I admit it. I usually have a love/hate relationship with AC30 type amps. There’s something I love about them and there’s usually something that grates on my ears after a while. I’ve tried every reissue they’ve come out with and even some vintage ones, but I just haven’t found THE AC30 for me. UNTIL a month or so ago. This 1962 pre-top-boost JMI Copper Panel AC30 fell into my lap from a friend.
So now I’m starting to wonder if my problem all along has been the “top boost” portion of the amp. I thought a non-top-boost version wouldn’t have the gain or the clarity but was I wrong. I literally played one chord through the amp to test it to know it was special. To say the controls on this amp are “minimal” would be an understatement. The only “tone” knob to be found is an overall “cut” knob that lets you tailor the high end to your liking. That just means the amp just oozes perfect tone and there’s not much need for adjustment, at least to my ears.
I find that the normal channel is damn near perfect for me. If I want the brighter, typical AC30 tone, I can use the brilliant channel or jumper the two but the normal channel with the tone cut just leaves all the tone unmolested and allows me to just tame the brightness to my liking.
I brought it home and started making some profiles of it. It is a UK model so I’m using a variac and a step up transformer to give it the required voltage and I’m not sure if that makes a big tonal difference but if it does, it’s a damn good one. The profiles came out so effortlessly and since there isn’t a lot of variation on the knobs I just spent some time finding the sweet spot on the speaker and then A/B comparing them to my existing favorite el84 profiles. I used them in some of my song presets on my live Kemper Stage and liked them so much they now comprise about half of our Lonestar live show. I still use the Matchless for some rhythm tones and my 3P for clean tones and Marshall, Bogner, etc for lead tones, but for the meat and potatoes tones for the majority of our show, this is now a staple. I did some profiling with the stock cab as well as my usual 3P cab with CL80 celestion speaker because that’s what feels like home to my ears, and I’ve included both sets for a little variety.
If you’re looking for just an all-around smooth, creamy guitar sound that smoothly transitions from clean to overdrive with ALL the good, juicy frequencies in it, this just may be your ticket too.
Check it out here: COPPER JMI PACK