Jump to content

marshall el34 100/100 power amp?


Recommended Posts

  • Members

Well one reason he might have said that is that the mesa 2-90,2-50,2-100 power amps only take up 2 rack spaces insted of 4 like the marshall power amp.The marshall poweramp 9200 100/100 is the exact same thing as the EL34 model but it came with 6L6's from the factory.You could put el34's in it and have it rebiased with no probelm.When I was looking at poweramps one thing that really turned me off about the marshall's is that they dont accept ohm loads of 4 ohms.The recomend you only use 8 and 16ohm.Which is fine if your only using marshall cabs and only in a 16ohm wiring but if you wanted to run two mesa cabs on channel A you cant since that would be a total of 4ohm's and marshall states it will put stress on the output transformer.Now..On the plus side the marshall 100/100 amps go for around $500-700 used and around 1K new the mesas go for around $700-900 used and cost $1,200-1,400 new but I think you get alot more for your money with the mesa.It just depends on how much you wanna spend and how you are going to use it.I think the marshall looks like a great amp for $500 used but I wouldnt pay anymore for an amp that couldnt do everything I wanted out of it.BTW I own the Mesa 2:100

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I had a Mesa 2:50, and a Marshall EL34 100/100 at the same time, and I sold the Mesa. It left everything sounding Sterile, and lifeless comparitively. Not that it was a bad amp, I actually liked it quite a bit, but I did prefer the Marshall. Maybe it's because you can bias the tubes in the Marshall, and get them into a proper range? Maybe it's because the Mesa is designed for 6L6's with El34's as an afterthought? I have no idea, but I do know I could hear a difference in the two.

 

 

As far as only doing 8 or 16 ohms, unless you're running 4 Mesa cabs, why would it matter? You can run an 8 ohm cab on each side. Since clean headroom is trait you want out of a power amp, there's no need to run both on one side in order to get the tubes warmed up like you would with a Dual Rectifier, or a JCM 800.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I've got a 9200 with 6l6's and really dig it overall. In the near future I'll be running one side 6l6 and the other e34l...should be sweet.

 

I don't know about the clean headroom thing being a rule of thumb though, I think that's more a matter of taste.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...