JCM 900 surprise

[richard]

Rehearsed last night. Usually I take my Cornford Roadhouse combo with me but last night I had to use the studio's backline. They have a lot of amps but there's always something in the room which you can change if you want. Last time I didn't take my own amp I used an Orange half stack which I hated.

Last night there was a JCM900 Dual Reverb half stack. I remember borrowing one of the dual MV 900 combos many years ago and finding it okay if rather unremarkable. I know that a lot of people consider the 900 Dual Reverb to be one of the worst amps Marshall produced.

Anyway - I had a go at the clean channel to see if I could get a usable crunch sound for rhythm. Horrible, dull, lifeless. So I switched to the lead channel with all EQ at noon, gain and master half way up, presence at zero. Ear splitting nasty treble. So I turned the treble all the way off. Better, but muddy. So I brought the presence up to 4pm. Now I was getting somewhere. Pushed the mid and bass up a little.

Now I'm getting an awesome crunch sound. My Firebird Studio with RYs sounded wonderful - absolutely nailed the classic rock crunch sound. Some lovely grit. As I've used up the lead channel for my rhythm sound I plugged in the old trusty Boss OD3 for a little more gain for solos. Excellent sound. The RYs sounded absolutely amazing through this set up. Cleaned up really well and the neck pick sounded wonderful too.

This amp really surprised me. It's way too toppy but with the treble off and the presence low it sounds incredible. I don't know if it was the 5881 or EL34 model. Didn't have my reading glasses so had the usual problem of being almost unable to see the settings. Marshall - please use chicken heads.

These amps usually go pretty cheap. Might try and pick on up if I get the chance as I need a back up.

[gwEm]

people often diss the JCM900 dual reverb.

i wouldn't say its my favourite amp, but i agree it sounds quite good. whenever i've needed to use one i've always been pleasantly surprised.

at the price i'd probably prefer a DSL50 if i was in the market for that sort of amp.

[richard]

I wouldn't mind spending some time with a DSL. I used one at a jam once and it sounded horrible but I didn't get much time to figure it out.

[Brow]

I wouldn't mind spending some time with a DSL. I used one at a jam once and it sounded horrible but I didn't get much time to figure it out.

I'm a fan of the DSL50s myself, I almost sold my JCM800 split channel for 1.

If you use them on the clean channel with the crunch mode on, they take OD pedals really well. Its how Gary Moore used his and I really liked his tone with a Bad Monkey as a boost with these amps.

[jpfamps]

The JCM900 certainly isn't my favourite amp, but is starting to look a bit of a bargain as they seem to be fetching between between £350-500 second hand.

The clean sound is passable on the 5881 version.

The build quality is much better than the DSL50 (we've not set the bar very high here).

All the pre-2005 DSL and TSLs have a problem with their PCBs that manifests itself in the amp over heating.

The remedy for this is a PCB change (not cheap), although there are some punters on the internet who have effected a repair by dremelling away substantial parts of the PCB!

If you are unlucky the over heating can take out one of the transformers.

Last one I repaired need a new mains transformer and PCB, and the bill was around £200 (it also needed new valves, but the customer had some spares which save £50 off the final total).

Even if you like the sound of the DSL/TSL (I don't and can't imagine why anyone would) I can't really recommend them in terms of build quality.

[Dmoney]

The split channel 800's are nice, but the trick is to forget the clean channel totally, and turn the overdrive channel volume up to 9 or 10, and then use the master volume to set the overall volume. MUCH better tone.

the DSL head is Marshall's biggest selling head I think. I'm not sure if I've played one or not now that I think about it. Had mates with them and TSL's. My friends with TSL 100watt heads had more issues than my mates with DSL's.

[richard]

I've never used a TSL and never been tempted to try one. When they first appeared I saw quite a few guys using them at my local pub and I thought that Marshall had reached an all time low in tone. They sounded solid state to me and not unlike an early model Peavey Bandit.

I saw the Marshall demo of the latest multi mode thing wotsitsname and thought it sounded even worse. I'm curious about the new DSL but from what I've heard they suffer the same excess top end as the 900. My Roadhouse gets great tones with bass, mid and treble all hovering around the noon mark which, to me, is how it should be. If I had the cash in hand I'd buy another of the few remaining RH combos because it looks like Cornford is dead.

[Dmoney]

you could always get someone to reverse it and build you a copy
not that much stuff inside it.

[BigB]

The JCM900 certainly isn't my favourite amp, but is starting to look a bit of a bargain as they seem to be fetching between between £350-500 second hand.

The clean sound is passable on the 5881 version.

The clean / crunch tone is more than passable on the EL34 version - at least with an open cab, and it sounds way better with the master volume set above 10 o'clock but that already way too loud. FWIW I just don't understand how some of you guys manage to use anything louder than a 20/30 watters ? :scratch:

[jpfamps]

you could always get someone to reverse it and build you a copy
not that much stuff inside it.

The construction details look suspiciously similar to Ornage amps.......

[JJretroTONEGOD]

I've never used a TSL and never been tempted to try one. When they first appeared I saw quite a few guys using them at my local pub and I thought that Marshall had reached an all time low in tone. They sounded solid state to me and not unlike an early model Peavey Bandit.

I saw the Marshall demo of the latest multi mode thing wotsitsname and thought it sounded even worse. I'm curious about the new DSL but from what I've heard they suffer the same excess top end as the 900. My Roadhouse gets great tones with bass, mid and treble all hovering around the noon mark which, to me, is how it should be. If I had the cash in hand I'd buy another of the few remaining RH combos because it looks like Cornford is dead.

whatever you do never get a TSL they are terrible amps, when I owned one I wanted it to set on fire and explode or blow up, the DSL JCM2000 amps were much better sounding.

[Dmoney]

The construction details look suspiciously similar to Ornage amps.......

That is something I thought too. Great minds think alike.

[richard]

Well they definitely don't SOUND like Orange amps. I used an Orange half stack recently and I was expecting to like it having read so many favourable comments but I thought it was terrible. The gain sounded more like a fuzz box to me. I used a Rocker 30 combo at a jam once and it was like playing through a packet of cornflakes, just a nasty little box. I don't understand combos where the speaker is crammed into the smallest possible enclosure. The RH combo has a huge open backed cab and it sounds big and three dimensional. Blues Juniors - they're just as bad as the little Orange amps.

[Dmoney]

The construction just looks a bit like a Tiny Terror, although the Tiny Terrors now have holes in the PCB placed strategically around the valves to help disperse heat. They both have ground planes on the PCB around the input jacks, they both have the filament wiring on push-on connectors and not as traces on the PCB. The roadhouse is more tidy.



Here is a Rocker 30. Also with a ground plane on the pcb around the input jack and the first couple of preamp stages. This looks like it has the heater voltage on the underside of the pcb but the valve orientation keeps the preamp components away from those traces while the addition of the ground plane might help reduce noise from the heater traces and possibly the high voltage by acting as a shield early in the preamp. It even looks like they use similar fonts and graphics on the silkscreen layer.



Nothing badly wrong with any of these amps. They are all pretty well laid out I think and designed to be easy to produce.

As for the tone, Orange isn't really for me either. I wouldn't say the small enclosure thing is typical with them though.

[richard]

Our singer's birthday last night. Some friends of ours played the bulk of the night but we used their gear to play half a dozen songs. So I got to use a Marshall SLX half stack. I decided to set it up pretty much how I did the 900 - take the treble and presence right down and bring a bit of it back to hit the sweet spot. Very different sounding amp to the 900, it seems to be aimed at guys that like a scoop in the mids which personally I don't. I was playing a bit louder than I usually do as it was a large pub.

Got an okay sound and went into our first song and the sound disappeared completely. It did not cut it in the mix at all mainly because of the weak mids. My mate Dave, owner of the amp, tweaked it while I was playing and got it sounding better but he also had to turn it up a lot more to get it to cut through. As far as I know the SLX is all tube whereas the 900 uses diodes in the gain circuit but I much preferred the sound of the 900. The 900 had much stronger mids and a lovely grainy quality to the overdrive that was absent in the SLX.

Still, it's fun to try different gear.