Re: Been thinking about one of these for long enough...
Just for general violences.
I bought the JCA50 as a solution to a high gainer, and it totally is, but, a 5150/6505 just has a specific sharpness of toof that i wanted to have around.
The JCA is smooth and very rock-n-roll in its feel. The Peavey is just crushed glass crankiness.
I like the green channel a bunch with nothing on it, just gain about 5-6.
But i have also been using the red, boosted with a few different bad ideas, the worst of which, is the Joyo Pocket Metal.
The thing is basically a simplified Metal Zone, circuit-wise, just tuned to the MT2's proper middsy sweet spot. It is just fun as hell to play.
Now i have spent more time with it, i have a better feel for the Sheffield speaker innit, too. It is actually fine, just kind of dark. I will definitely swap a V30 in there for properness. The Sheffield works, but i do wind up running a bit more treble and presence with it than you really should for the amp.
It is so much fun to play these amps though. Weirdly quiet too(noise floor-wise), for how much gain it can give. That is one of the big reasons i bought instead of built. They have done so much revision on the boards for this, it is really well done. No way a homebrew version would be this quiet cranked up.
The 1x12 is exactly the right size too, i am finding. Big enough for some low end, but not sooooo big that you might as well just use a 4x12/head. The old 2x12 5150s combos were a bit like that, fucking massive to the point that you would start to question whether you wanted a combo at all.