FOR MASSIVE CLEAN power and hypnotic chorus and vibrato effects in a relatively compact package, the Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus is hard to beat. But we take its existence too much for granted these days. Before its arrival in 1975, most guitarists had given the cold shoulder to the first wave of solid state amplifiers. From the mid 1960s onward, major makers in the industry such as Vox, Fender and Gibson tried their damnedest to convince players that tube amps were the way of the past. Their promotional efforts declared they were too fragile, hot, temperamental, heavy and expensive to maintain. They even insisted the old glowing glass bottles should be abandoned for the way of the future: solid-state transistors. And this was in spite of the fact that each of them already made great tube based models pro players loved.
The problem was, the efforts of these makers and others to replicate the tube-amp tones that rockers had fallen in love with failed abysmally, and guitarists just weren’t buying it.
Roland approached things differently, and in retrospect that’s no surprise. The Japanese company was new, and it took a novel approach to product development that continues to this day. Rather than attempting to emulate the sounds of existing tube amps, Roland designed a high-quality, dual-60-watt stereo solid-state
