Best fuzz/dirt for a Roland Jazz Chorus JC40

[BintyTwanger77]

That's what I thought as well.

[BintyTwanger77]

Well...that was unexpected.

At home, tweaking the Frazz Dazzler (way too noisy into this amp when not playing), so I engaged The Cleanness, cranked the Low and Mid up and rolled off the High end to around 1 o'clock and (yes really) turned the distortion on the Jazz Chorus up to 3 o'clock (yes really) and it sounds f***ing great. A pedal like a Cleanness with an EQ filling out the thinness of the JC's (on its own terrible) distortion channel and it's actually more than usable.

Ryan, if you're out there, your Cleanness made a Jazz Chorus's dirty channel sound great. You are a genius.

[UglyCasanova]

It's basically how loud you can play the amp without it clipping, and solid state clipping (squarewaveish sound) can be pretty freaking ugly. It's super clean at very high volumes, meaning you can hit it with plenty of volume/dirt as well as turning up the volume on the actual amp without it clipping. That's what I meant with "basically no headroom". Sorry if I used the wrong terminology.

[D.o.S.]

Sorry if I used the wrong terminology.

You didn't.

[tremolo3]

Yeah you didn't, but a JC in my experience has like infinite headroom, at least with the 2 120s I have. I do get some nice speaker breakup at insane levels though.

[amnesiac305]

I consider my JC120 to have super high headroom - as a matter of fact I don't think I have ever heard it clip and its seriously loud

[SPACERITUAL]

Iron lung fuckng rules.

[ProCarsteNation]

Sorry if I used the wrong terminology.

You didn't.

but a smartaleck might argue you used the right terminology wrong. wrongly?

"basically no headroom" reads to me like "it clips very fast"

[D.o.S.]

Yeah I agree with that too. UC is probably wrong (or deaf) but I don't think there's any actual misunderstanding of what's being said?

[UglyCasanova]

Yeah, phrasing derp. Near infinte headroom*

[huggernaut]

What's the general consensus on the jc-40 around these parts?

I'm looking for a combo that doesn't blow my house down, but will be a great pedal platform...

[Mudfuzz]

The 2x12 one sounds cool with bass.. a guy I gigged with a lot use to use the 1x12 one for acoustic blues, sounded cool

[backwardsvoyager]

Well...that was unexpected.

At home, tweaking the Frazz Dazzler (way too noisy into this amp when not playing), so I engaged The Cleanness, cranked the Low and Mid up and rolled off the High end to around 1 o'clock and (yes really) turned the distortion on the Jazz Chorus up to 3 o'clock (yes really) and it sounds f***ing great. A pedal like a Cleanness with an EQ filling out the thinness of the JC's (on its own terrible) distortion channel and it's actually more than usable.

Ryan, if you're out there, your Cleanness made a Jazz Chorus's dirty channel sound great. You are a genius.

That's pretty neat. I remember really liking the sound of my peavey T15 through the JC120 with the distortion set fairly low as like a slightly dirty clean tone, had an almost harmonic percolator kinda feel to it.
the JC distortion definitely isn't entirely useless and i'm glad they haven't gotten rid of it on the 40. can you even imagine turning that knob on and getting a nice creamy transparent overdrive? i'd be horrified.

i will echo lordgalvar's sentiment in that i think that the because the RAT works so well with JC's and many other solid state amps you will get awesome results stacking almost any other kind of dirt pedal into it to retain the character of the RAT but push it into fuzz territory. IMO most RATs sound nicer at lower gain so stacking is better than cranking the distortion if you want fuzz.

by the way have you compared the JC40 to older JC's? I need a small amp and was hoping it sounded just like the 120 but yknow, more portable.

[Mudfuzz]

also Rats work better with amps designed to get clean sounds.. I love them through my bass ams and my ampeg and sunn but the things don't have that magic through my orange also yeah that built in dirt is cool, such a unhappy sound

[huggernaut]

by the way have you compared the JC40 to older JC's? I need a small amp and was hoping it sounded just like the 120 but yknow, more portable.

This is what I'm most curious about. Haven't gotten my hands on one yet.