Now discontinued, the Forest Effects Onça is a natural-sounding, JFET-based amp-in-a-box made in the UK. There’s also a mini version of it.
Forest Effects Onça, Builder’s Notes
Onça is a class A single ended amplifier in a box, using a pair of JFET’s in the place of tubes. Onça breaks up just like those classic little tube amps – there’s no diodes doing any clipping here, just true organic overdrive. JFETs function in the same way as vacuum tubes. Where in a tube an audio signal is a applied to the grid to control the flow of electrons from the cathode to the anode, in a JFET an audio signal is applied to the ‘gate’ to control the flow of electrons from the ‘source’ to the ‘drain’.
In plain English, this means you get exactly the same touch sensitive, dynamic, reactive to pickup choice, harmonically rich breakup that you would expect from a tube amp. Super compact & simple to use, you really only need the one volume knob as you can use your guitars volume pot to clean it up & your guitars tone pot to expand Onça’s EQ. Born for stacking, it’s perfect for driving with other overdrives or boosters.
