Marshall JTM 30

[CMunch]

Going to try a used JTM 3O tomorrow,anyone use these,opinions?Have read somewhere about reliability issues,not sure if its them all or just a certain age/model.

[DrewPeterson7]

Originally Posted by CMunch

Going to try a used JTM 3O tomorrow,anyone use these,opinions?Have read somewhere about reliability issues,not sure if its them all or just a certain age/model.

Nooooo shit. I used to own one of those, it was my first real tube amp.

Don't expect a huge amount of gain; at low volumes, the gain channel will just produce some slightly hairy crunch, not much more (though, to be fair, this was with a Strat).

That said, this is a Marshall in the original sense of the word - it's not really meant to be played quietly. As the master came up, the clean channel went from "meh" to this nice glassy bluesy sound that reminded me a bit of Clapton's more recent work, for some reason (either way, the tone owned), to, as you got nearer to wide-open, full on Jimi-plays-the-blues. Even 30 watts are going to be pretty damned loud, but if you could get it up that high, it sounded AWESOME. With enough volume, there was no reason for this thing to even have an overdrive channel.

That said, I too had reliability issues - it'd sort of fart out when it was cranked up that loud, and the volume would drop out. Flipping it off and then on again would fix it, but... My local shop couldn't find anything wrong with it, so eventually I just traded it in elsewhere for my first Mesa (and never looked back, but that's a different story).

If you own a Strat, play blues, and play somewhere where you can really open that thing up (and if your amp doesn't have issues), then snag the thing, it was a really great sounding combo when it had some juice running through it. I owned a TSL for a while later on, and while everyone talked about how great the clean was on that amp, I found it pretty uninspiring and really missed the glassiness of the JTM's clean.

Out of curiosity, what's the guy asking? If you can, run it wide open for maybe 5-10 minutes, just to make sure whatever the issue I was happening isn't happening to you, too.

[CMunch]

Arite bud,the guy advertised it as never gigged,home use only,I can only imagine by that he meant as a stool for DIY,it was in pretty bad shape,which in itself wouldn`t really have bothered me could easily have fixed it up,new tolex etc.one of the speakers was only working intermittently and it crapped out at higher volumes,the pretend surprise look had me heading for the door just about,nice tones tho,just wasn`t worth the money to sort out,re tolex,re-valve,speakers etc.He offered it to me for £200,seen some minted ones on the bay for about £300.

Mesa mmm never tried one as nearest retailer about 300 miles away,tempted to go try some.

[DrewPeterson7]

Originally Posted by CMunch

Arite bud,the guy advertised it as never gigged,home use only,I can only imagine by that he meant as a stool for DIY,it was in pretty bad shape,which in itself wouldn`t really have bothered me could easily have fixed it up,new tolex etc.one of the speakers was only working intermittently and it crapped out at higher volumes,the pretend surprise look had me heading for the door just about,nice tones tho,just wasn`t worth the money to sort out,re tolex,re-valve,speakers etc.He offered it to me for £200,seen some minted ones on the bay for about £300.

Mesa mmm never tried one as nearest retailer about 300 miles away,tempted to go try some.

Man, too bad, they're fun little combos.

Mesas rule, but it's a wildly different tone. If you're into the Marshall sound, then you might not dig it (especially if you're in the UK anyway, where they're like 2x the price of what they'd be in the States and Marshalls are comparably cheap).