So, about a week ago, I received through LazyNinja's lovely Marshall Class 5 combo, and have put it though it's paces at work when i've had a spare moment in the evenings. I must point out that I was never in the market for a new amp, but this combo is something i've wanted to try out for a while, and if I didn't like it, a mate of mine would take it off my hands for the price I paid-- so there was nothing to lose for me.
I've so far tried the amp with 3 guitars; Gibbo LP, Epiphone Slash LP, and an Epiphone SG, so all the same flavour-- not had a chance to grab some single coils yet.
I'll give a very brief outline of the amp for those not familiar with it: It's a 5W all-valve 1x10 combo. Very simplistic, with the only controls being Volume, Treble, Mid and Bass. Extension cab output (16ohm), as well as a headphone out (with dummy loading) for night-time rocking.
When I first plugged in the amp, turning it up to 3, it was clean, and reasonably loud. With the bridge pickup, the treble and mid controls were not too responsive, but the bass was. Neck pickup was a lot fuller sounding, but the bass had to be turned down a fair bit. With the volume at 5, playing dynamics brought the amp to life more-- digging in would give a bark, but rolling back down would clean it up nicely again, although the sound was quite dark. At max volume, the amp was very loud-- way too loud for regular bedroom playing. The treble and mid sounded best all the way up, but the problem was with the bass. For a small combo with a 10" speaker, the bass was tremendous-- at anything above 4, it was way too much, and completely overpowered the amp. The gain on tap is very surprising-- would cover everything except the extreme end of the metal spectrum! The amp as a combo I didn't find particularly flexible, and it really didn't sound like a Marshall to me; 'dark sounding with overpowering bass' is something i'd never think to describe a Marshall as.
However, when plugged into a 4x12, this amp becomes spectacular-- loud enough to cope with a drummer (not too hard hitting, though!), and the amp sounds so much more Marshall-y... the bass still has to be quite low, at about 3 or 4 (with the rest of the controls at 10), but when rolling the guitar volume back, you can get a wonderful Plexi thing going on. Roll the volume up, there's Sabbath right there, and at full, it can be the dirtiest, most satisfying of tones. Put the bass on 10, and you've got a 2 piece band, no need for a bass guitar here! The darkness that was present in the combo is gone, and the controls are a lot more responsive, even though they just sound best at 10.
As a combo on it's own, I feel that the stock Marshall branded Celestion 10" is a let down, and i'm very interested in swapping the speaker out to see if it brightens the amp up. The combo would get a 6/10 i'd think, and when it's plugged into a cab, it'd be pushing the 9 mark. The overall criticisms i'd say are: Too loud for proper home use (we all know that valve amps sound best when cranked, but this 5W really is too loud for home), and when using it in combo mode, there are a lot of vibrations of the chassis and the valve retainer. I understand that Marshall have made attempts to cure the rattling, but in this amp it's not worked.
I've not had a chance to plug any pedals into it, but i'll report back when I have.
I don't think that my mate will be buying this one off of me, it sounds too great!
