Marshall amp advice?

Question

I need a really good marshall amp combo. a cabinet that will take me from coffee shop jazz/blues to Hard rock in a sold out stadium. a cabinet that will get quiet enough to enjoy in small settings but when turned up will gett loud. LOUD. and i needa amp head that is crazy versitile. that will mesh well with pedal boards, that has a wide range of guitar effects all ready and that will take me from sweet and jazzy to nasty and grudged-out metal. also some light wouldn't hurt or i can put them up there myself it doesn't matter.

Answer 1

Wow... you're really asking for the sun, moon, and the stars all in one question!

No amp will do it all. You have to choose between an amp that will sound great belting it out super loud, or an amp that will sound good at lower volumes.

The reason is that there is always a sweet spot - with tube amps, for instance, the sweet spot is when the power tubes start saturating. What that means is that a 100w tube amp won't sound reeeeally good until you're using most of those 100 watts. Since you get most of your volume in the first 10 or 20 watts, that means that you have to crank that high-watt tube amp before it sounds really good. Trust me, I have one.

That's why guitar players are always turning their amps up too loud - 100w amps got popular in the 70's-80's, and it's been h**l ever since for soundmen. Loud is actually *bad*... if you start bleeding into other mics on stage the sound guy can't amplify those instruments without amplifying you... which takes away from the sound. If you've been to any show where this has happened, you know what I'm talking about.

With solid state amps, they usually sound better before they hit their clipping - below their wattage rating. So diming a 15w solid state amp in a vain attempt to be a little louder will only trash the sound (and possibly damage the power amp).

My honest recommendation is to get a lower watt amp... between 50 and 75 watts, and no more. This will give you an amp that will sound better at lower volumes, yet still have enough volume to fill a room, be heard over a drumset, etc. If you really end up concerned about volume, invest in some speakers with high sensitivity... even a few db difference in a rating makes a huge difference in volume.

Do you want a good quality amp that will work well with pedals, or do you want an amp that has a bunch of stuff built into it, some of which you may not want? The problem with the built-in effects is that often they aren't very good, unless you get a very high quality amp (a VHT combo, for instance, or a Line 6 Vetta).

Okay, as far as weight goes, tube amps are just about always heavier than solid state. Tubes are more finicky to maintain, you have to make sure to use the standby switch, and they don't sound nearly as good quiet as they do cranked. They also sound very good. You can also swap out tubes to change the sound of your amp... this is a cool thing to do. Talk to a tech before you do it, so you know if you have to get it rebiased or not.

Carvin makes a few tube amps that I've heard aren't very heavy, might want to check them out.

Solid state amps are usually far more dependable, lighter, no problems with impedance (did I mention that if you s***w up your impedance with a tube amp you can blow your tubes or damage your amp?), and always give a consistent sound. The drawback is that they usually don't have as good of a sound as a cranked tube amp. They sound better quieter, though, usually.

I like the Marshall MG series. A buddy of mine plays a 7-string Schecter with EMGs through it, and it sounds pretty frickin' wicked. The onboard effects are primitive, but it interfaces well with pedals.

My Mesa Boogie TremoVerb eats it for breakfast, can be louder, is far more versatile as far as tone, and is pretty sweet. It also cost three times (not counting maintenance or repairs!) what my buddy's MG cost him.

So, there you go.

Saul

Answer 2

The Marshall MG series are a good buy, they are not driven by Valves but have got valve preamps to give the warm tone to them, the MG50DFX, MG100DFX and the MG250DFX are good models, anything under the 50 watts rate sounds a little bad.