Fender Supersonic 22 vs Marshall DSL20CR

NelsonP

Which is better and why?

DannyP

Super Sonic 22 owner here.

I like it for a number of reasons, but I don't love it unconditionally.

It's clearly an attempt at a 'best of both worlds' amp - Fender cleans, but with a decent dirty channel with proper amounts of gain.

It definitely does the clean thing better, in my view. I play clean or stonesy most of the time so that's fine with me.

I enjoy the Burn channel at the lower portion of gain, but the high gain settings sound a bit thin unless really cranked, so I prefer pedals at polite volume.

A good thing is that "normal channel pushed with pedals", "fat channel pushed with pedals" and "Burn channel with gain turned down pushed with pedals" all give you different flavours. Rather than switching between these in a song or a set, I tend to go through 4 month phases of each approach! Good for when you want to change things around without the hastle of buying and selling an amp!

Pain in the arse things:

- The Vintage 30 speaker made my ears tired with that insistent mids thing. I swapped it for a warehouse G12C - muuuuuch better.

- It's noisy as hell. not too bad at gig volume, but signal to noise at bedroom volume can be annoying. It was worse in the loft conversion of my old house. Not sure why. I used to use a noise gate in the loop to combat the noise BUT the reverb is before the loop so the gate cuts off the tails. So you put a reverb pedal after the gate in the loop and start wondering why you put up with the bloody thing in the first place.......

I no longer use the noise gate in the loop. I swapped V4 for a 12AT7 which brings the noise down a bit. I can live with it.

So yeah, mixed feelings, but I have a lot affection for the thing.

If you like flavours of clean/break-up, it's a rewarding and sweet-sounding amp at gigging levels.

If you live in Angus to Slash territory, for god's sake save yourself the heartache and get the DSL!

monquixote

Depends what you want.

The Supersonic 22 is essentially a DRRI with a drive channel.

The DSL is much better at doing the Marshall thing.

So it depends if it's the clean or dirty thats more important to you.

I've had the SS22 and the DSL40 and I prefer the DSL.

gordiji

The SS has a beautiful clean channel with natural compression. The dirty channel can be a bit hairy (where it sounds best) or very hairy. Stock spkr is much better than a V.30. It's loud and sounds best at gigish vol. Apart from the noise issue i can't really fault it. I had the old DSL 40 a long time ago and would conclude for marshally tones get the marshall, for Fendery...

    

DannyP

gordiji said:

The SS has a beautiful clean channel with natural compression. The dirty channel can be a bit hairy (where it sounds best) or very hairy. Stock spkr is much better than a V.30. It's loud and sounds best at gigish vol. Apart from the noise issue i can't really fault it. I had the old DSL 40 a long time ago and would conclude for marshally tones get the marshall, for Fendery...

    

Vintage 30 was the stock speaker in these for quite a while. It was in mine. They ship with an Eminence Lightning Bolt now, but I've no experience of that speaker.

gordiji

DannyP said:

gordiji said:

The SS has a beautiful clean channel with natural compression. The dirty channel can be a bit hairy (where it sounds best) or very hairy. Stock spkr is much better than a V.30. It's loud and sounds best at gigish vol. Apart from the noise issue i can't really fault it. I had the old DSL 40 a long time ago and would conclude for marshally tones get the marshall, for Fendery...

    

Vintage 30 was the stock speaker in these for quite a while. It was in mine. They ship with an Eminence Lightning Bolt now, but I've no experience of that speaker.

Mine's got the lightening bolt but i did have a well worn in V30 in another combo to compare when the ss was new. The V30 somewhat spoiled the clean channel but may have had the edge on overdrive channel. The lightening bolt when softened up is imo the perfect speaker for this amp. I didn't know they shipped with v30's, i bought mine new about 4 yrs ago. It's my favourite fender amp i've owned having had a prosonic, evil twin & super 60.

PAL

Neither one is better than the other they are just different animals.

Lodious

I've had a couple of Supersonics and liked them. My experience was pretty much identical to what DannyP wrote above.  The noise floor was pretty high at lowish volumes, but the noise level is fine when loud or when using an attenuator. 

Good feature set and reasonable weight to carry.

I used clean channel more than the drive, but it was nice to have a option of a different voicing. The gain channel won’t don’t to Marshall style pushed tones as the top end doesn’t have enough bite. 

Never played a DSL, but I can’t help feeling that the answer to the question is as simple as “are after Fender or Marshall tones?”

monquixote

DannyP said:

gordiji said:

The SS has a beautiful clean channel with natural compression. The dirty channel can be a bit hairy (where it sounds best) or very hairy. Stock spkr is much better than a V.30. It's loud and sounds best at gigish vol. Apart from the noise issue i can't really fault it. I had the old DSL 40 a long time ago and would conclude for marshally tones get the marshall, for Fendery...

    

Vintage 30 was the stock speaker in these for quite a while. It was in mine. They ship with an Eminence Lightning Bolt now, but I've no experience of that speaker.

I think the lightning bolt was the standard speaker and the V30 was a limited edition.