Great amp for low-volume/practice situations with lots of usable tones.
"I purchased this amp along with a small 212 with V30s as a smaller, low-volume rig for playing at home and honestly i was quite surprised at what i got.
I'll start with tone. I tested this out with a few electrics, but primarily a strat, a bass VI and a rickenbacker 4001 bass. The jackman based on the marshall jcm and while there is only "tone" and "gain" knobs, i didnt have any trouble finding a solid jcm-style tone. I'm not totally sure about this, but i feel like the tone knob isnt just fixed on one sweep, but turning the tone knob almost sounds as if the entire eq curve changes. So to my ears, turning the knob counter-clockwise pulls up a darker tone more with a treble cut, low mid boost and low boost, and turning it all the way clockwise gets you a bass cut/treble boost that is very cutting. It almost sounds like you blend between 3 eq curves, from bassy/dark to flat to trebly/bright. Which makes sense if you are only going to include a single tone knob. You've got a blend of 3 different classic tones that are all useable imo. If you want more tonal control, there are plenty of marshall-in-a-box type pedals that you could put in front of this and it's be even more tweakable, if that's what you want. All in all, the tone knob doesnt have a huge, drastic effect on the overall tone, but honestly, i dont see this amp made for that purpose. You get a handful of solid tones to use, and if you want more, you've got pedals. I used a zvex box-of-rocks into the clean channel and it sounded really good.
The gain has a much wider sweep, but clean to gritty to full out marshall distortion-even on the clean channel. The od channel gives a boost, so you get a bit more drive out of that channel, but you've pretty much a good range of usable distortion. Is it tweakable? Again, no, but there are hundreds of pedals that are great at distortion.
Conclusion: very solid jcm tones. Not tweakable, but you'll still get the classic tones. For the pricepoint, i think it sounds great and for it's purposes is very useful.
Volume: through the v30 212, it was louder than i anticipated. My volume for at home solo playing for clean was at about 1/4 up and distortion needed the master to be turned down a little for matched volume. Is it loud enough for gigs? Coffeeshop gigs would be just fine, but anything bigger and you'd probably want to mic it.
Conclusion: plenty of volume for lower volume playing, but may struggle against a loud drummer.
Re: bass -- just for fun i ran a bass VI through it and a rickenbacker bass. It handled both as expected. Not super bassy, but the distortion sounded great with the VI, as my personal preference is to cut some of the bass anyways. Clean, the VI sounded like a VI through a marshall, so mets expectations.
The rick was of personal interest, as my favorite bass distortion tone is a bass through a screaming jcm. It was a great, cutting tone that would sit nicely in a mix. Personally i could see myself using this alongside a clean bass rig for a really cool blended clean/dirty rig.
Build: all metal, everything feels solid. Would i whip it down a flight of stairs? No. Most amps will break, except for the old 70s/peaveys. However if i was to throw this at someone/something, i could make up for the low weight with speed as it's light as a feather and small. It was actually a little smaller than i anticipated, but no complaints. I wanted small, and i got small.
Bluetooth: probably fine. I dont use it, and probably wont. I assume its to stream in music to play along to, which could be a handy feature. Or who knows. Maybe i could lock into someone elses at a show and randomly play duck noises for some fun. I'll report back when i try it.
At the end of the day, this makes for a great little lower-volume rig. If you like the jcm sound, you'll like this one. It's a nice no-frills/low-cost amp that will get you some usable tones and is also a great platform for pedals if you want more tonal options.
I'd also remind you that since this is just a head, your speaker choice will play a big role in the overall tone. If you buy a cab with bad speakers, an amp can't rescue that. Personally i'd say with the cost of the amp, spend a little bit on a good cab/good speakers and you'll be a lot happier.
My only complaint is that the clean and od channels are not footswitchable, so you can either use a boost pedal on the clean channel to bring in distortion, use a distortion pedal, flip the switch on the amp or just use it for a single tone at a time. The good news is that joyo just came out with a v2 of this amp, and it *is* footswitchable. To me, that makes for a really great value for a small amp!
I'd recommend this amp to anyone who is looking for a small practice amp or plays lower-volume shows. I certainly see a use for this amp in my future, and hope that they continue improving this series of amps, because they are really on to something good!"
Incredibly close to the real thing for a fraction of the price (and size)!
"I've been gigging with the Orange Jim Root Terror for a few years and it's my all-time favorite amp to get that Rise Against - Revolutions Per Minute kind of tone. Big, growly distortion without being muddy or too fuzzy. That amp was designed as a portable version of the Rockerverb crunch channel and runs at 7 or 15 watts, no clean channel or reverb built in at all.
So when I heard there was an even smaller tube amp that copied the tone for under $200 I was skeptical but the reviews were great, and the potential option of a clean channel for the rare times I need to switch would come in really handy. I got it and played with my E-II Eclipse Evertune with the Duncan Pegasus bridge pickup, hooked up to an Orange 2x12 cab, and compared back and forth between the two heads to see how close it really got.
The tone is incredibly close. There's only one tone knob so it's hard to do a perfect tone comparison, but my first impression is that I would absolutely play live with this amp. In comparison to the Orange it seems to lack a little something on the high end, and I noticed that when you crank the volume you get more low end without more high end, so that's probably why, and a little disappointing. So while I wouldn't record with the Joyo if the Orange was available, we're still talking an almost imperceptible difference, especially if you put it in with a band on stage, you're not gonna hear a difference. The fact that I'm even nitpicking the tone difference to that level at this price is saying something.
And then there's the size. The Joyo is half the width, and 10-20% smaller in the other dimensions. The weight is what gets me, though. I thought the Jim Root Terror was light at 12.8 lbs. The Meteor II is a mere 2.5 lbs (3.1 lbs with the footswitch)! That's the weight of 2-3 pedals. The Orange fits in my carryon, but I definitely feel it wheeling it through the airport. I haven't yet traveled with the Joyo but it could easily fit in my backpack and I could forget it's there.
The big draw for me was the footswitchable clean channel, which is fine, if a bit lackluster. I don't love the sound of it, but I'm also not playing a guitar that is really meant to sound great clean. The Orange with the gain turned down is definitely a nicer clean sound, no question, but that's hardly practical in a live setting when you need to switch mid-song. For my purposes, it's a win.
The only true complaint I have here is with the volume. This is a 20W amp but cranked all the way up it seems a little quieter than the Jim Root cranked at 7W, and the tone definitely suffers. As I mentioned above, you get a lot more low end as you get way up there but not a lot more volume. This won't matter at a gig when they're micing the amps, but I don't think it would work as a practice amp with a full band in the room, pretty sure the drums would overpower it, whereas I've practiced many times with the Jim Root.
The bluetooth connectivity is a nice feature for practicing at home. Unfortunately the tone of the guitar through the headphone jack is thin and weak, comparable to the tone from my Boss Katana 50 through headphones. I expect this kind of thing, the only good headphone tone I've heard from an amp is my Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 but that's a very different kind of head for 5x the price, so no shock there.
One more little detail I just realized that I will have to confirm is that because this is a 18V 2A power supply, it should be able to be used in Europe as well as the US as long as you pick up the matching power cable for the region. I realize that's not something that will be important to most people shopping for sub-$200 amps but for my purposes being able to take this tiny head anywhere in the world would be a game-changer, and the reason I bought the aforementioned H&K.
So if you love the Rockerverb but are put off by the price or the size, give this little guy a try!"
