Marshall Origin 20 head

  • Thread starter Thread starter Robus
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Robus

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New amp came today. I had my eye on the two new lines of Vietnamese Marshall heads and combos that came out this year. There is the Origin series, which is supposed to be based on vintage low gain Marshalls. They come in 20 and 50 watt heads as wells as assorted combos. There is also the DSL series, starting with a revamped 40 watt combo. I have the original DSL40c combo, so I decided to give the Origin 20 watt head a try.

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Wow, this little thing sounds pretty great to me. I had a couple of hours this afternoon to try it out. I was running it through my Mesa 1x12 with a Vintage 30, and through the speaker of the DSL combo with a Celestion 70/80. I'll be running it through a bunch more cabs in the next days. I'll post up some tones.

How do you think a 25 watt Greenback in an open backed cab would stand up to this 20 watt amp? Enough margin for error?
 
Very cool! I got the 50 watt version of this head a while ago. I'm really thinking of getting a 20 watt head as well. A greenback or creamback would probably pair up nice with it. I've tried the head through a 1x12 Traynor cab loaded with a greenback, as well as a Marshall 2x12 vertical slant cab loaded with Seventy 80's. Oh, and a red knob twin cab. Running the Marshall through the Twin cab made it sound actually a bit like a Twin. The Traynor cab is too bright and doesn't really have any low end grunt. Probably because it's a really small cab with very little depth. The Marshall cab gives that sound, but I'm probably going to get Creambacks for it. It's a VERY bright head and the Seventy 80's are just cheaper and brighter than other speakers.

It's a cool amp. Very nice clean sound. If you crank it up, hit the front end with some gain and switch in the boost there's actually a fair amount of drive as well. It doesn't sound like a Plexi, but I like it better than what you get from a DSL. It's just never going to hit shred level gain like a DSL can on its own. The tilt control is fun. You can get some really cool variations with it.

At full power, it's friggin loud! Sounds better when it's louder, but I think it's easier to control than a Plexi. Kind of why I'm interested in the 20 watter as well.
 
Thanks lizard. I thought about the 50 watt head but my home recording sweet spot seems to be 15-25 watts. Still loud as hell but I track with the cab in another room and me monitoring through my studio monitors. I aim to keep what hearing I have left. Another reason why I am done buying combos.

This amp had quite a bit of gain on tap. It's meant to be a pedal platform. However I was getting pretty awesome crunch just with a clean boost and cranking the amp all the way up. Between this and the DSL combo I think I have Marshall tones covered.

You are right that it is a bright amp. I like that. I have a Mesa V 25 watt head that has gain to infinity and does a nice crunch too, but a darker sound. I will try blending the two for doubled rhythm parts and see how that sounds.

$550. Wow! The DSL 20 watt head is even cheaper...Tempting.
 
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