start out with the blue in V1, then move it to V3, then try the amber in V1...then in V3...and finally run blue in V1 and amber in V3. Since the crunch channel on the 22H has plenty of what I need...I never max it out...and the distortion channel has way more than I need and I rarely push it past about 2, the RV's should mellow both channels out quite a bit and give me loads of overhead, in theory allowing very discrete adjustments in the distortion.
The question of course, for everyone...me, you, Mayor Doug...is how will the tone measure up to vacuum tubes? I'd like to think that they'd have good tone, good longevity, the ability to feedback in a reasonable manner, be free of microphonics and spurious noises...time will tell!
I'll be posting a review here for sure but without the ability to record direct, I doubt if there'll be a video or an MP3, sorry. I wish that I could record a bunch of stuff and let people hear what's going on but the handheld TASCAM digital recorder I have is all but worthless. I need a deck and don't have one, sorry.
Anyhow...stay tuned! -Rod-
A few weeks back the wife was out of town and as is my habit, I drag all my gear downstairs where the TV and computers are, that way I can play at will without having to go upstairs and miss whatever's on the tube. So I drag one cab down...I use dual JCA12S's...then grab the head and gently place it on the cab, correctly hooking it up in the 16 ohm configuration. I add the GT-10, the Gibson and 120v and the amp sounds like it's FARTING! :shock:
If I was playing Spirit in the Sky it might have been okay, but this was just bad bad bad. The volume was iffy, fading in and out, so I pulled the power tubes and they appeared to be just fine. They didn't have any scorch marks, the flashing was normal, they lit up as per normal...so I pulled the preamp tubes and they looked okay too, but as I had an unused set of Tungsol 12AX7's, I put them in, flipped the switch and....THPTHPTHPTHPTHPTHPTHPTHP! You can guess what sound THAT is!
SO I emailed and talked to Robert Perales at Global Audio, we verified that I was still under warranty (By about a month...whew!) and I shipped the amp off to him. It arrived back here yesterday afternoon, looking good as new and I swear sounding better than new too. It turns out that the bias pot was faulty...a pot I never touched when I took the chassis out and photographed everything. According to the warrant service invoice that came back with the amp, he replaced the bias pot, cleaned the other pots and contacts, tightened and adjusted the sockets and tested it overnight. Between that and the Tungsols, this amp sounds amazing...and it was GREAT before!
I've got 2 Retrovalves here courtesy of Mayor Doug that I'm going to hopefully test drive this week. One's a blue...mild...and one's an amber...normal distortion...if I understand their color scheme correctly. I'm thinking I'll start out with the blue in V1, then move it to V3, then try the amber in V1...then in V3...and finally run blue in V1 and amber in V3. Since the crunch channel on the 22H has plenty of what I need...I never max it out...and the distortion channel has way more than I need and I rarely push it past about 2, the RV's should mellow both channels out quite a bit and give me loads of overhead, in theory allowing very discrete adjustments in the distortion.
The question of course, for everyone...me, you, Mayor Doug...is how will the tone measure up to vacuum tubes? I'd like to think that they'd have good tone, good longevity, the ability to feedback in a reasonable manner, be free of microphonics and spurious noises...time will tell!
I'll be posting a review here for sure but without the ability to record direct, I doubt if there'll be a video or an MP3, sorry. I wish that I could record a bunch of stuff and let people hear what's going on but the handheld TASCAM digital recorder I have is all but worthless. I need a deck and don't have one, sorry.
Anyhow...stay tuned! -Rod-
