Friedman JJ-Junior Head

good, but not that awesome as expected

Ordered together with Soldano SLO 30 amp, played for few hours when returned back home, what to say its not exactly what I was looking for as I already have Smallbox 50 which has very similar BE mode, I was looking for that type of JBE mode which I found on some demos to be quite good, but reality is that JBE mode (Jerry Cantrell) is in this type of small amp very sqeezed and compressed, its even noticable quiet when switching channels which is a no-go :(

Also effect loop is not that clear as you might find on another Friedman amps and affects tone and gain structure even when you have some good pedals from Strymon with buffer on. Next thing is that clean channel is not good to use because of lack of EQ setting.

For this kind of money I was expecting well build amp, generaly its not that bad at all, but for me there are better ways to go and maybe its good to save more money and go for the real deal, 100 watt head.

With this amp you can cover not only 99% of AiC tones, but anything from 80s rock and metal to modern metal tones. Clean channel sounds very nice and can be controlled via the presence control and a 3-way bright switch. The amp also takes pedals very well so you can run a lower gain pedal for 60s/70s rock tones and cover a wide area of sound palette. At low volumes it sounds pretty good but the master volume control is very sensitive and needs to be set to at least around 8-9 o'clock which may be too much for an apartment so I suggest you should use some attenuator if you want the best sound out of this amp. Friedman BE100W or JJ100W sound better at low volumes than this 20W, which I find very funny.