So, after 4 months of extensive use I can now give you my final verdict on the JCM 2000 DSL 100.
I love this amp, it has opened up a whole new world of different sounds for me, but it has it's quirks so I'm gonna give you a honest rundown.
I'd say let's start with the positive things:
+ This amp has a multitude of sounds to deliver, from beautiful and sparkly cleans over crunchy overdrive all the way to saturated high gain, it's in there. I feel like I have finally all the tonal ground covered I'll ever need and if I ever start gigging again I know I can pull off all the sounds any particular songs may require.
+ Cleans up very well, you can basically have the crunch channel engaged with the gain dimed: a few turns of your volume knob
and you're back in clean territory.
+ Takes pedals well, especially overdrives. Tightens the amp up and brings you some nice grit, wether it's on the crunch or on the lead channel.
+ Touch responsive, you can really dig in to make those notes stand out.
+ Built in reverb is actually pretty nice.
List of negative things:
- Shared EQ - it's a little bit hard to shape both channels to complement each other, you basically have to choose the one you'll be using most of the time and compromise on the other one. I'm sure that's easy fixable with an additional EQ pedal though.
- When in high gain mode you wanna stay in OD1 for riffing, but the gain is only usable up to 6-7, everything higher than that turns your tone to mush. OD2 mode: way too oversaturated and only usable for compressed leads, no rhythm sounds to be found here.
- No possibility to footswitch between clean/crunch and OD1/OD2.
- No resonance pot, by pushing in the deep knob the bass thump becomes overkill (I know they fixed this on the newer DSL 100).
- The FX loop: I don't know wether it's the whole series or if specifically my amp has this problem: without the effects loop engaged you have less gain on tap. As soon as you have a pedal in there the sound becomes more saturated but at the same time it sends you to fizz city. Only noticed this on lower volumes so far, as with every Marshall it gets better the more you turn it up. Still, me no likey.
- Tone shift is useless imho, it cuts out your mids and those are the frequencies where this amp shines. A mid shift sort of thing would have been better imho.
- Reverb makes notes suddenly jump at you when master is set high and you switch channels.
So there you have it. My pros and cons I have found with this very first Marshall I own. It has it's strengths just as it has it's weaknesses, but I'm satisfied with it. It's a good ampflifier and usable for everything up to 80's Hard Rock and Thrash metal, so if you ever need an amp that can cover lots of ground and you have the chance to grab one cheap, the DSL is a great choice.
Hope this helps someone out there, cheers
