Trying to decide on a new guitar amp... anyone hate Marshalls or have a better sugges

  • Thread starter Thread starter pisces7378
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How do these musicians get different sounds?

NIN uses them most for touring....in the studio they used one but DIed the thing.

Slash, well his IS A MARSHALL all the way to the bank. That IS the Marshall sound people refer to now a days.

A lot of the other people might use Marshalls but they are different Marshalls, such as a Plexi or Bluesbreaker.

I don't think you have ever played a Marshall by the sound of it. You should play one......you might just want a Fender or Mesa.
 
Funny thing about amps and tone. Not everyone hears the same thing given the same equipment.

That Virtual Yadda Yadda thing that's supposed to cut the volume and make it sound like a 25 watt amp...Here's the catch. Take a JCM800 or similar amp and turn it all the way up till the tubes are roasting and then put a big fat resistor (the marshall power brake) between the cabinet and the amp. You get the saturated tube sound without all the volume. Now take the virtual version. Take your guitar signal and digitize it, now do some real fancy computer math and simulate the sound of the tubes roasting. Now convert it back to analog. Now cut the gain down to about 2% of what it was and send it along to the amplifier section and then out to the speaker cabinet. Seems a little silly to me but that's just me.

You're trying to find a 'do everything' box and there arent any. Find yourself a good sounding amp. Don't worry about what it sounds like in your apartment. Don't worry about how loud it is in practice. Just get the sound you are looking for. Mic it when you play live if you have to. Buy a $300 POD and simulate it when you record.

As far as features go, forget the direct ouputs, they're fine for bass, no good for guitar. If you're getting a combo amp, get one with external speaker connections. don't get one with a ton of built in effects. The only effect any amp should have built in is a reverb. No chorus, flanger, phaser, delays, pitch shifters, or anything else. They all suck.

Personally, I say get a boogie. I just jammed yesterday with a tiny little boogie (1x12 and 30 watts) and it did fine against a marshall full stack, a very well endowed drum kit, a humungous bass amp, and a rather large PA.
 
You're going to have a real tough time getting a decent crunch out of an amp in an apartement, especially if it's a Marshall.

Even with a power break you'll be micing a speaker that's meant to sound right when hammered with "n" watts.

If it were me, I'd get something that was 30-50 watts, had enough juice to play in a band (30 w transistors can be sketchy in this departement depeding how loud the band plays) and maintains a reasonable lead tone when played at moderate volumns, and setup some kind of isolation chamber.

Unfortuneately, if you want a Marshall, they aren't reknown for sounding good at low volumns. The newer ones may be better. High gain amps usually do this a bit better because you can back off the preamp and still get decent gain without sacrafixing as much power tube saturation.
 
that 350 watt marshall mentioned earlier is actually a solid state amp in the same arena as the valvestate. it probably falls in right next to randall's warhead amps. they have to compensate for the fact that the amp has absolutely no midrange. you need 350 watts to cut through the mix if you steal all the frequencies the guitar is made to take up. that and i'm sure there are plenty of people out there who want to stroke themselves with the idea of 350 watts.

50 watts is plenty 'friggin loud enough, i've never gotten mine up past 6/7, and i've played BIG venues, on a weekly basis.

jacob
 
Calling a vote!

Ok this is to everyone that has posted on this thread so far. I have had a hard time with seeing who likes Marshalls and who does not. Who thinks that this amp is too powerful and those that do not... etc...

So I am going to post a poll in this same "GUITARS AND BASSES" forum. Could you please go vote your conscious so that I can get a better idea of what people think about Marshalls on HR dot Com. I mean, I will still only buy one after I have played thousands and really Bbut you opinions matter and do help.

Thanks for you help so far!
 
Wow - this turned out to be quite a thread!

I'm sure some would debate this, but a cranked 100 watt amp sounds better (more powerful sound, more body, more bite, more "mean" sounding) than a cranked 50 watt amp. The problem is that most people never have a chance to even crank even a 30 watt amp.

If I lived in an aparment and did recording, as sacreligious as it is, I'd probably buy a POD. I live in a house and still had to soundproof a room and use an attenuator to get a good tube sound without having the neighbors hate me.

Pisces,
I'd suggest buying used so that you sell at not too much of a loss if the first amp you buy isn't working for you.
 
I just got a Marshall AVT50 a couple days ago. It's in the valvestate 2000 series and I love it. It has a solid state power amp, so it doesn't have to be turned on that loud to sound good. It screams at 1/4 volume, enough to get complaints/compliments from people far away. The emulated DI doesn't sound too good. so I record with an SM57.

I got it from the Hollywood GC. It had a $475 sticker price. The nearby Samash had it for $479 but they wouldn't really budge much with the price. I ended up getting it for $410 at GC.
 
I'm sure some would debate this, but a cranked 100 watt amp sounds better (more powerful sound, more body, more bite, more "mean" sounding) than a cranked 50 watt amp. The problem is that most people never have a chance to even crank even a 30 watt amp.
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I absolutely disagree. The only thing you get from the 100 watt amp cranked over the 50 watt is 3dB of volume. At that point all you're doing is adding a little bit more ear damage and a little bit more distortion to your speakers. The sound will be virtually identical, given the same preamp circuit and the same type of power tubes.

And yes, I have cranked many amps in my time.
 
....but a lot of amps don't feature things on the 50 watt version. Like, Marshall, the TSL has seperate EQs for all 3 channels on the hundred watt head, the 50 only has for 2......I think.
 
charger said:
I absolutely disagree. The only thing you get from the 100 watt amp cranked over the 50 watt is 3dB of volume. At that point all you're doing is adding a little bit more ear damage and a little bit more distortion to your speakers. The sound will be virtually identical, given the same preamp circuit and the same type of power tubes.

And yes, I have cranked many amps in my time.
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A couple times I've tried cranking my 100 watt Marshall, pulled out 2 power tubes and compared. It did sound better to me at 100 watts. Didn't sound any louder, but it did sound better. The amp tech I was working with at the time confirmed that would be the case.

Maybe it sounded better because the amp itself was designed to run at 100 watts not 50. But wouldn't you think - at 100 watts it's got the same number of preamp tubes, same number of speakers, same number of other components (that I don't know what they do), but twice the number of power tubes? It should affect the sound quality, right?
 
No. Why would it? 2 power tubes or 6 power tubes, physics still applies. Depending on what you're after, it's often the case that the lower wattage "sounds" better, because it gets power tube distortion at a lower volume. That's assuming that you get a big huge powerful amp because you WANT distortion, though some people like big powerful amps because they offer more clean headroom.

But this isn't really the case either... Like I said, 3dB of difference between 50 and 100 watts. And after that, 200 watts for the next 3dB of difference. A great sounding amp is a great sounding amp, regardless of the wattage. If you want to check this out, cruise over to Cornford's web site, and check out their samples of the Harlequin, a 6-watt amp that sounds monstrous. Or go to THD and check out the sounds they get out of their univalve and bivalve amps, using power tube and preamp combos that can go as low as 1 watt...

Really what you're hearing-- if you are listening at the same volume level, to the same circuitry--with 4 power tubes as opposed to two, is a little bit of a cleaner sound, more "headroom," slightly less distortion. But not much at all, by any measurement standard. In fact, if you did a blind listening test to the same amp rig, I'm willing to bet you would only guess the right combo of power tubes half the time.

Also remember, speakers used to be a lot less efficient, and required a lot more energy to get loud sounds. Nowadays, a speaker like the Celestion Vintage 30 is so much more efficient, that you get 3-6 dB more volume from it than from older designs, like a Greenback or a Jensen. This means that you could conceivably match (for volume) a 100-watt head with 4x12 greenbacks, using a 25-watt head with 4x12 V30s.
 
You can not compare small watt amps to a Marshall Half stack. Period. Just because if you want a Fender to break up so you get a low watt one, doesn't mean you need a low watt marshall. I would, but thats not the case here. A 100 watt Marshall is going to be a little different in that it has 4 power tubes. You know how those things work, Charger? Let me explain even though......One little piggy gets saturated, the next fills up....when that little piggy gets saturated, the one next fills up....after that little piggy gets saturated, and the last little piggy gets filled up.....NOW ALL THE LITTLE PIGS GET DRIVEN TO HELL AND BACK, WITH A MARSHALL CHAINSAW.
So how is the amp supposed to stay clean if it only has two tubes? Maybe there isn't as much volume difference, but there is a difference in how loud before it breaks up. Marshall, might be built for distortion, but they still have clean channel.
 
any of you pickers ever had a Matchless? if so, what did you think about it.
 
A 100 watt Marshall is going to be a little different in that it has 4 power tubes. You know how those things work, Charger? Let me explain even though......One little piggy gets saturated, the next fills up....when that little piggy gets saturated, the one next fills up....after that little piggy gets saturated, and the last little piggy gets filled up.....
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Not true. Power tubes work in pairs. And pairs of power tubes work in pairs. So all the pairs get saturated (a misnomer: they get overdriven, but power tubes don't really saturate) at the same time. What this means is, slightly less distortion overall in the 4 power tubes than in the two, at the same volume. But at the same time, physics is physics. We ARE talking 3db of difference at FULL VOLUME. Those are just the facts, not something I'm making up.

You sound as if you think I'm clueless... but I can tell you, I've been there. I've fought volume wars with bandmates, I've used 50, 100 watt, 120 watt (4x7027 tubes) heads. I've used 6l6s, 6550s, EL34s in that quest for the huge monster tone. I've been told again and again by professionals behind the mixing boards
at clubs to "turn it down." I've sacrificed years of my hearing to rock harder and louder than the next guy. And in the end, I have learned the hard way that I can get a killer sound at low volumes/wattages. A lot of companies (THD, Dr.Z, Cornford, Z.vex [maker of a 1/2 watt head]) seem to understand this nowadays, and trends are changing, which doesn't mean you have to accept it.

If it makes you feel better, and you can run your Marshall 100 watt head on 10, then by all means, go for it. Life is too short to argue physics with guitarists.
 
Matchless?
I spent about half an hour with one in a store in Minneapolis about two years ago. It was 30 watts and 2 x 12 (I think)

My recollection is that it sounded great - like a Vox AC30 - only more so.

Really crystal and glassy clean, and a nice soft overdrive at a little more volume.

Expensive, but not any more so than any other 'boutique' amp.

foo
 
Another amp to look at would be the Carvin Legacy. The clean channel is comparable to a Fender and the gain is comparable to a Marshall. If you like the more aggressive Boogie sound then change the EL34s to 6L6s. The Legacy can be changed from a 100 watt amp to a 50 watter with a flick of a switch. The good thing is that you can get a fine tube amp for less money then a vanilla Marshall AVT. The bad thing is you can't play it before you buy it, unless you live in California by a Carvin shop. Some people hate them and some love them. I hated mine until I change the tubes.

If you have a large budget try a Mesa tri-axis / 2:90 setup for a very nice range of applications.
 
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Sorry if I don't really care that you have done this, this, this, and this. Oh, and this.

There is a difference....otherwise they wouldn't make them.
 
LocusLarsen said:
Sorry if I don't really care that you have done this, this, this, and this. Oh, and this.

There is a difference....otherwise they wouldn't make them.
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Who are you talking too? There are a lot of users that have listed things they have done in this topic, including yourself.
 
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