Marshall MA 100 head any good?

chrisjac2

Hi ya all,

Has anyone used one? A quick look on line and feed back is they are cheaply put together and the speakers in the 4x12 cab are awful? 
They are going on for about £300 these days are they really that bad?

MattBanshee

All the opinions I've read have suggested that they are indeed dogshit.

At current prices, you should be able to get a second hand JCM head and a decent second hand 4x12 for under £500, so I'd suggest looking in that direction instead.

HHwarner

I know they get a bit of a slating but the later DSL100H are pretty good sounding and reliable if it must be Marshall. Certainly way better than the MA series & the earlier troublesome DSL range. They are ridiculously cheap second hand and you should be able to score one for around £300. Another option would be Jet City or Laney Amps. I would recommend you avoid the MA. My other guitarist had one for a short while and it sounded horrible

ICBM

Avoid the MA. It was Marshall's first attempt at manufacturing a valve amp in Vietnam and they hadn't got it right. Poorly-made and sound average at best (being generous).

The current DSL series is the result of learning from all the mistakes they made, as well as the ones in the earlier UK DSL/TSL series, and are actually better than the UK ones.

chrisjac2

Thanks all ill give that one a wide birth!

gubble

I'll give you a review of the Marshall MA Head as someone who owned one.......................

Looks wise it's a Marshall and has some funky LED lights inside it the make things glow red (not the only thing that glows but we will get onto that later).

Clean - isn't half bad to be honest. Sounds ok but nothing spectacular.

Drive Channel - oh dear this is not good. It sounds terrible. Really bad. 

Reliability - I got the amp on the Wednesday and had a quick play around at home. Wasn't happy with the sound but i'd paid my money and made my choice so off I went to a gig on Saturday. Around 2/3 of the way into the first set the amp went really quiet so i turned round to have a look and was greeted with a blinding glow of a valve redplating itself. Didn't trust the amp and the rest of the gig used a line 6 pocket pod directly into the PA which sounded much better.

I moved it on the next day

So in summary I owned one for a week, it sounded rubbish, it broke down.

Avoid at all costs

Arjailer

I had an MA50 Combo for a few years - would not recommend.

First one died after 3 weeks - just no sound at all - had to be sent back to Germany (Thomann) which was a P.I.T.A. as I'd already disposed of the enormous box it came in. Replacement worked fine though until I eventually got rid of it a couple of years ago.

Clean sound was fine, but the dirty sound was very unsatisfying. I could never settle on it - some days it seemed to sound okay-ish, other days it sounded horribly harsh and fizzy. After a year or so I gave up and stopped using it and just used my Pod HD300 straight into the PA instead, which was fine for the band I was in then.

Eventually took a bath on it when I joined my current metal covers band and realised the Pod HD wasn't going to cut it anymore   

Used the money to help fund a Blackstar ID 100 TVP, which I'm still very happy with - lots of versatility and competes well with the other guitarists B* HT Club 50.