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Guitar talk: acoustic, bass, classical, twelve string? You name it!

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Alan -- Your Marshall is the one with the 10" Celestion speaker or the really little one with an 8" speaker? And does it give you a good clean sound?

If so then the other option might be some kind of preamp pedal with the amp set clean? There are *lots* of these pedals and they not only sound great but although not valves they are analog, give you all the touch sensitivity, respond well to the guitar controls, have really usable EQ ranges (not just only works between 4 and 9) and let your guitars and pickups all sound different and like they should.

E.g. something like this very versatile Xotic AC+ which is half price at Anderton's (it's been discontinued): https://www.andertons.co.uk/guitar-dept/guitar-pedals/boost-pedals/xotic-ac-plus-booster-pedal

Or one of the Caitlinbread foundation overdrive range such as the very popular Dirty Little Secret if you like the classic Marshall sound : https://www.catalinbread.com/index.php?category=all&product=dirty-little-secret

Just a suggestion. And I would stress that if you don't like the sound from your Marshall amp a good pedal won't fix it.
 
And if the pups are too hot, it may just give you more of what is not required? I love my LP with low output pickups and was chuffed to find I could get pukka ZZ Top tones with a mini tubescreamer.
 
It is the Marshall with the 10" Celestion speaker Matthew. Can be set reasonably clean with the Strat through it, but seems a bit limited in terms of range of sounds - (relatively) clean or with progressive / linear 'dirtiness' as you turn up the gain. Not much else in terms of variety/things to play with. I've an old original Big Muff from the 80s and a Wah-Wah pedal of the same vintage, but as you say, they change the tones but don't improve it much.

Am indeed tempted by the range of amps you and Steve have suggested.

One of the other options I considered a while back though after looking at a Reverb Vox vs. Marshall vs Fender comparison vid was the Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. There seems to be a plethora of them in the local classifieds. 500-600 euro aint exactly cheap, but if they hold their price reasonably well, the actual ownership cost might be fairly low.

https://www.adverts.ie/guitar-amps/...cover-just-serviced-footswitch-cable/16504293

(Apart from the Godawful hue, the red Texas special one looks a decent proposition perhaps)
 
FWIW, and I’m likely showing my prejudices here, I very much associate Marshall with a specific ‘hard rock’ sound (that I don’t like), and if that isn’t your goal I would suspect you have the wrong amp. I say this as someone at the polar opposite mindset, e.g. my ideal amp is something like a Fender Princeton or the Rift I link to upthread somewhere (clean with a great spring reverb and ideally a great trem too). I prefer to add any grunge with pedals and I don’t want anything more than a very slight valve fatness/compression from the amp. I’m actually pretty much convinced I’d be perfectly happy with a solid state Roland Blues Cube or Mark Jazz!
 
My taste generally aligns with Tony here, the Princeton or Rift (18w) sort of tone is a target. However, not all Marshall’s are gain monsters, think of Paul Kossoff. They do tend to be less sparkly and with thicker mids than Fender though.
I think we all have target tones in mind, sadly, to get them all we might need as many amps as guitars!
 
Steve Taylor said:
My taste generally aligns with Tony here, the Princeton or Rift (18w) sort of tone is a target. However, not all Marshall’s are gain monsters, think of Paul Kossoff. They do tend to be less sparkly and with thicker mids than Fender though.
I think we all have target tones in mind, sadly, to get them all we might need as many amps as guitars!
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Even my Friedman has a glorious clean channel...
 
Yeah - I think if you have that sparkly sound, its much easier to dirty up the mid range, than it is to try to get the right clean tones from something that doesn't.

Was googling some of the amps suggested earlier this morning there. Came across a review of the Blues Cube by Don Felder. Bit of a sponsored review I suspect.. but one of the points he makes is that ideally you want an amp with as wide a variety of tones and textures as possible. Probably moreso when you're still on the hunt for the perfect tone. With that - and with one eye on reliability re older s/h tube amps - some of the more modern SS / digital modelling jobs might be a better bet for the developing noodler.
 
-alan- said:
Was googling some of the amps suggested earlier this morning there. Came across a review of the Blues Cube by Don Felder. Bit of a sponsored review I suspect.. but one of the points he makes is that ideally you want an amp with as wide a variety of tones and textures as possible. Probably moreso when you're still on the hunt for the perfect tone. With that - and with one eye on reliability re older s/h tube amps - some of the more modern SS / digital modelling jobs might be a better bet for the developing noodler.
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FWIW this screams Katana to me. Which is a great choice and probably the best option for the likes of you and I absent of any other strong requirement.
 
That’s a good point. Despite being a truly crap guitar player I think I’ve been doing it long enough now to know exactly the sound I want and I just have my little Roland set up to sound as close to a Princeton with reverb as I can possibly get it (which Ironically isn’t its ‘Black Face’ setting!) and haven’t touched it for years. I do everything else with my handful of pedals.

PS Dream rig: the 6 Watt Rift PR6 (would have to think about 10” vs 12” speaker), vintage Roland RE501 Chorus Echo (or a 201 and a Boss CE-2), Boss BD-2, either a Fuzz Face or Big Muff, and my Yam SC1200.
 
Careful with the 6w Rift, I’ve not heard it in the flesh but Anderton’s said it was “fizzy “ with drive pedals and it certainly seemed that way on their vlog.
 
Mine would be the Milkman 5W half pint which sort of the US version of the PR6 would have to think about speaker options (greenback, jupiter alnico or alnico blue). Would be interesting to compare to the Rift, although of course in the UK the Rift is much cheaper.

https://milkmansound.com/collections/amplifiers/products/5w

Effects would involve every single take on the boutique low to mid overdrive / boost as I can't get enough of these and the endless possibilities of picking a couple to stack and twiddlnig away to get the best tone you can. Currently I am playing Xotic AC Comp into a Tumnus which is just epic in that small boutique amp sort of way and am still desperately trying to convince myself that I do not in fact need a Greer Lightspeed in my life...
 
matthewr said:
Effects would involve every single take on the boutique low to mid overdrive / boost as I can't get enough of these and the endless possibilities of picking a couple to stack and twiddlnig away to get the best tone you can. Currently I am playing Xotic AC Comp into a Tumnus which is just epic in that small boutique amp sort of way and am still desperately trying to convince myself that I do not in fact need a Greer Lightspeed in my life...
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I'm a big fan of the Lovedrive...
 
Steve Taylor said:
Careful with the 6w Rift, I’ve not heard it in the flesh but Anderton’s said it was “fizzy “ with drive pedals and it certainly seemed that way on their vlog.
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I got the impression they were caning it at that point and that it would be fine at any level I’d ever want. To be honest I suspect I use pedals wrongly anyway as I tend to not add volume with them, i.e. I get a straight amp sound I like that is clean with some reverb and sounds great with my guitar vol and tone both set to about 7/10 and maybe fattening up a bit if wind the guitar up full. I then set the pedals (currently Boss FZ-5, BD-2 and DD-7) to add the colour I want without adding any additional level so I can still click them out for the clean sound. This always ends up with the pedal’s level knobs set fairly low, around ‘quarter to’.
 
I used to have a Marshall Lead 12 non reverb version of the Reverb 12 a long time ago. It wasn't great to be honest - a very basic solidstate practice amp. I love Marshalls BTW I never really used it much. These days pretty much anything is better. I think you need to try some out at the very least to compare. I am sure the Tokai will thank you for it :) I certainly wouldn't be thinking of swapping pickups at this stage.
 
I do exactly that as well Tony, although I sometimes run the Blackstar with enough gain to get getting some significant tone from the valves with pedals. The Fender I always run clean with as much headroom as possible in Blackface mode.

Although is there not a very good argument that if you are not pushing your preamp over the edge into overdrive and distortion with pedals and having the power amp do the sag and compression thing there's not really that much difference between an awful lot of amps? (Other than speakers the big EQ differences between Fender / Marshall / Vox etc).
 
I actually ordered the Nobels once only for Anderton's to have sold the last one and I managed to come to my senses and cancel it before the restock.

I also just realised I don't know what a Lovedrive is (other than a Scorpion album) and took it to mean the Lovepedal Tchula that Josh Smith and Kirk Fletcher use, which is possibly what you meant?
 
matthewr said:
I actually ordered the Nobels once only for Anderton's to have sold the last one and I managed to come to my senses and cancel it before the restock.

I also just realised I don't know what a Lovedrive is (other than a Scorpion album) and took it to mean the Lovepedal Tchula that Josh Smith and Kirk Fletcher use, which is possibly what you meant?
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Sorry I meant the Lovepedal Zendrive. There's the new mini version of the ODR-1 which looks good, not heard it though - yes the Tchula looks very interesting ;)
 
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