Peters Amplification JP-50 Head

This is serial #2, built in 2003. It's a single-channel 50 watt amp with incredible versatility - the most versatility I've ever seen in a single-channel amp. I play Jazz, Blues, Classic Rock and Hard Rock.

Features and controls include: Bass, Mid, Treble (each with mini-toggle boost switch), Master Volume, Gain (with mini-toggle boost), 4-way Gain Voicing (overdrive becomes progressively more pronounced and more complex going from voicing 1 to voicing 4), Presence, Damping and Resonance. Turning down the Damping generally compresses the sound and makes it more even sounding. Turning up the Damping gives the amp more of a dynamic response so that it sounds more aggressive and really thumps - it also increases the treble and bass response and increases the overall glassiness. Resonance works similar to the Presence control but boosts the bass response rather than the treble response. Turning up the Resonance control really creates a huge beefy sound.

Other controls on back panel include: Attack (Shallow/Deep), 4-way Output Drive, Response (Modern/Vintage).

Switching the Attack to Deep produces a deeper chugging kind of response, slightly scoops the tone and gives a bit more glassiness (glassiness can also be described as a greater string-to-string note definition and that sound that is like ***Ching*** - something a lot of Fender amps are known for). Setting the attack to Shallow produces a slightly faster, more immediate attack, more focused or pronounced mids and a slightly more "complex" sounding overdrive character that sounds very classic and organic.

Turning up the Output Drive basically boosts the preamp signal to slam the output section harder. Turning it up generally fattens up the response and produces more overdrive.

Setting the Response switch to Modern gives a more authoritative kind of punch and more aggressive sound. Setting it to Vintage makes the attack a bit more, well, vintage sounding - less aggressive and slightly rounder sounding. The Vintage response setting is meant to emulate the sound of a tube rectifier.

There is also a mini bias-pot and test points to connect a volt-meter to so you can adjust the bias of the amp.

This amp will accept power tubes types such as: EL34, 6L6/5881, 6CA7, 6550, KT66 and the new JJ 6V6 tubes. You could also run the amp with only one power tube for a half-power solution. The ability to set the bias yourself and experiment with various tubes gives you even more tone tweakability.

I mainly play with a Stratocaster (H-S-S) and a PRS Standard 22. This amps excels at clean, many flavours of classic rock and 80s-style hard-rock/metal. It isn't especially suited to blues. You can get close to an SRV kind of tone but it won't do a Tweed Bassman kind of sound if that's what you associate with blues.

On Voicings 1 and 2 and the gain set low the amps clean tone is a cross between a black face Fender and an old Hiwatt. It's fatter and more substantial sounding than the BF Fender but has more sparkle and shimmer than a Hiwatt. It's got a nice character - not sterile sounding. It's nice for Jazz and rock. Also, it's very responsive to your picking style so you can get it to breakup easily by striking the strings harder - something that is not easy to do with an old Hiwatt or BF Fender. This is something that I really like. In this regard, the amp doesn't have a huge amount of clean headroom so it's not something you'd really use for Jazz - particularly at higher volumes. However, it does produce a substantial but sparkly clean tone with the ability to create a light breakup just by slamming the strings a bit harder.

The lower-gain overdrive sounds can create a variety of tones from early Hiwatt-ish to more Marshally - depending on how you have some of the controls set. Maxing the gain on voicing 1 will get you into loud plexi-Marshall overdrive territory. Voicing 2 ups the overdrive more for maxed-plexi Marshall overdrive levels. Maxing the gain on voicing 3 and setting the tone controls appropriately will produce a level of distortion and an attack that sounds very similar to Van Halen II (not to be confused with the notchier, brighter sound of Van Halen I). Voicing 3 could be considered a great lead voicing for many people. In general, the overdrive sound of voicings 1 - 3 are very classic and woody sounding. Because of the various controls that affect the "feel" of the amp (Attack, Response, Output Drive) plus the fact that the tone controls are so versatile you can change the character and feel of the overdrive from a more Hiwatt-ish kind of tone to a more Marshally tone with easy.

Voicings 1 - 3 clean up very well using the guitar volume and by altering your picking technique. As it is, voicing 3 could be a kind of all-around voicing for many rock players as, with the guitar volume low you can clean up nicely for "rock clean" and by cranking the guitar volume you can get early Van Halen levels of overdrive for rhythm and leads.

Switching to voicing 4 will get you Soldano SLO levels of distortion and is great for 80's hard-rock / metal and Satch types of sounds. It has a lot of complexity and richness in its tone. It's great for singing leads as well as chunky rhythms. By turning the gain level down it can also do a good classic rock sound. When used this way it makes a nice contrast to voicing 3 as it produces a glassier / spanky kind of sound which is good for more indie-type rock. Voicing 3 also maintains a very classic feel so it isn't really suitable for a nu-metal kind of sound or someone who likes the tone from, say, a Mesa Dual-Rectifier.

The amp always maintains quite a bit of clarity and string-to-string note definition and will never become mush even at very high volumes. In this sense it is different than most Marshalls I've played. By comparison most Marshalls, in my experience, are relatively muddy sounding in that they lack note-to-note definition and clarity. This amp produces great Marshall-like classic-type distortion from voicings 1 - 3 but with greater clarity and much more versatility and SLO levels of distortion on voicing 4 plus it has, IMO, a really great clean tone - something you won't get on any Marshalls or SLOs I've played.

As for speaker cabinets I've always used this amp with 4x12 cabs and I know that's what James recommends. Greenbacks sound great with the lower gain classic rock settings (voicings 1 - 3). Vintage 30s also sou

I've had this amp for over a year. I mainly play it at home. It's been 100% reliable.

James Peters is a fantastic guy to do business with. He'll bend over backwards to support his customers and really cares about making them happy. He will pour loads of his time into helping people understand his amps and figure out what features they would like from the amp or whether they would be best suited for another brand of amp - based on what they're looking for.

You really can't find any better person to do business with. He's a perfectionist and a very smart person. He's got a ton of experience with a lot of different guitar equipment from the low end to the very high-end and his experience shows in his designs.

I've been playing guitar for 24 years. This is my main amp. I sold two old Hiwatt DR103s after deciding to purchase this amp as it has so much to offer and also produced a rich, thick overdrive that I wanted and was used to getting but previously had to use an attenuator to get. I've got 3 4x12 cabs (two Hiwatt and one Marshall) that I use and play mostly either my Fender Stratocaster (HSS) or my PRS Standard 22. I had played a number of high-gain amps over a wide span of time but had developed the opinion that preamp distortion was thin and lifeless sounding. However, after hearing the JP-50 I was really surprised to hear that it would produce such a rich, dynamic and thick sound with outstanding complex overtones. Plus, I knew that not having to use an attenuator would give the amp (and tubes) a longer life-span and would be very reliable as well as provide so much more versatility than I was used to.

This amp can produce 95% of the tones I ever need. For a really good SRV tone or Tweed Bassman tone I'd need a different amp but for Clean, classic rock, or hard rock this amp is truly amazing.

If this amp was stolen I'd definitely replace it with another Peters amp. Knowing what I know about the new Peters Dual-channel amps, I would replace it with one of those as having a custom dual-channel with a combination of the Classic Overdrive preamp and the Lead Overdrive preamp it would cover all the ground that this amp covers but have the bonus of two separate footswitchable channels (separate preamps, separate tone controls etc) for switching, effectively, between voicings 1,2 & 3 (classic overdrive) and voicing 4 (lead overdrive).

I have heard James' amps next to some very expensive boutique amps (Komet, Soldano, Roccaforte) and his amps stand toe-to-toe with those amps and hold their own all the way. In fact, IMO, they are superior in that, not only do they produce fantastic tone, they are also much more flexible than the other ones I mentioned. Plus, James' amps can be had for much less cost - about the same as what you would pay for a new Marshall TSL or something along those lines but the tone is so much more superior (to me at least) to a TSL that it's silly not to consider his amps. So, you get the best of both worlds.