Ampeg Jet J-20

08/09 Manufactured. It's a versatile amp despite the minimal features. Perfect for rock, could also handle blues well.

Tremolo sounds fantastic with a good overdrive pedal (I currently use Greer's "Relic Drive +").

At 20 tube watts, it has plenty of power but I may decide to swap the 20w stock speaker for a 30w.

The bright channel is not very usable to me, even with humbuckers. Doesn't much matter, though - the normal channel makes up for it.

Sound is nearly perfect.

There's a bit of rattle from the back area that I can't pinpoint (although I've ruled out tube rattle), so that'll be on the list of stuff for my amp tech to check on when I bring it in for the inevitable once-over.

Also of slight concern is some signal bleed-through when in standby.

Again I must gush a bit over the tremolo. It sounds more inspiring to me than the tremolo on my SF Pro Reverb.

Volume at two is good for the bedroom (with tone around three). Volume between five and seven (with tone still at three) and the amp is fully responsive. I haven't run it at ten (and probably won't NEED to) but I'm sure it would handle it well for a reasonable amount of time (this amp gets pretty hot on the front control plate after a couple hours of use).

The volume and tone knob have an interesting relationship. Cranking up the tone gives me an overdriven feel, not quite break-up to my ears but hinting at it.

I purchased this item through Amazon, who in turn was selling it on behalf of the manufacturer. It was listed as "reconditioned". I chose the reconditioned one rather than a brand new one, figuring they had worked out any problems with it and were satisfied enough to return it to the public (and also saved about a hundred bucks). How this plays out in terms of reliability down the road is anyone's guess, but the amp is well-crafted and most any decent amp tech should be able to fix nearly anything that would go wrong with it.

I've been playing guitar for 22 years now. My other amps include a '67 Fender Bassman head paired with a 2x12 Marshall cab, a late '70s Fender Pro Reverb (2x12) and a Vox Pathfinder 15 (1x8). The J-20 is much smaller and lighter than the Pro and will make hauling gear to gigs around town a little easier. I could also push the Marshall cab with it for lots more volume. This model has been discontinued, so I'm glad I got it while I did. I wasn't able to test it beforehand but the online reviews and video clips convinced me it was a safe purchase. I am not disappointed at all.

2008 or 2009 model, now discontinued as of July 2009.
20 watts, point to point wiring.
One channel, 2 inputs, bright and normal.
2 x 6v6 power tubes, 3 preamp tubes, tube rectified.
1 volume & 1 tone control with one of the best tremolos ever. Two trem controls, speed & intensity.
Simple and uncomplicated.
12" 20w Alinco speaker. Well built cab, appears to be 12 ply plywood, nicely covered.
Clean handwired chassis. Hefty transformers.
Footswitch for tremolo.
The amp gets quite loud and begins to break up quite nicely at around 6 on the volume control.
The tubes that came with it are all Russian and though I'm sure there is much room for improvement in this area, the factory supplied tubes are more than adequate and are the same ones that come with many boutique amps. Of course a duet of RCA blackplates would sound better but are a bit spendy. The factory EH & Sovtek tubes sound very good, but not great.
My amp was made in Korea. Discontinued. Welome to the 21st century....

I did some research and this amp design is a clone of Fender's 1961-1963 Brown "Deluxe" 6g3 circuit. The amp sounds very vintage-like. The alnico speaker sounds very good. I plugged this amp into a 2-12 Celestion 60w extension cab and the amp really came alive with much more bottom end. The factory speaker sound good tho.
I've played a '66 Strat, P90 LP Special and Humbucker SG Std. thru it and am very impressed with all. I play blues and classic rock. This amp nails 50's - 70's rock sound, blues, grunge and even jazz when cranked down. Distortion is thick and creamy. Brown and round, not a bit brittle. It's not for metal. The addition of onboard reverb would have been the icing on the cake but you know.....
Bottom line: one of the best Class AB 6v6 amps I've ever played.

Appears to be very sturdy and well built with a simple design. Probably about a reliable as any tube amp can be.

5 year transferable warranty, good.....but SLM, Ampeg & Crate are now Loud Tech and who knows. Ampeg is just another American icon bought up by Asian interests.

I've been playin' 40 yrs. I have owned many tube amps and this one looks as good as any of them and sounds better than most. It's a quality item that I will keep in my collection. This amp has about the same power and tube configurationn as my Fender Super Champ. Both amps sound great but the simple circuitry of the J-20 sounds more earthy and organic. It's a keeper, for sure! Great for clubbing and smaller venues. Manageable weight and size.

i'm giving this a 10 because i don't want to knock points off for expecting this amp to do things it wasn't designed for.if you want channel switching,master volume,effect loop e.t.c then look elsewhere.

on the whole very good.it has that vibrancy and life that only decent valve amps seem to be able to achieve.the bright channel is far too bright for me,a neck humbucker might work well with it though.the normal channel seems voiced just about right.the tone control is very responsive but does cut/boost the volume quite alot as well.this isn't neccesarily a good or a bad thing but i thought i'd mention it anyway.the tremolo is lovely but causes the background noise of the amp to throb far too much.even to the point that at high volumes it might not be all that useable.the amp breaks up around the 4-5 mark depending on pickups and settings and does so quite well.a slight fizzy edge to the drive but i'm not sure if this is down to the speaker or the valves,or a combination of both.i run it with a 1912A marshall cab fitted with a celestion classic lead 80 speaker i fitted in it and it sounds rounder and smoother through that.live,that's the one i'll mike up.

only played it about half a dozen times and pushed it quite hard.not long enough to put it through it's paces but i've had other valve amps i've owned develop problems sooner than this so so far so good.

the website seemed to be broken when i tried to send them an email.i haven't tried since so i'm going to duck out of this category.

the tremolo is on by default which grates me a little bit.i don't use tremolo but have to still have the fotswitch plugged in just to keep it switched off.seems sturdy,looks quirky and overall has a very good sound.a few tweaks by any modders out there (perhaps a celestion alnico blue and better valves) and this could posibly sound damn near perfect.

I assume amp was made in 2008-2009.

This is a simple amp. It is a great clean amp and handles my playing real well. I play mostly old school C & W.

1 channel-"normal" and "bright". As many have pointed out, bright is too bright.

I would like reverb, but I am not complaining.

I use this amp at home (recording) and out weekly in small rooms. Plenty of juice for me.

I use it with single coils-Tele, Strat, P-90.

Just a great country amp.

A little noisy when the volume and the treble go up.

Great clean sounds, and after 12 0'clock on the volume it gets a real musical overdriven sound.

Great tremelo.

I've only had this a month. So far, so good...

Been playing 45 years and own a ton more stuff.

I would buy it again.

It is just a simple, great sounding little amp.

I have an Egnator Rebel and a Blues Jr. It eats those amps alive...

Why they don't put reverb on these is a mystery. I use a Holy Grail with it.

This will be a brief review. Good simple amp. Overprioced at full MSRP. Good value at $500 (used market and some eBay retailers). Shop around. Would have preferred reverb over tremolo.

Unlike some of the other reviewers I'm not going to gush over the amp's tone. I swapped the speaker out for an Eminence Private Jack but preferred the stock Alnico and put it back in. The stock tubes were just ok; installed new tubes and it improved the tone. In my opinion the bright channel is too bright and the normal channel is too dark. Playing Les Pauls and Strats. Ideal amount of power for small club gigs. Sounds best to me at 4-7 on the volume knob.

No idea. All of these have some "signal bleed-through when in standby". Design flaw of the amp but no big deal. Point to point easy to service but IMO makes no difference to tone.

No idea.

Good, basic amp if bought under $500. Takes pedals well.

The amp is very simple, volume and tone with a two knob tremelo. Simply perfect it's all I need. I started playing in the early eighties with amps that didn't have to many controls such as jcm 800 as well as Ampeg. then came the mid to late ninties when life started you know, wife, house, kids and somewhere along the way my amps got sold, not my guitars thank god and while ampless I played mostly my 1984 giblon es-175. So about a year ago I walked into guitar center to look at amps. I wanted all tube as pure as I could get, well I couldn't believe my eyes and ears it was like I was in synthetic hell the amps had tubes but sounded fake to me. And there were all these kids in there playing some kind of death metal with pointy guitars. the last time I was in a guitar store we were all playing Hendrix and Zep songs. If your into metal this is not your amp.

To me this is the sound I was after it's a clean amp at low volume and it breaks up fantastically at about 6 or 7. Over all it's not as clean an amp as a Fender but I don't play totally clean I like distortion, natural distortion real tube distortion. I play a lot at moderat volume so to get a little more break up I coupled the amp with a Fulltone overdrive 2 Mosfet, I can't say enough about that box it's the most natural sounding overdrive I have ever heard, It does not change the tone of the amp at all the Fulltone makes the amp sound like it does cranked on 10 when it's actually on 2. total SRV or Hendrix with my Tele or Zep with my Les Paul. The overdrive didn't sound nearly as well in the store with the amp that was hooked up to it I think a Marshll MG, but I took it home anyway and wow I could not stop playing WOW WOW WOW.

It lookes like its built well there's not a lot to break

never used it

like I said it's not for metal or pointy guitars. But if you like real sweat worm tone or that creamy distortion try this. And someone said earlyer about it being noisy mine is very quiet, not as quiet as a solid state amp but if I can remember it is less noisy than my jcm 800. remember this is a hand wired piont to point amp made just like the ones in the 60's and it sounds it. And for the price holy crap I was happy to spend the $800 bucks Sam Ash wanted. then I looked online and found this store in upstate NY called Boynton Pro Audio there pumping them out for Ready for this $499 it was shipped to my house in perfect condition what a deal for that amp they said they got a whole truck load, man was I happy, I don't think the Fender hand wired amps sound as good for over $2000

Amp's DOB: 2007ish-or-thereabots. Not many features except that the few are exceptional. Few ever are. It is a single channel all PTP/tube/analog amp with a kick like a babycham (look it up).
Sweet, sweet, sweet, tremolo via bias-vari. It's basic in terms of features but... you know... if you want more features, maybe you should put down the pick? I spend all my time trying to achieve clear (not "clean" necessarily) tone the last thing I want is an echo of any sort mushing it up... Reverb? WTF is that?

Construction... Well it's not boutique but it is PTO and hand wired and is exceptional. Layout is great not hum or parasitics. Really well made PTP amp. I make amps myself and I'm a total OC freak and this amp is my favorite. It will look the same inside 70+ years from now... it is a brick!

Sweet. Breakup is later but almost-not-quite-too-loud, if you know what I mean. Sweet Churchy/gospel on the lower settings and Fire and Brimstone on the latter part of the dial. It is okay to run this amp on the latter part of the dial without worry, It's PTP and everything is safe (see reliability section). I run mine at about 7.5 and add some front end gain via a Timmy pedal (very natural OD). I notice that while cranking up the tone "improves" treble, it oddly contributes to an earlier onset of compression... so at moderate volumes you can crank the tone pot and get some very cool, waiting-to-happen overdrive, very suspenseful, dynamic for blues and traditional rock,I swear to God it can hear me think.

Beautiful, beautify, tones that cut through right, powerful and articulate... though you'd better be ready to hear and play nuances. Never had to mic' it and I play in a loud blues band often in big rooms (like 200 seaters). The stock AlNiCo speaker sounds great at moderate volumes but gives-up when the amp is really pushed hard for long periods. I swapped it out for a Celestion Vintage 30 which is... well... lovely.

Here's the pinch. This amp is very stable. However it does put over 400vdc on the plates at factory idle. Of course when the current is flowing you may see 370 380 because of the sag across the 5AR4 rectifier, but IMO/FWIW this is still a little too much for 6V6's. Having said that the extra plate voltage makes for more headroom and a very punchy recovery. It has a thermally protected PT and I added a 500mA HT fuse between power transformer CT and ground just to be on the safe side. The 6V6's that it came with were junk and I threw them away. I currently have some new TungSols that sound great and don't appear to care about the additional Plate voltage. It runs only warm after a four/five hour gig... cooler than a lot of current production main-stream amps I have tried out. I can't imagine there would be any problems with this amp except with bad tubes not handling the higher plate voltage.

I've searched the web for review, and struck out. There is no advertising for this amp which makes it a very well kept secret. I contacted Ampeg (loud technologies) about the relatively high plate voltage for a 6V6 amp, and it took several days for them to come back with a well constructed argument for the high plate voltage. No standard reply, brush-off, they appear to have their s%&t together. I'm not keen on "Loud Technologies" but I love this amp.

I have been playing pro for about 20 years and playing guitar since I was 6. I'm now in my 40's. I build my own amps because I'm fussy over how things are made/put-together. This is an exceptional amp. It is made in Korea so there a slight pull on conscience in terms of work/conditions but I see few US manufacturers offering this kind of quality, boutique or otherwise.

Very basic here... bare-bones, however; if you're more interested in playing than dialing in.. it is not a problem. One volume control, and one for tone tone. The only effect is a tremalo with a one speed and one intensity knob. At first I was worried about there not being a reverb until I heard it. I discovered, an amp designed to not have reverb sounds very different than an amp designed for one and then just having it turned off. More on this below... Lastly, a great feature of this amp is it's solid pine, consequently, only 25 pounds. A GREAT feature, not only for it's weight but its sound.

I have a variety of guitars the amp sound great with them all. This amp is voiced very nicely with it's alnico speaker... When I play my deluxe reverb with the reverb off... it's very dry sounding with it's ceramic speaker. However, the J-20 without a reverb sounds great and really begins to scream at "4" It has a great edge and punches well. I'm an ole cat who's been playing a long time... my prefered sound may not be the prefered sound of younger guys... but for a nice old-school vibe from Memphis to Motown, from Chicago to the West Coast it really fits the bill.

We'll have to see on this one... Ampeg though has a great name. It is Point to Point, hand wired... as a consequence, that should be a great help.

I called ampeg to register my amp because it is such a new item for them, it wasn't listed in there drop-down menu online. The person I talked with was very helpful. The reason I didn't have a registration card in the packing was this was a scratch & dent item from musiciansfriend.

I've been playing for almost 45 years and this reminds me of the amp my dad helped me buy from a pawn-shop in LA. It captures that whole vibe in both looks, sound and quality. A nice simple amp for a simple man... Thanks Ampeg for trusting that other parts of the world can hand wire a great amp. This is my go-to amp from now on!

The Ampeg J-20 Jet is a new, 2008 combo guitar amp. It has two channels (normal and bright), a tone knob, and a 2-control tremolo. The amp comes with an Ampeg-branded 12" alnico speaker. The amp is hand-wired and the enclosure made of pine.

The circuit is based on the Fender 5E3 Tweed amp and has 3 x 12AX7, 2 x 6V6, and a 5AR4 rectifier.

I play classic rock and blues. The features are slim, but they are enough for me. I knew what I was buying, so there were no surprises.

The only feature I would appreciate, but can't really expect in a combo amp, is a waveform selector for the trem. It has the standard triangle format, but it would be nice to be able to select a square waveform, as well.

Also, the retro diamond-blue look is a lot nicer than the standard black-box look of a lot of other amps.

I play a modded PRS Custom SE with Seymour Duncan pickups, a self-built, ash-bodied mutant guitar with Rio Grande single coils and a humbucker, and a modded Jay Turser Tele knockoff with Bill Lawrence pickups.

I bought the Ampeg to replace my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe Texas Red Edition. The HRDX was too powerful for my house, and the overdrive channels were not very natural sounding. I want to hear tubes and simple circuits doing their thing. The Ampeg does this in spades. The overdrive is natural and beautiful. The clean sparkles.

All in all, it blows the HRDX out of the water. The HRDX is a nice enough amp, but the Ampeg is pure tone for only a bit more money -- than the price of most pedals.
The only drawback, which I had read in another review and which is borne out in my amp is that the amp is VERY sensitive to cable capacitance. Even with humbuckers, there's a lot of noise, especially on the bright channel. Buying a cable with better shielding should solve the problem.

No problems, yet, as opposed to another amp I own which came with a cabinet buzz as an undocumented 'feature.'

The warranty is 5 years. The guy who services my HRDX is also certified for Ampeg products.

I've been playing for less than a year, but I've had a lot of opportunities to hear guitar tone in all its manifestations. The Ampeg J-20 has what it takes, and at its price, it's a bargain.

My other gear is basic: an Epiphone VJr head and cab, a wah pedal I never use, some Danelectro chorus and flange pedals, and a DigiTech Bad Monkey OD pedal (which I may not need, now that I have the J-20).

If the amp were lost or stolen, I'd get another.

Solid pine box, alnico 12" speaker, volume, tone, speed, intensity, point to point wiring, all tube (3-12ax7 preamp, 2-6v6 poweramp, 5aru rectification) bias tremolo circuit, very nice looking vintage design.

Features here amount to quality vintage-style hand-wired ptp, alnico, 100% tube, solid pine. This is a boutique level amp -- with only four knobs plus on/off on the tremolo footswitch.

Standby and power -- a very important feature actually.

25lbs -- that's a nice feature: it's light.

Lack of reverb is a big bummer. I take off a point for that.

Perfect clean tube sound - with a nice amount of bite -- and plenty of warm old-school vintage blues/early rock mojo. The tremolo adds a lot.

Alnico/pine combination adds serious 'magic' points to the tone.

I doubt the point to point wiring adds/subtracts to the tone -- but it makes it seem cooler.

Lack of reverb is a big bummer -- but that can be fixed with an outboard unit.

Using an outboard high-quality reverb box (Holy Grail Plus) -- this thing is absolute heaven.

And -- it's shockingly versatile given its mere volume/tone config. Depending on which pickup, which guitar, and how you adjust your guitars vol/tone -- this thing sounds like several different awesome amps.

My teles sound insanely good -- and my Les Paul sounds very nice.

Hard to imagine what would break with so few parts.

?

For 799 -- this is the finest tone-grail-quest find that there is. Period. Forget Carr and the boutique brands -- get this sucker, be happy, and forget about it. The tone quest is OVER for me.