ejeliazkov's Reviews

you think the DSLs have the marshall character? I was in a band with a guy who had a DSL50 and we had a struggle getting her to sound marshally against my plexi. She just sounded generic and modern. Eventually he just abandoned having a clean sound, got an attenuator and ran the clean/classic gain channel for a nice mix of pre and poweramp grunt like a single channel 800, only not as good...

After all we cannot ignore the HUMAN Factor. You know that a Guitar in a stand doesnt make any sound - you put the sound in the guitar. It is the same with the amp - it is covering a variety of sounds and from that point on - it is in your hands and ears to make it sound the way you want it. Another thing we cannot ignore is that we can never compare 40watt combo with a 100watt head. They Both have different purposes and different destiny. With the combo the good part is that it is smaller, lighter, easier to carry, and it gives you an opportunity to play with a marshall sound in smaller clubs with not that big stage where you can put the 100watts Head with 4x12 Cabinet and more importantly - a place where you can afford to put the 100watt head volume on 12/1 o'clock where the real sound starts. I always preffer the 100watt head, but more than that - i prefer the tube amp with the volume set where the real sound starts, so depending on the circumstances - i use a different watt amp :) "Dont use a sword to kill a fly"

yeah I get all that, I always sound like me through anything though more like myself through an ac30 because it responds the way I am used to, blah blah blah.... but having owned TONS of Marshalls in every wattage from every era prior to the JCM2000 I can say that nothing short of a mesa rectifier (ugh) colored my individual touch more than a master volume Marshall circuit, 800, split channel 800, 900slx, 200, whatever.... there IS a Marshall sound that they try to adhere to and make available at any volume but my experience gigging with Mr rhythm-guitarist for years was that they kinda lost the script somewhere along the line... also, I didn't say if I was playing a 100 watter, plexis come in all sizes from 18 to 200 watts, but yes, my #1 was a superlead though when I used a JTM45 or 50 watt black flag on a few occasions it still un-manned that DSL head... when Mr rhythm,-guitarist used the DSL as intended with the classic gain as a clean or light OD and the ultragain for drive or lead it just wasn't happenin'... I used to love when the guy's DSL went down (all the time) and he would borrow our neighbors 900SLX (the only 900 w/o a ton of clipping diodes, just a gained up 2203)... I'm not ciriticizing you for loving your DSL, apart from reliability (which can be crap on the road, I have so many horror stories) they are well designed amps, just not terribly Marshally unless you really dig those few settings out of them that get back in the ballpark...

I pretty much always use 15 or 30 waters now that I don't play huge halls and if I need more stage volume I just bring more AC30s (this NEVER happens anymore), when the rooms got smaller even in that band I gauged down to a single HC30 for the small shows, usually in half power mode, then dude's DSL sounded really bad with the master rolled down to work in a small bar or college setting

I didn't mean to flame you or anything, it just gets me when people say things like "it has the Marshall sound".... well, it says Marshall on the front and it produces guitar sounds when you turn it on and plug a guitar in, maybe we all have different ideas about the Marshall sound, Marshall seems to be on the fence about it sometimes as they gain all their amps up to high heaven, but there's a certain marshall midrange magic that a lot of Marshalls have like 50 and 100 watt plexis, all the JMP amps, single channel 800s, the 900slx to a certain extent and even the little studio15 I briefly owned