wolf1419

I've used my JTM30 at home in a condo for a few months and it sounds pretty sweet. The clean channel sounds very nice at low levels - nice lively tone, and the distortion can work at low levels, but you have to play around a bit to get your preamp and output tubes tweaked in. I found that if you turn your master volume to halfway first, then dial in your individual channels for a comfortable clean volume, then experiment with your gain channel(gain & volume) you can get some great sounds, then you can turn your master up or down, with headroom to spare, have better sound and control of the total amp at whatever you consider to be your "reasonable starting volume" at halfway on the master. I think this gets all your tubes working a bit. This is just one approach for bedroom playing channel-switching and taking control of the amp. "Easy" to quiet down to 2,3,4 or up to 6,7,8 on your master when the neighbors are away without losing your input gain stages. "Individual preferences" and situations will always override this approach, but it's working for me and I'm in a condo, where I have to keep the peace.
Oh yeah, just remembered - always clean your fx loop send/return jacks as they are a source of a lot of the cutting in/out and volume changes that people have. It was the same with my Ashdown amp until I figured it was a simple connection that gets funky from non-use. You can plug your cable in/out a few times every once in a while to keep it clean, or use contact cleaner if it's really dirty or corroded. If you're unsure just plug a short cable from send to return to complete the loop and see if that's the problem. One guy I knows just keeps the jumper plugged all the time to avoid cleaning. I like to just keep it clean. Your preference!