jimmarchi1's Reviews

zingy!

I think these JBLs were initially designed for home theater applications back in the 60s... don't hit them with too much power, they're not as tough as the ones that were beefed up for fender, however they have a similar sound. Great late-period American alnico sound for your fender or ampeg.

these are highly underrated

a very 80s, hard rock sounding speaker... the best of celestion's small magnet speakers, kinda greenbacky but brighter. Early breakup that's very hair-metal. Very low efficiency so you cna get a 30 to 50 watt amp to go into power amp saturation at somewhat reasonable volume. More natural sounding then an attenuator on more efficient speakers.

things sound better when they're freee

Does it sound like a Bogner? not really... the controls have a weird response, not unlike this guy's marhsall… but its still sounds kinda good once you can out think the weird response. I've never used this for guitar after I tested it out but its handy on synths and stuff to remove a little of the DI blandness. Like all this guy's stuff, if you want it to sound like a guitar amp you need a cab sim or some good cab IRs.

the msot inconsistent speaker line in celestion history

the V30 cuts a mix and can sound quite good in a loud 4 piece... more cannot be said of it. Its entire reputation is based on the original 80s models. Those Marshall branded 'vintage' speakers you find in some mid 80s amps and cabs sound really, really good. Celestion branded ones are a crap shoot. I don't think its just that the older ones are really broken in. Celestion messed with the formula like they always do and created yet another collectible speaker that sounds great but cannot be replicated. Thanks guys.

it came from beyonf the 70s!

I really warmed up to 'ugly' guitar shapes in my 30s. This guild S300 is the less common one with the lower output Guild HB1s rather than the 300D that ahs super distrtions. After a short flirtation via my washburns I decided I actually hate super distortions so if you prefer woody PAF-meets-fitlertron tones then keep your eyes peeled for the non-D version or be prepared to change pickups to something else if all you can find is a D version. Ironically the non-D S300 seems to sell for less, I dunno why. The guild buckers were always great pickups. This guitar has the best tailpiece ever. Sits between an SG and Explorer in weight. Nice chunky neck on mine but not SUPER fat... Has the 'fast' Guild nut width, so the string spacing is a bit tight like a late 60s Gibson. If you have fat fingers Guilds are not for you, but I like them. A real rocker.

great, utilitarian lvie box

combines all the DL4, M4 etc models into one little stomp that does one effect at a time. Most of the distortions leave me a bit flat and the wah/fitler stuff is hit or miss, but the modulation, delay, compression and reverb is pretty solid. I mainly use it for the modualtions since it models a lot of the iconic units I've owned or still own so I can approximate tones I record without brining a pile of old pedals around. Its got MIDI in and out so I'm a big fan of that. Iw as doing all MIDI for a while. I sue this less now that I've got my old AC30s gig worthy because I sue their old Vibrato in a wet/dry setup to produce a phase/chorus type sound and I'm kinda retiring the MIDI rig for now, going with less effects again. But when I wanna do a big MIDI setup this guy is indispensable. You could get a bigger unit and use multiple effects at ocne but frankly I'm not a reverb guy and I like my TC and Korg delays so I pretty much just use the modulations on this and how often do you really run 2 modulation effects in tandem? maybe phase and trem? but I can use my amp trem if I'm playing vintage voxes. This is the perfect little device for a less is more guy like me. Maybe not studio quality one very effect, but hella stage worthy! AND SMALL!

not bad

huge wattage handling and a big, clean, slightly scooped sound make this a real winner for spanky clean tone. This is like Celestion's EVM12L. More presence, but similar handling and spankiness. I like this guy in a 1x12 configuration for country type stuff.

not one of my favorites

A lot of 90s amrshall cabs came with these. I've owned ton. I was never a big fan, but they have a place in a rig that's got multiple 4x12s where you want a sizzly scooped sound from one cab and thena vintage cab sound from another running off the same marshall head... I keep a couple of these around.

a real winner

This is the best british speaker design of the 80s to my ear.... really smooths out the amplifiers of the day without losing all presence. Its been copied by many companies and reissued by celestion. Everyone should try one. Its the only large dustcap celestion I can think of too...

I've found a use for this bad boy

I've been mixing an album for a friend and tis a very clean digital recording of a stonesy, swampy rock n roll band... I've been using the clean blend on this to add little bits of 'gated; transistory dirt to my busses. the 2 different transistor simulations and all the voicing controls are great. in this role I definitely prefer the fuzz face side to the tonebender side although for DI guitar the tonebender sounds better to my ear. Its not the real thing though. These guys make great free distortion machines for when you wanna add some really specific kinda dirt sounds to a mix.

see my review here

my new favorite in coated strings... see my review here: https://equipboard.com/posts/elixir-optiweb-strings-review

the only preamp I can remember owning

put an alesis 3630, 3631 or any studio VCA unit with soft knee in the loop, set for mild grab and a huge make up gain boost and you will have the preamp sound of every dirty MCIS rhythm tone short of 'to forgive'. Do more grab and less makeup gain on a clean channel and you have the clean tones sans effects. You don't even need the mesa power amp, DI it and then throw an impulse of a stock 1960B cab powered by a tube power amp on it and that's that. Not a easy to cop the ZZ top live sounds though. This was supposed to approximate every Marshall tone you could think of but it se approximation of anything but the higher gain heads like the jubilee and the 900s. Not one of my favorite pieces of kit when I had it but I miss it now that its gone because it has its own sound. These have become quite expensive as of late.

a lower wattage, compact jazz head from Polytone

The baby brute head is relatively light for a traditional SS amp with ehat syncs and old style power transformers, its pretty loud at 4 ohms, less so at my preferred 16... it stays clean all the way up though... concentric knob for bass and mid and the treble knob doubles as a voicing control for the useless distortion circuit. Bright switch available but dark mode is more traditionally jazzy especially paired with JBL, EV or Fane speakers. Bright switch is good with an 80s chorus out front or in the loop for recording some very stout new-wave sounds through celestion speakers. FX loop is great, featuring a trim for send and return! Also features a mediocre headphone out and dual speaker outs in case you wanna drive 2 cabs. You mroe commonly see these in an 8" equipped combo, but I think this amp shines with 12 and 15 inch drivers.

I got this for free from my highschool around '97 or 8. No diea what eyar its from. It was not working at all and they said if I wanted to fix it I could have it (along with a quadraverb, some symmetrix modules and other assorted junk I found in the band room and stage crew closets). My friend helped me get her up and running but we never got the reverb working. Used a few times for jazz jams, but I usually prefer tube amps even for jazz. I like a Grant Green sound. I forgot I had this amp until recently. Still works except the verb. Sounds clean. Very low noise. Much better clean tone then other 70s and 80s SS amps. Capable of jazz tones but also some more rock n roll clean sounds that might surprise you. Love the little handle on the side. Small and cute. more hifi then my tiny quilter but that amp is meant to cover distorted rock and the polytone just added a dirt effect as ana fterthought like the JC120. Makes a great keyboard amp and a decent, if low powered, bass amp too. If your benchmark SS tones are all 80s soudns from Roland, Yamaha, Fender and Peavy then try a polytone. it schools them. I still prefer tubes 99% of the time but I don't think I will sell this ever. Its not worth a lot and you don't see many Poly heads, mainly the combos. The ehad is convenient. Stores in a drawer.

YES!

digitally controlled overdrive and distortion.... preset storage thanks to the digital encoders in place of pots... responds to MIDI program and CC changes! OD side is a TS9 circuit with a clean blend, very much sounds like a Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive. The Distortion side is a Rat like on the full Nova system but with a 2 band baxandall tonestack instead of just a modified rat single tone control. It sounds damned good and can easily be dialed in to match your amp's frequency response ina way a stock rat can't be. What makes this unit really special though is the way you can combine the TS and Rat sections. Of course you can go 'either or', TS into Rat or Rat into TS, but you can also use them in Parallel and this is how the vast majority of my stored patches use these 2 effects. You can blend in clean tone to create dirty boost effects where the rat and TS bits are only adding distortion in certai frequency ranges and then slam that into a tube amp on the edge of rebak up to accentuate its natural distortion character or fill it out... so amny options with this gadget. It can do 2 very fmailair sounds but it can also do a lot more by blending them. And when you have something you like you can just store it and never have to fiddle with the knobs again! Responds well to MIDI control as aprt of a larger system... any knob can be assigned to an expression pedal allowing for some pretty awesome effects like treble swells, volume swells or variable dirt from subtle to blitzkrieg all within the same phrase. Its such a shame TC discontinued this unit, tis a real gem of an analog/digital hybrid.

an excellent reverb in the fender style

traynor made a fine outboard spring reverb in the fender outboard style back in the 60s... very similar all tube design. A little noisy. Some people ont eh web have claimed that this is because its meant to run at line level in and out, low impedance studio levels, but I don't see any schematic evidence of that. it looks like a fender reverb to me. Its just a slightly noisier unit then a fender. Sounds great in the 'fx' loop of my traynor amp.

this is the world's weakest, most distorted PA... BUT

even in an era when people had hi-Z mics on unbalanced quarter inches and no stage monitoring for the signer this amp was an AWFUL design for a PA. Though its a loud and stout 50 watts it is not a very clean 50 watts. Mine is the 1st gen circuit from 68 or 69. It utilizes the not-so-hifi concertina phase inverter and has not-so-hifi grid leak bias V1 and V2, the 4 triode stages that serve as the 4 individual mic/line inputs. It has a hi Z effects loop after the 'master volume control'. Pretty much goes 4 channels with 1 stage each, individual volumes, master volume, send and return, then a driver stage for the 2 band EQ followed by a driver stage for the pahse inverter and then the pahse inverter driving the EL34 woer section. Solid state diode bridge rectification and a wide ranging presence control that's very british ind esign round out this amp. Awful PA design but if you made it a 1 channel it would look an awful lot like an Orange/Matamp. Scarily like it actually, just without the FAC control. For guitar this amp sounds like an early Orange ehad. Drive it into dirt and its just osntrous. The clean sound is complex and punchy. Hifi yet smokey. British but unmarhsally. Cops some hiwatty tones too due to the fast response of the wonderful old Hammond transformers which are WAY oversized.

I got this and I thought it would eb really hiwatty like the 4 input Pete Hiwatts due to some bad internet info but its more like a 4 input orange and that's okay. More than okay actually. These can be had for peanuts. They only made this circuit for a year before changing the EQ to be more fender than baxandall, switching to a fendery long tailed pair inverter and dropping the psot EQ recovery stage. With these changes it probably made a slightly better PA by the standards of the time and I'll bet it made a MUCH better bass amp (its secondary role) but probably is an anemic and wimpy guitar amp for rock n roll.

The original baxandall/james type tonestack is awesome by the way. there's like 1 perfect setting for each guitar. it took me awhile to get used to since its not quite an ampeg bax EQ and tis not precisely like a 2 band vox EQ either, total mutt that's highly interactive but not in a way that's immediately intuitive.... lots of control of the mid content from those 2 knobs though! the presence sounds the most rocking all the way up but good tones can be had throughout its range if you dial in enough trble.

If you want something like this look for a '69 or earlier. Talk to the guy about the transformer date codes and ask for gut shots and analyze them with the help of a tech if needed. Mine is a rock monster that conjures up powerful 70s muscle car tones, but YMMV. if you get the right one it will SLAY! I have JJ 34s in mine right now but at one point I had it biased up for JJ's very robust 6V6 and the sucker gave up the pwoeramp distortion like immediately and put out maybe 25 watts RMS .... great for recording but it didn't have the stout clean tone I like from this amp so I switched back to 34s. Came stock with either 6CA7s or those 7027A mil spec 6L6es that ampeg liked to sue. As those dried up in Canada where it was made traynor switched to the CA7es which are just a beam tretrode, USA made EL34 more or les.... basically the American KT77. With those tubes or a 6L6 the amp will have less midrange and more thumpy lows/glassy top. I think tis best with EL34s, though I might try 77s too sicne they're kinless and will deliver the mids. I generally find the 77s to be too clean though.

Interestingly there is an unused gainstage on V3... to use it without introducing nosie you would have to heavily modify the power supply making a separate line for that stage, but you couldalso run it off the same line as V3a with minimal supply noise as long as you weren't trying to make an over-the-top gain banger outta her, justa dd little more gain. All I did to mine was to disconnect the old amster volume and set it aside and then wire an Orange Overdrive model post phase ivnerter master in tis place with a dual ganged 1m pot hooked up between the 2 outputs from the splitter and the 2 output tubes. This is an effectice little control that's been utilized on long tailed inverter amps by matchless and more recently vox and its nice here though I typically leave the control wide open and dial in a loud, edge of breakup tone and then use a dirt box out front if iw ant more hair.

anyway, love this amp... hard rock beast and secret weapon

awesome but a bit noisey

if marhsall made a brownfaced bassman with british tubes and iron instead of making a tweed bassman that way ti woudla sounded like the selmer treble 'n bass model. A might british beast thatsplits the difference between plexi and fender with some hints of hiwatt to boot. Muscley clean and righteous EL34 grind. LOUD LOUD LOUD. Grounding is not superb, a problem common to many 60s brit amps. Nosiefloor isn't great but the whole amp likely needs to be gone over by a better tech than myself. love this guy. Its got a stout and manly sound. These can still be had for under $1kUSD if you're patient and don't care about good cosmetics.

how did this get here?!

I assume this is meant to be like a boss FA1. Its got a bax type 2 band EQ and some boosting power. Very bland to my ear. I forget why I bought this. It musta been to solve some specific stage rig problem but I cannot remember now. Might be handy to you and they're cheap. Nice build quality on these nobels boxes.

so shitty

my friend got tons of these at a yard sale new in the boxes and he gave me one of each... they're a joke. not pictured is the fuzz effect which is the real winner if you want to actually use one of these to make music. great curiosity pieces that can be had anywhere for whatever is in your wallet at the time. A wonderful example of what the Japanese knockoff companies were doing with all those early silicon semiconductors back in the day.

expensive even secondhand but...

drives an ac30 normal channel 'stone cold crazy'.... less output andmore internal dirt then fryer circuit but its an apples and apples comparison.