NAD - Jet City JCA50H

cliffenstein

cliffenstein

Active member
I have been following this company over the past few years and been very impressed with their overall ethos. I got the chance to pick up a gently used (very gently) 50H over the Christmas holiday season for the low price of $230. It arrived with all stock tubes (power and pre) and I'd read enough about this head to know that those all need to come out. I fired it up anyway and, though I thought the overall tone was okay, it seemed thin and small sounding. At first I was thinking I would need to send it back. I came back a few hours later and decided to see if the things people write regarding the need to completely retube it were true. I had 5 JJ 12AX7's on hand, but I didn't have any 6L6's. I did have two short bottle Tung-Sol 5881's and decided to give them a try.

My word what a difference the tube changes made. I am just out of my mind floored with how good this thing sounds now. I just keep it on the Crunch channel with the Pre on 6 and I'm exactly where I want to be. I love this amp!

The head is a bit smaller than a comparable Marshall head. I think I may spring for a full size Hi-Watt style head box this summer to really make this thing look as killer as it sounds.

Oh...and there's no inherent buzz or excessive noise with this one at all.

31647229957_cae48037c0_o.jpg
 
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Re: NAD - Jet City JCA50H

Nice. But I would think twice about changing the enclosure. It looks just fine as is to me.

Sent from my Alcatel_5044C using Tapatalk
 
Re: NAD - Jet City JCA50H

The crunch channel is almost all you need on that amp, isn't it? Add a pedal, and you have almost all you could ask for. Loop sucks, but other than that, a great amp, especially at that price. Is that the stock footswitch? Mine looks much different. It looks like you could summon your butler with yours.
 
Re: NAD - Jet City JCA50H

misterwhizzy said:
The crunch channel is almost all you need on that amp, isn't it? Add a pedal, and you have almost all you could ask for. Loop sucks, but other than that, a great amp, especially at that price. Is that the stock footswitch? Mine looks much different. It looks like you could summon your butler with yours.
Click to expand...
If I had one, I'd run an MT-2 into the front of the clean channel.
Then mop up after.

Sent from my Alcatel_5044C using Tapatalk
 
Re: NAD - Jet City JCA50H

misterwhizzy said:
The crunch channel is almost all you need on that amp, isn't it? Add a pedal, and you have almost all you could ask for. Loop sucks, but other than that, a great amp, especially at that price. Is that the stock footswitch? Mine looks much different. It looks like you could summon your butler with yours.
Click to expand...

The footswitch that came with it was actually a Randall. I’ve had this one for years. It’s old and unbranded so I thought I’d use it instead. I can’t use the crunch channel without engaging the footswitch. If I ever take it into get it properly biased, I’ll probably have them add a way for me to keep it on the crunch channel without the footswitch having to be plugged in.
 
Re: NAD - Jet City JCA50H

Demanic said:
Nice. But I would think twice about changing the enclosure. It looks just fine as is to me.

Sent from my Alcatel_5044C using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I would de badge it
remove the Jet city logo placard
thats what i did to my new cab
just flipped that thing over to the blank side
looks much cleaner
 
Re: NAD - Jet City JCA50H

Demanic said:
If I had one, I'd run an MT-2 into the front of the clean channel.
Then mop up after.

Sent from my Alcatel_5044C using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

They don't really have a clean channel without modding. You can get the crunch channel to do sort-of-clean with the gain on 1 or 1.5, but it doesn't have a ton of headroom. IMO the crunch channel sounds like a MV JCM800 with just a touch more gain and more responsive tone controls.
 
Re: NAD - Jet City JCA50H

I must be one of the few people who couldn't care less how my equipment looks as long as it sounds good.

Sent from my Alcatel_5044C using Tapatalk
 
Re: NAD - Jet City JCA50H

Demanic said:
I must be one of the few people who couldn't care less how my equipment looks as long as it sounds good.
Click to expand...

There are plenty of musicians like that. No idea if you’re in the minority or not. All I know is I like my guitars and amps to inspire me to want to play. They’d still work just fine if they all looked like ugly ducklings, but them looking like I want them to does a lot for me.
 
Re: NAD - Jet City JCA50H

I pay attention to equipment looks too, but you have to be careful with it because if you get too anal and go all matchy matchy and look like you put too much consideration into it then you just come across as a cream puff and not very rock n roll.
 
Re: NAD - Jet City JCA50H

cliffenstein said:
There are plenty of musicians like that. No idea if you’re in the minority or not. All I know is I like my guitars and amps to inspire me to want to play. They’d still work just fine if they all looked like ugly ducklings, but them looking like I want them to does a lot for me.
Click to expand...
Which is fine.

Sent from my Alcatel_5044C using Tapatalk
 
Re: NAD - Jet City JCA50H

I decided to get a properly matched pair of JJ 6LCGC's for this amp...holy cow what a difference they made! It's bigger, badder and bolder...and better! I'm taking it in for a bias on the 19th. It's going to be interesting to hear what that does to this. It's SO good now!
 
Re: NAD - Jet City JCA50H

Here's a clip I made this morning of some mindless riffing to test out the new JJ power tubes. I'll post a fresh clip after it gets biased.

 
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