Marshall MA100C

Danny1969

So I just worked on a  Marshall MA100C amp for a customer and quite liked the amp so decided to gig it last night as a soak test. I had a Telecaster plugged straight into it and with the tone knobs at 12 o'clock it sounded like a typical Marshall. No where near as loud as it could be plenty loud enough. 
Looking at the reviews it seems to be quite disliked and you can actually buy one for less than £300 which seems pretty cheap for a 100 watt combo. 
So why aren't they more popular then ? ... as I'm thinking of buying one. 

Danny1969

Any thought on this @ICBM ; ?   Seems a lot of amp for the money and the layout seems easy enough to work on ... mind you I've been working on a Mesa Boogie for the last 4 hours and any layout would seem sane after that 

ICBM

Danny1969 said:

Any thought on this @ICBM ; ?   Seems a lot of amp for the money and the layout seems easy enough to work on ... mind you I've been working on a Mesa Boogie for the last 4 hours and any layout would seem sane after that 

I've worked on a couple of them, they didn't seem that bad - but that said, they have a poor reputation for reliability, so maybe I just haven't seen enough to come across any real horrors.

I have to say I thought they sounded very mediocre as well, kind of 'cartoon Marshall' without any of the depth and aggression of the real thing. I can't remember if they were better or worse than the Haze!

Ddigger

Never used or even seen one.

There is a 50w head on Gumtree at the moment for £160.

gubble

I had a 50 watt head version.

Clean sound was ok - and that's the only good thing I can say about it.

The drive channel did not sound good and it redplated a power valve on it's first gig.  

Sold it on the next day.

Put simply it looked like a Marshall, but didn't sound like one and I wouldn't trust one to get you through a gig.

Danny1969

I used the amp on the dirty channel for that last gig. Only set a medium amount of gain and basically used the volume of the guitar to clean up for the lighter stuff. To my ears it sounded pretty good and very much like a Marshall. 

All the Youtube videos of the amp I've watched are way too gained in my opinion to sound like a classic rock Marshall. I couldn't find any with a decent tone but I can get a great tone out of it just by setting everything at 12 o'clock. Gonna have another play in a minute to see if I was just imagining it.