Members mbengs1 Posted July 5, 2016 Members Share Posted July 5, 2016 I have a marshall. i think they sound pretty good. i like satriani's tone and he uses marshall. but after listening to lots of marshall amp vids on youtube. i think marshalls are thin sounding and tend to be bright. but players like malmsteen, eric johnson, sound fine. their marshalls sound really great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted July 5, 2016 Members Share Posted July 5, 2016 Marshalls aren't known for their cleans. That's about the worst thing I can say. As for YouTube vids made by hacks and recorded with poor gear, bear in mind that pros know how to dial in great tone. That's one reason pros sound better than hacks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 1001gear Posted July 5, 2016 Members Share Posted July 5, 2016 Marshall cleans are what I like most about 'em. They have a rich darkness that Fender will not do. The distortion is actually pretty crappy and just about requires you have great rock/rhythm chops. Given that, that crappy distortion perfectly orchestrates rock triads and power intervals. For lead tones Bogner is a better derivative. Matter of fact, for lead, Marshall doesn't even make my GAS list. Note EVH is not a stock sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members AJ6stringsting Posted July 5, 2016 Members Share Posted July 5, 2016 Back in 1986, my Marshall JCM died on me. So I took it in for repairs. We had gigs lined up two eeeks later, so I got a Carvin X-100B to sub until my Marshall got fixed.I got better sounds out of my X-100B that my JCM 800 could get, plus the X-100B's clean channel was as good as a Fender Twin, the JCM's cleans were not as good.The Carvin had a 5 band Eq, that gave it more flexibility and if I wanted to get the bass grunt of a Mesa- Boogie, I'd raised the lower frequency band on the Eq.I guess it was one of those Life Surprise's, that people talk about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members AJ6stringsting Posted July 5, 2016 Members Share Posted July 5, 2016 Jose Aredondo did a lot of amp mods to EVH' S amps back in the day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mikeo Posted July 5, 2016 Members Share Posted July 5, 2016 I have a JMC 800 2x12 combo and I like it for what it is. I used to run it side by side with a Fender Twin. I tend to like the old skool Marshalls. They kind of are a lot of coin these days, but always were. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted July 5, 2016 Members Share Posted July 5, 2016 Is there anything about Marshall amps that suck? Well sure - The person using it. Any amp will suck if you don't know how to get the best from them. Marshalls will really make a bad player stand out because its harder to hide behind muffled tones like you can on other amps. I'd first have to ask what Marshall you actually have. Marshall makes "allot" of different amps, some are great sounding and some aren't so hot. They produce some absolutely wonderful cleans you cant get from any other amp. Second I'd have to ask what speakers is it paired with. Allot of times you don't hear it because of the cabs and speakers being used. Greenbacks commonly used with Marshalls are horrid sounding when it comes to frequency response but they are often paired with the amp to get the head to saturate by removing highs and lows. Third I'd have to ask what guitar you're using with the amp. The guitar used with an amp is just as big a factor as the speakers and the head itself. A guitar with single coils may sound thinner then a guitar with humbuckers but isn't that true with any amp? Fourth you have the player and the experience using the amp.Just like any other amp you have players who know how to use them well and others who don't. Fenders tend to be a broad brush compared to using a Marshall. Marshalls let you selectively pull through some upper mids which is great for playing leads but again it depends on your entire setup. There are some sounds players gravitate towards when using the amps because its just as much a matter of string touch when using an amp as it is getting a certain tone. Stereotyping the way an amp sounds based on a recording is pretty shallow. Those simply may be the recognizable tones you are accustomed to hearing because you listen to those songs allot. There are just as many "other" tones including cleans that have been recorded where you probably wouldn't even recognize them as coming from a Marshall, and given the fact there are so many pedal, guitar, and speaker selections available now its impossible to identify which amp is producing what sound in a blind comparison unless it is dialed up to produce a stereotypical tone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted July 5, 2016 Share Posted July 5, 2016 Yeah, you really can't lump all "Marshalls" into the same group and generalize about them like that. Not all of them sound the same. The usual beef you hear is that their cleans are not very good, but I don't agree with that - certainly not in all cases. The typical clean tones you'll get from a Marshall are definitely different than the stereotypical Fender cleans, but a big part of that is because the amps are generally EQed differently, and have a different sound. It's not better or worse, just subjectively different... and again, it really depends on which Marshall model we're talking about. The Marshall Class 5 is so small and low-powered that it doesn't have much headroom, but it wasn't designed as a high volume "clean" amp. The cleans on the Marshall JVM215C are really quite nice IMHO. The links will take you to the full reviews I did on each of the two mentioned Marshall models in case anyone is interested in checking them out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mbengs1 Posted July 7, 2016 Author Members Share Posted July 7, 2016 I have the jtm60 combo. it has 3 10 inch speakers. theyre stock. i'll have to check later the kind of speakers. the guitars i use are mainly ibanez RG's, S, JEM, fender strat w/ a humbucker in the bridge.. for the most part. i like the tone of satriani. but i like the sound of my bugera just as much. but i think i'd settle for a nicer name brand than bugera. maybe a blackstar or peavey. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted July 8, 2016 Members Share Posted July 8, 2016 I have a Marshall Valvestate 100 Head I run on either a 4X12 or a 1X10 cab. The clean channel stays clean all the way up to max on the 300W 4X12 cab and will flap your pant legs with full lush sounding clean tones. The 4X10" cab four 25W Alnico Jensens in it. I've never taken the head up over 3/4 max on that can because its sweet spot is around 1/2 to 3/4. Still on the clean channel its distortion free all the way up. The drive channels (2) are a different story. It gets its drive in the preamp section and has a crunch and overdrive channel. The crunch channel makes it sound like a tube amp pushing under powered speakers and the drive channel produces the typical signature marshall drive sound you get from many of the amps. I run my amp on the clean channel and simply get my drive tones from pedals. Plexi Tube amps are nearly identical to the clean channel on my Valvestate. I've owned a 50 and a 100W version and they remain incredibly clean yp to maybe 1?2 power or more the same way Fender tube amps saturate when you push them. They simply saturate at different frequencies. The Marshalls also use the EL34 which tend to break up differently then 6L6 tube amps. Tube age and type are factors too. My 50W plexi would begin to break up at a lower volume setting when the tubes got older and would also darken a bit, loosing some of their high end presence. The 6L6's in fenders have a big bark when they are new. They tend to break up more in the lower mids and bass frequencies more then EL34's giving you that brown sound many like. When the tubes get old you notice a loss of highs and lows become flabby. Again allot of this is because of their tone stacks. I've also heard good and bad from the same versions of heads. Both me and a buddy of mine has 50's when we played together for several years. His was hot rodded and had a master volume put in so he could drive the preamp up and saturate his tones that way. I never liked it much but it was his tone and we played together well and always had a packed house so I guess the people liked the combination. As I said before, I run a Fender and Marshall together and I'm always blending the tones of the two. In my case I set everything for 12 o'clock and it sounds ideal. If I had to choose one over the other, I'd pick the richer sounding cleans I get from the Marshall. Its not just the tone either its how the guitar feels when you're picking the strings and how pedals react to the head. I can say my ideal guitars for a Fender amps have always been mini humbuckers because they add some extra needed mids to the amp and pushes the amps into saturation better. Vintage Fender singe coils tend to produce that clean James Bond theme song surf guitar tone that a bit too clean for most stuff I play. Full sized humbuckers usually make a Fender amp sound a bit too bassy and when you turn the bass down it then gets whimpy sounding. Of course the type of HB is very important too. A Marshall can take all three types of pickups very well because the bass rolls off a little higher then a fender so its not so muddy with full sized HB's, The mid range targets singles optimal ranges extremely well and when boosted and pushed hard you start getting that Hendrix tone. Mini Humbuckers using a Marshall nail the Allman Brothers clean tones exactly. When you crank them up you can nail Johnny Winter rock blues tones. There's really nothing I've come across that does it quite so well. My sound City head came close to the up front live wire cleans I can get from a Plexi, mainly because it uses EL34 tubes too and has similar tone stacks If you aren't happy with the JTM 60, try finding a Marshall with 2X12's. You'll likely be happier with the cleans you get depending on the amp you get. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members guitarcapo Posted July 9, 2016 Members Share Posted July 9, 2016 Best cleans I ever experienced was a telecaster through a 100 watt Marshall stack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted July 9, 2016 Members Share Posted July 9, 2016 I find Marshall amps to be big, heavy and difficult to move around. I generally find them to be too loud but I would certainly not say that they "suck." In fact, I play a lot of variety shows, especially in the summer, and if a Marshall amp is provided for me, I will not complain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MASQUE Posted July 9, 2016 Members Share Posted July 9, 2016 You know....i can make any amp sound crappy. not to mention the studio it was recorded in, engineer preferences and what not. Do you like the sound you get? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted July 10, 2016 Members Share Posted July 10, 2016 You know....i can make any amp sound crappy. . . . What a coincidence. So can I. I can also make any guitar sound crappy. Must be a special talent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bluesmann Posted July 20, 2016 Members Share Posted July 20, 2016 I'll just keep quiet about tubes / valves V1 etc. I'm just someone cryin in the wilderness here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Russell H. Posted July 27, 2016 Members Share Posted July 27, 2016 Playing through an older (JCM-era and before) Marsh is pure bliss. I have a 1987 model from '72. Hand wired and all that with a reversable master volume done by Eric Bradley here in NY. He's one of the best techs around. This amp is such a joy to play and hear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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