Both the Lee Renaldo and Jazz Club use a single 12-inch custom Eminence speaker made in Kentucky. I received the CJA1 Jazz Club model and it has been a big hit with the guitar players coming into my studio to record.

The Jazz Club was developed with input from several prominent jazz guitarists and offers beautiful, clean tones at very high volume and extended low frequencies; it is ideally suited for arch top jazz guitars, but I have tried other guitars including my custom Fender Strat. The Jazz Club amp measures 15 H X 14 W and 11 D-inches--almost a perfect cube handmade from rigid plywood and MDF. It weighs 25 pounds has a comfortable carrying handle and uses a 220-watt Class-D amplifier. It has a protective front metal screen over the speaker that easily pops on/off and the standard finish is a handsome, painted industrial-grade lightly textured midnight blue. (ZT is planning on offering custom colors soon).

ZT Amplifiers Custom Shop Jazz Club Guitar Amp

For its weight and size, this is a very loud and clean guitar amplifier with loads of headroom, a big bass tone and projecting sound. On the top, recessed into the cabinet are the controls that include: Gain, Bass, Mid, Treble, (Master) Volume, and Reverb. The reverb is a digitally modeled emulation of a spring reverb and sounded sweet for adding just a touch of ambience.

When testing, I tried the Gain maxed and Volume way down to get an overdriven saturated tone. It will not do that like a tube amp, so you'll do better at getting that sound using an overdrive pedal. Speaking of adding your own effects, on the rear panel are both a Send and a Return EFX jacks that come (in the circuit) after the tone stack--you can interface professional studio gear.

I liked the XLR Direct Output connector on the rear panel; it's voiced like the Jazz Club's speaker and good news for studio work or for live stage performances. Your FOH mixer or studio recording engineer (like me!) will love this feature. This is a direct output for recording and you can record this way right in the control room by muting the internal speaker using the rear panel switch. Works great and I've been doing this since the Jazz Club came for review.

There is also a jack for using an external speaker either along with the amp's internal speaker or not. The impedance of the external speaker should be anywhere between 8 and 16-ohms plus look for ZT to offer a matching extension cabinet.

Other ZT Amplifers Products!  Extortion Pedal Lunchbox Amp Lunchbox Junior Amp Club Amp Cabinet Acoustic Amp Jazz Club Amp

Guitar players coming into my studio and using the Jazz Club have all just love it! They say things like: "Super clean!" "Love the headroom and nice rich tone," "It'll sound great with my arch top!" and "Jazzers will love the amp's extended low end for playing live gigs."

Both the Lee Ranaldo Club and the Jazz Club (reviewed here) are available now. The Lee Ranaldo Club is $1,499 MAP and the Jazz Club sells for $1,299 MAP.