New old Musicman Amp Day with sound clips

richardhomer

I posted about this a couple of weeks ago when I needed advice on a replacement speaker.

Its an RD50 112 from the early 80s, in near mint condition. I’ve revalved it and fitted it with a Jensen Tornado neo speaker. It sounds decent at low volume in the house - but shows signs of being ‘very’ loud, if needed.

I gigged Musicman amps when I was in my first band, so there’s a degree of reliving my youth with this. For pure cleans, they’re amazing.

The clip was recorded on my phone - so quality isn’t amazing - and nether is the playing....

https://m.soundcloud.com/richard-homer/musicman-amp-demo

And driven:

https://m.soundcloud.com/richard-homer/musicman-amp-drive-sound

TheBigDipper

Despite all your caveats, it sounds great to me! 

polotska

I haven’t played through one in ages, but I used to use a 112 RD 50 when I was first learning guitar many years ago—it was one of my instructor’s amps. I thought it sounded fantastic, both clean and with a TS10.

ICBM

That sounds really excellent, especially the last bit from about 40" onwards.

Glad to have helped with the speaker choice, and I bet your back is too .

IvisonGuitars

Sounds great Richard, Great playing too!

jpfamps

Glad to have helped with the speaker choice, and I bet your back is too .

Probably not much.....

sweepy

Great amps indeed, I have my mates 100w 2x12 sat in my music room, insanely loud and heavy 

richardhomer

ICBM said:

That sounds really excellent, especially the last bit from about 40" onwards.

Glad to have helped with the speaker choice, and I bet your back is too .

Knocked out with the speaker - thanks again for the recommendation. The whole amp weighs 30lbs with the Jensen. That’s half what my LSS weighs! You get the sense that there’s limitless headroom - especially for an amp that’s so small.

BluesyDave

Sounds great.....A wonderful find.  Nice playing too.

richardhomer

BluesyDave said:

Sounds great.....A wonderful find.  Nice playing too.

Cheers Dave - the playing sounds a bit ropey to me - I’ve not played much over the summer. I need to put some work in!

oktorockto

Sounds great - I have one of these but not so keen on the dirty channel. What type of Jensen Tornado did you put in there? I see they have a few models. The neo speakers certainly lighten this combo up a good bit - I have a Celestion Neo Creamback in mine.

richardhomer

oktorockto said:

Sounds great - I have one of these but not so keen on the dirty channel. What type of Jensen Tornado did you put in there? I see they have a few models. The neo speakers certainly lighten this combo up a good bit - I have a Celestion Neo Creamback in mine.

They do two - one’s called the Jensen Tornado Stealth - which seems to have a cover over the magnet and the standard 100 watt Tornado. It’s the standard model in mine. The speaker is sounding better than when I recorded the clips - apparently Jensons take a while to break in.

The drive channel sounds really good now to my ears - not massively dirty - but I prefer it to the drive channel in my Mesa Lonestar Special - particularly with single coils.

ICBM

richardhomer said:

They do two - one’s called the Jensen Tornado Stealth - which seems to have a cover over the magnet and the standard 100 watt Tornado. It’s the standard model in mine. The speaker is sounding better than when I recorded the clips - apparently Jensons take a while to break in.

They do, although from just having heard a pair of new-out-of-the-box Tornados, less than their traditional speakers. These sounded really pretty good straight away, whereas the vintage models sound quite harsh initially.

There are now a couple of other Tornado models as well - although I haven't heard them in person, the clips on Jensen's website make them sound a bit more midrangy.

richardhomer said:

The drive channel sounds really good now to my ears - not massively dirty - but I prefer it to the drive channel in my Mesa Lonestar Special - particularly with single coils.

I can see that Mesa making an appearance in the Classifieds .

The MM RD overdrive channel is a bit of an acquired taste I think - although both of us probably acquired it by listening to the same sort of sounds in the 1970s - but what's really interesting is how unusual the circuit is. Like almost everything about MM amps, Leo went back to the drawing board and created something completely different from his - or anyone else's I know of - previous amps. The overdrive *is* done with the single 12AX7 valve, but in a really unusual circuit with an extremely high plate resistor value (4.7M) and a grounded cathode. (That may sound like Chinese to you, but trust me that it's pretty unique .)