JP-2C Mark IIC+ John Petrucci 60/100-watt Rackmount Tube Head Review

This amp is a beast!

After spending some time with it I find I favor channel two for all around flip and play two and three are like switching high gain amps entirely the tonal texture and shaping have qualities all their own still working on a happy place for channel three but i"m Positive I will dial in the sweet spot as this amp is very loud when cranked and can leave one a bit tone deaf after a… read more few minutes. Flip her down to 60 watts and things get a bit more manageable for practice and keeping the neighbors from calling the law on me. The clean channel is pristine and clear and brings out the best in my guitars I have a prs custom 24 with split EMG"s installed, the jp monarch and a fender American deluxe HSS Strat and you can define the tonality of each blindfolded. The same goes for channel two and three but with the gain up this thing just ROARS. After playing for over an hour it just stayed consistent and unchanged unlike other amps I have that require constant tweaking as to follow demand changes and temperature. I can toss my effects and pare down to a delay chorus and wah. Maybe a boost for the strat. All I can say is the sound is beautiful and motivating my other amps are going to get lonesome.... now to figure the Ideal speakers. Sorry but i"ve Yet to use the other features this amp posses such as medi DI and cab emulator i"m Just a plug and play type I"ll let the engineers figure the tech side when I bring this thing in the studio.

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The Heavy Metal God's have welcomed me to their chambers

I purchased this amp right after a John Petrucci "Tone Summit" and was almost ready for a "Lone Star" edition instead. John's and the MESA engineer's expert guidance quickly talked me out of that, as this was the amp for me! After lugging it from the box (no easy task as it is quite BEEFY) I cleared out my age old effects from my rack to make room. And many of them needed… read more to go as they generated so much noise, many people thought I was running a "white noise" room scan when I fired up the QuadraVerb for instance. :) I placed the amp in standby and patiently waited for the shimmering tubes of goodness to prepare for the onslaught of power chords that were soon to be delivered. My Ibanez Pro Line had not been unsheathed from it's beaten up case in too long! It was time to wield the Axe of Thor and throw down some tone! I will say it was pretty easy to get good tone on channel two by following the basic setup from their recommended settings page. I focused on just playing the amp and not worrying about effects etc. on the first session. One thing I really didn't expect was just how dang clean the channel 1 is. I moved over to a Strat and enjoyed the shimmering goodness of that setup for a bit. You can get just a hint of overdrive if you want but it really excels at nice clean tones. I have since tried a Andy Timmons BB Preamp on the clean channel and it has totally opened up a myriad of choices and sounds with that channel. Still tweaking my channel two sounds and have since added my Line6 Pod X3 in the effects loop for reverb, chorus, delay only. It really sounds great through the effects loop and not so great in front of the amp. I am going to experiment with a dbx Compressor/limiter/gate next in the effects loop and see what it can do for me. Overall blown away by this amp and Sweetwater made it very easy on me to purchase.

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