My band has finally finished our album and now I am thinking that I will celebrate by shaking up my tone a little by treating myself to a new amp and I was thinking the Marshall JTM45 would be a good fit.
Currently i am using a 18 watt el84 5e3 2x10 combo and I think it sounds great, it's not leaving me but I was wanting a bit more volume and a touch less compression.
I have mulled over a few Marshall choices and the JTM45 seems like a good fit as I don't need the visceral power of the 1987x or 1959 slp.
Does anyone here use the JTM45 live? Is it too loud for pub and small club gigs? Can you use it to get break up in those type of venues? which type of cabs do you use with it?
Comments
If it is drive tones you are after go for inefficient speakers like greenbacks or G12M-65 Creamback, but 30w cranked is plenty loud, but not loads of clean headroom
I am building 2 now, one for shows and one for a fundraising raffle for a local charity
Theyre also not THAT loud. About ideal I'd say.
Takes pedals VERY well.
I suppose I do crank my 5e3 because after half way up it doesn't get louder just more compressed. I don't run it all the way up, normally at around 2 o'clock.
Which cabs would you suggest for this amp?
Do do you have any other suggestions of amps in this ballpark? My sound is pretty much right in the classic rock territory (late 60's early 70's) so fender need not apply.
I am sure others could suggest an alternative, there are lots of other builders who do variations of this amp, I know Martin at Stoneham does some nice variations.
For your genre this is a cracking amp, only thing you may want to do is get the bass tamed a little
Still a cracking amp, but it's unwieldy sometimes.
The JTM45 head had no FX loop, no reverb, and no master volume, so you had to really crank it to get it to overdrive which was a very nice throaty, harmonically rich open tone, and the clean tone was very musical - kind of chimey in a sort of Vox way. The only pedal I had in those days was a combined Vox fuzz-wah, so I don't know how it sounded with tubescreamers or other distortions etc as I didn't have anything else at that time (this would have been around 1976?).
I think I swapped it later on for another head (an Orange head I think) that was better suited for the rock band I was in as it had more distortion and more 'grunt'. Unfortunately in those days if I wanted another amp I had to swap or sell what I had as I had no money to buy more than one amp. I wish I could have kept them all - who knew they'd become vintage collectibles!
- European part substitutions
- a ECC83 (12AX7) in the first preamp (more gain)
- an additional bypass capacitor at the input to the second preamp
- three times more negative feedback voltage delivered to the phase inverter
[1] from The Fender Bassman 5F6A by RIchard KuehnelThere are also some power supply changes making the JTM45 sag a little more than the Bassman.
R.
Eqd Speaker Cranker clone
Monte Allums TR-2 Plus mod kit
Trading feedback: http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/60602/
What they excel at in that situation is they start to get into a lovely warm natural compression which works perfectly with a good overdrive pedal but still leaves you with a little headroom for boosts and modulation effects.
Unless you specifically have to have power valve mush as part of your core tone it's about the perfect general-purpose pub gigging amp IMO.
I guess my question would be what would I be getting extra for my money?
I would have suggested MJW build you one but that's not an option at the mo.
I'd seriously consider a Fender Bassbreaker 45.
It's described as a Bassman with EL34s which as I understand it makes it pretty much a JTM45. It's non MV, but it has power scaling so you should be able to get it into it's sweet spot for smaller gigs. I tried one at the guitar show and I was very impressed.
Louder than a Dual Rec.
No FX loop.
Brilliant with drive pedals.
https://speakerimpedance.co.uk/?act=two_parallel&page=calculator
Although mine has a pair of 6L6s not EL34s, I read somewhere recently that the first JTM45 prototype was 6L6 powered. However, because they were struggling to find a supply of 6L6s in the UK they modified the subsequent prototypes to use EL34s.