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This page: Johnson J-Station: Guitar Amps, Bass Amps, Effects

Johnson J-Station

Putting electric, acoustic, and bass guitar sounds on the table

 

(click for a close-up)

Aimed directly at Line 6's successful POD, the J-Station is a departure for Johnson amps in that it does not include a tube in its circuitry. The tabletop unit does, however, sport a deep array of tube-inspired guitar and -- it trumps the standard POD here -- bass tones, as well as acoustic-guitar simulation, and a very nice collection of effects.

Guitar Amps and Bass Amps

The J-Station offers the usual collection of amp models, including Fender, Marshall, Vox, Mesa, and others (I like that they included a Hiwatt), but adds a couple of bass amps into the mix (based on Ampeg, SWR, and Trace-Elliot units), a major plus. (Line 6 addresses bass sounds in separate devices, such as the Bass POD and the Bass POD Pro.) In addition to the models based on vintage gear, the J-Station includes sounds drawn from its own Millennium series (Crunch, Solo, and Clean), and these are some of its richest tones.

Amps can be mated to one of ten cabinets -- or to no cabinet, if you're feeding the J-Station to a standard guitar amp. Cabinet choice has a major impact on tone, so I was a little disappointed to find a relatively small selection. On the plus side, three of the ten cabinets are bass-oriented, including the powerful-sounding Folded Horn 1 x 18.

While the controls behave appropriately for each model, I did find I was able to take some -- such as the BlackFace -- beyond what I'd normally expect in the gain department. This flexibility was enhanced by the effects section, which packs a lot of punch considering the J-Station's compact size.

Effects

Although some of the J-Station's factory presets sounded over-processed for my taste, overall the J-Station makes very efficient use of its effects section. Compression is always available, as are delay, reverb, noise gate, and wah. The modulation effects include chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, rotary speaker, auto-wah, and pitch-shift/detune. These can be placed either before or after the amp model in the signal chain, a nice plus. All of the effects sound very good, and the aforementioned "over-processed" criticism is easy to fix with a couple of quick edits. I especially like that I could switch the compressor in and out with a button push.

Next Page: Johnson J-Station: Operation and Control, Tone, Feel, Bottom Line....