I've had this amp through 2 bands and about 8 years and have used it exclusively live and in the studio throughout that time.
First the specs, this is still in the Marshall product roster and is a 4 channel, 100 watt valve head. Each channel has 3 gain modes, green, orange and red to give you effectively 12 different gain configurations. In addition to this the amp sports individual EQ for each of the 4 channels, 2 switchable master volumes, a switchable parallel fx loop, a switchable reverb and a non-switchable serial loop between the power and preamp stages. Best of all these options are all controllable via midi making this amp remarkably flexible.
The Good
So to start with, the good. The amps flexibility is undoubtedly it's strongest point, the midi programability makes it pair extremely well with a multi-fx pedal which is how I use it (with a boss-GT10). Patches are easy to program, you simply setup the amp channel how you want it and then double tap the midi button on the front, the next patch change you make on the multi-fx will then become associated with the amp setting. I use this extensively having my fx on the boss-GT10 switch at the same time as the amp channels via one stomp.
You can use the muti-fx in a number of configurations and I have been through using 4CM in both the loops as well as using the unit just in front of the amp. The programmable loop even when set to 100% wet has a tiny amount of dry signal bleed, which made it awkward to use with the few patches where I run amp modelling (to get fenderish cleans) so I found 4CM worked best in the insert loop.
Since each channel has it's own volume I generally run the patches on the muti-fx at unity and use the per-channel volumes to balance the individual channels and the switchable master volume to provide solo boost. This makes setting up at gigs, quick, predicatbale and no fuss, I simply adjust the master volumes an presence per venue and tweak the distorted versus clean balance as required.
The Average
So I've spent a lot of time talking about switching and work flow and haven't mentioned the sounds yet. The sounds are serviceable but even with 12 different gain levels there is definitely a similar character to the distorted channels. I tend to care most about pure cleans with no breakup which I get out of clean orange (because clean green bypasses the per channel volume control and uses gain to control volume). I have in the past used the crunch channel as my main distortion channel boosted by a tubescreamer model but recently I've been rocking OD1 and OD2, which although a little noiser gives me more aggressive rhythm tones.
The sounds in here are all distinctly marshally and perfectly adequate, you can hear them on our EP and album but I would say they aren't top of class tones from a metal perspective.
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Comments
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