'The Juke is all things musical not available elsewhere' is more or less how the small ad reads on guitar mags. In all honesty, we didn’t pay that much attention to it up until when we actually had the chance to play through one...
Being long time fans of 50’s and 60’s classic American tube amps, and especially of the less popular, not yet rocketed to stardom and thus kept from the reach of the average player by the vintage craze (read Magnatone, Valco), we were struck by the Juke being referred to as a sibling of those great amplifiers of lore. Magnatone 'golden voice' pitch shifting vibrato? Valco-inspired bias modulated tremolo? Ampeg 'hall' reverb? No distorsion mode? It sounded as if all efforts had been accurately made to make this an amp that has nothing to do with fashion, commercial success or boutique ‘hipness’. So, the Juke could as well have been designed and built for the only thing that matters (to us) in an amplifier: tone.
This is how at that point it became mandatory for us to track one down and give it a whirl! We stumbled upon the smaller Juke 112 first, an ex-demo for factory-direct sale on Ebay, contacted Gary Croteau (the only person behind Juke Amps: amp designer, engineer, welder, cabinet maker, tolex gluer and shipper) to ask if a 220V version was available, and ended up ordering a full-sized 1210 with Weber speakers and custom-ordered 220V power tranny, all in a couple emails.
The amp shipped in a matter of days (I understand Gary likes to keep some finished amps always at hand) and, thanks to our trusty ol’ FedX Int’l Economy, made it through safely overseas in even less than that. The amp was very neatly packaged and arrived perfect. All it was needed was to wire up a European-type plug (our was the very first Juke amp shipped to Europe, so Gary had no EU-type plugs he could supply), flick the switch and rock out. It’s been quite some months now since we had our Juke 1210 shipped, and after some playing at home, in the studio and at gigs we feel confidently qualified to write up some impressions.
The Juke 1210 was definitely meant to be a combo from the very beginning: its 1x12’’ + 2x10’’ speaker configuration is anything but usual and was obviously chosen to highlight and value the amp’s voice for its best. Our amp came with one Weber P12Q and two Weber P10R, bolted to a Baltic birch ply baffle board and nicely housed inside a finger-jointed solid pine cabinet. The amp is neatly covered in green tolex, with a very elegant black and cane grille cloth.
In the fashion of the glorious Fender tweed amps, the 1210 controls reside on its upper face. Removing the back panel gives access to the hand-wired interior (solid core wire is used throughout). An eyelet style black board houses top-grade components and it is evident that a great effort was spent in the amp’s engineering and layout. The results are a well organized interior (easy serviceability) and rational layout of components (consistency in tone from amp to amp, noise minimization). Definitely not your average basement-made-rat-nest-looking science project.
Not your average ‘plug in and play’ amp either: control knobs and switches abound on the silkscreened top panel. By the way… here’s a nice little touch that reveals a lot: the top panel extends a bit over the back panel, thus closing the infamous gap that’s always seen on amps with top mounted controls and avoiding dust, debris or the typical beer spillage from filtering between the back panel and the amp chassis and making their way inside the amp. Thoughtful!
Back to the controls: lots of tone shaping options, the eq controls sweep a broad range of useful frequencies and are expertly centred around the electric guitar tone ‘hot spots’. Plus, we get plenty of control over the built in effects: reverb (dwell, color and level); vibrato, i.e. frequency modulation (speed and intensity); tremolo, i.e. amplitude modulation (speed and intensity). In addition, we get to choose between 3 different output modes: triode, pentode and ultralinear. We found ourselves sticking pretty much to the latter two, offering the triode mode no particular tonal advantage per se...
...other than a slight decrease in output power (which is not necessarily a tonal advantage).
As far as tubes are concerned, the Juke 1210 sports the usual double triodes in the preamp section (12AX7’s and a 12AU7 for reverb driver), while a couple of EL34 bottles pump up to 45 Watts to the speakers through the output transformer (in pentode mode). DC power supply is provided by a GZ34 rectifier tube. The Juke can also be run with 6L6’s, KT66’s or 6550’s with nothing but proper re-biasing.
Finally, a standard type double footswitch (supplied with the amp) allows to switch on/off reverb and vibrato/tremolo from front stage without having to run back to the amp!
In three words: it sounds great. For those who might like a little better detail to this statement, I’ll try to articulate a better explanation hereafter.
Maybe for those familiar with the classics, I’d better start by saying what the 1210 does not sound like.. It does not sound like a Fender (be it tweed, brown, black or silver face), it definitely does not sound like any Marshall ever made, it does not sound like any Ampeg, Gretsch, or any other amp of any manufacturer that I have ever had the chance to play through. Yet, it sounds familiar in a positive way. It sounds pretty much like the classic tones we have always heard on recordings with its own twist to them. It’s like tasting your favourite food, but prepared with a special recipe, spiced up with an added flavour: familiar but unexpected at the same time.
The Juke does have a "Level" control that functions more or less like a master volume, but even at higher settings, while adding some girth to the signal, it never pushes the amp into overdrive. The 1210 was clearly built for clean to mildly driven tone. It’s there where the 1210 truly shines and offers sounds with a level of detail, clarity, bloom and definition that are truly head and shoulders above the average. If the term ‘woody’ rings any bell to you in terms of guitar tone, then this amp is definitely very woody. The 1210 has an almost acoustic quality to it, that really lets through the different character of every guitar that gets played through it....
Bass notes bounce out with a big, round attack that would put a smile on the face of anyone armed with a 6120 or a Telecaster and going for those honkin’ riffs. Highs are meaty and solid, mids are complex and refined. Get yourself an ash-bodied, maple neck strat and play your favourite Ronnie Earl tunes..."Language of the Soul" tone to boot! Pump the signal up a bit, switch to middle pickup and dig in with your index and thumb: instant Jimmie Vaughan...This is fun, folks! A lot of Swapping the stock JJ EL34 (great bottles, by the way, for all you Marshall players out there) with a pair of GT KT66 HP’s that Gary sent over to test drive yielded marvellous results. Of everything that we liked about the Juke we simply had more: more spaciousness, more note detail and bloom. Solid, coherent fundamentals with lots of harmonic coloration on top.The tone got even more three-dimensional and consistent.
Then come the effects. The spring reverb is lush, spacious and never ‘boingy’. Other amp designers have accomplished this with their spring reverbs, but the Juke’s reverb is more so (i.e. ‘boing’-free) than any other I’ve played to date. It stands behind notes without engulfing them: discreet even at higher settings. It will take a bit getting used to, since it does not sound at all like the more familiar Fender reverb, but it deserves its niche in reverberated guitar tone thanks to its musicality. Airy.
The tremolo / vibrato are truly awesome. They are so good they will change the way you think about these classic effects and make you think of ways you can sneak them into your guitar lines...
..The Magnatone pitch shifting vibrato is the best fun you are going to experience playing guitar after the discovery of the wha pedal: just close your tone pot, switch on the neck pickup and pretend you’re Jimmy Smith sitting behind his Hammond B3. Mind blowing.
Of course, this is far from being a multi purpose amp. It will handle with awesome grip any roots genre: jazz, blues, swing, rockabilly, classic rock (think Rolling Stones, not Aerosmith). It will not take you to more aggressive territories. Yeah, it takes distorsion pedals pretty well, but if you leave them on 90% of your playing time, then this ain’t the amp for you.
On the other hand, if your tastes lean towards lush, transparent, bold clean tone in a big way, then the 1210 has a lot to reward you with and it’s definitely worth going that extra mile to get hold of one. We liked 1210 a whole lot..
...We think it’s a tremendous tone machine and we keep coming back to it (along with a very, very few other amps) whenever the urge for strumming strikes...
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