Yestergear: Yamaha JX50 Amplifier

This week I went back to my early guitar playing days for our piece of gear from days gone by.  This was a piece of gear I personally owned.  This was a piece of gear near and dear to me. This was my first serious amp.

Yamaha JX50 Amplifier

The Yamaha JX50 was a 50 watt solid state amplifier.  The controls were Volume (pull gain), master volume,treble,middle,bass, and a 3 position FAT switch.  There was a control for reverb (footswitchable as well) and a headphone jack.  There were also high and low inputs.

This was a pretty decent amp.   It had a smooth creamy kind of distortion.  Good for some rock stuff but not quite dirty or edgy enough for heavier stuff. I always goosed mine with a DOD 250 overdrive. The FAT switch allowed you to dial in some interesting tones.  I can’t remember where I set mine to be honest. It was only a single channel so you had to pick whether you wanted to run clean and get your dirt from pedals or just dime the gain and go for broke.

I don’t know exactly what year this amp was released but I picked my up used in 1984.  As of this writing I could not find any listings on ebay.  I guess if you got one you either dig it or just figure it’s not worth selling.  I had mine for about 9 or 10 years and it was my main amp for 5 of those years.