Quick review:
Channel 1 is the "British" channel. You can easily dial in sounds anywhere from plexi on the verge of breakup, to a wailing JCM800. The open back combo makes various comparisons to a Marshall stack a bit suspect, but the EL34 grinding crunch is there by the bucket load. The Lead Gain boost adds just that - more gain, but with a volume boost and an increase in the upper midrange. It pushes the saturation over the top, yet it's still highly controllable. No squeals or whistles, just rich, British drive.
Channel 2, the "American" channel, does incredible imitations of two of my favorite 6V6-GT Fender amps while utilizing the EL34. In normal mode or with the bright switch pulled, this amp oozes the famous blackface tone of the Deluxe Reverb or at lower volumes, the Princeton Reverb. Pull the midrange notch and it turns into a tweed Deluxe or Champ. Turning the gain on the clean channel up to 10 with the bright switch off is where this combo shines for me and my recent style transition. Maxing the gain brings back the British flavor of a JTM45 or a Bluesbreaker combo. It barks, bites and maintains note articulation very well.
What I was looking to achieve with this amp was to recreate my favorite features of my JSX, but in a compact, lightweight package. It does the JSX clean and crunch extremely well, perhaps better than the JSX itself. I hardly ever used the Ultra on the JSX and when I did, the gain was never far from 4 on the dial. The Rivera is under 50 pounds. Very light in weight for a 55 watt all-tube 1x12. The
JSX head alone goes about 55, plus another 60 to 90 pounds, depending upon which cabinet I choose to load into the truck.
I can easily see this little beast will have a place of honor on stage any gig I choose to grace with my geezerish presence, short of an arena or stadium. I don't see either of those in my immediate future, so the JSX may be in mothballs until the summer backyard party circuit heats back up.
