deeaa
Well-known member
Well, I got a change to play with the amp for over an hour today.
When I first booted it up and started dialing in a clean sound, man I was disappointed at first. Cleans sounded really papery, thin and buzzy.
And finally I ended up using over 30 minutes just on the clean channel, trying to get it sounding not very brittle and top buzzy. I did manage to dial in quite a nice sound, but, seriously, it's still a far cry from the Ceriatone's warm, lush and deep sound.
The clean(ish) sounds I get from the clean green are now quite british-feeling, quite bright perhaps too, but rather usable and OK. I can't get a very clean clean sound out of it other than using so thin a tone it starts to sound more like an acoustic guitar than an electric...but it's a Marshall and I don't really need very clean sounds anyway. If you like sparkling, pure sounds like on metal picking and such, those are easy to get, but a thicker, warmer and crunchier clean was very hard to get. Now it is good, but the highest strings do sound kind of dead and too metallic to me still, almost like they touched the frets a little too much is the best I can describe. Clean green mode and on single coils it's rather clean but if I hit a chord on bridge pup, it's Back In Black level AC/DC almost. But I would have expected a 100W amp to be able to yield a thicker yet clean sound nicely. Will have to do some more tests but I doubt it does that, anything 'Fendery' or EL84 type thick clean sound.
The crunch channel proved pretty much as hard to get a good sound out of. A very bright modern AC/DC is a given, but dialing in any depth and warmth seems hard. I did manage to get a pretty good sound finally by really digging deep into EQ, but it is nothing extraordinary. I think I will be able to get a very good driven rhythm sound out of the green mode, if I can get it a little punchier&warmer still without adding buzz.
OD1 channel was much better, then. In green mode, I could immediately dial in a helluva lead tone that wails very well - again more on the cold side than warm, but great definition and sustain, very easy to play with notes just jumping out like only a classic Marshall does, and screams and feedbacks beautifully, superb sustainand no noise whatsoever. Gain has to be like only halfway up for a good sound. Amber and red versions of the channel only add too much saturated buzz to it, and on those you need to almost cut off gain and still it gets noisey.
Od2, well, very hard to find uses for that channel for me. Green mode and gain almost off it is still way more drive than you need for, say, Metallica etc, and any more or the other modes, it just becomes a thick singing but not too clean a buzz I don't know for what I'd use. Waaaayyyyy too much drive for anything really, IMO.
But to sum it all up, on the plus side I did manage to get a very nice variation of sounds, and I really really like the lead tone I get from OD1 green.
I could not find a single thing where I'd have liked amber and red modes though...on all channels, they just add an extra layer of buzziness to the sounds, and it seems to me I'll likely only be using green modes and the first three channels with masters high and gains low and also EQ's drastically cut to give it some warmth.
Overall the amp is a bit too bright and not very deep sounding at all - but the built-in reverb helps battle it some. I think it will prove to yield good sounds for recording and band playing though, and I'm happy so far!
When I first booted it up and started dialing in a clean sound, man I was disappointed at first. Cleans sounded really papery, thin and buzzy.
And finally I ended up using over 30 minutes just on the clean channel, trying to get it sounding not very brittle and top buzzy. I did manage to dial in quite a nice sound, but, seriously, it's still a far cry from the Ceriatone's warm, lush and deep sound.
The clean(ish) sounds I get from the clean green are now quite british-feeling, quite bright perhaps too, but rather usable and OK. I can't get a very clean clean sound out of it other than using so thin a tone it starts to sound more like an acoustic guitar than an electric...but it's a Marshall and I don't really need very clean sounds anyway. If you like sparkling, pure sounds like on metal picking and such, those are easy to get, but a thicker, warmer and crunchier clean was very hard to get. Now it is good, but the highest strings do sound kind of dead and too metallic to me still, almost like they touched the frets a little too much is the best I can describe. Clean green mode and on single coils it's rather clean but if I hit a chord on bridge pup, it's Back In Black level AC/DC almost. But I would have expected a 100W amp to be able to yield a thicker yet clean sound nicely. Will have to do some more tests but I doubt it does that, anything 'Fendery' or EL84 type thick clean sound.
The crunch channel proved pretty much as hard to get a good sound out of. A very bright modern AC/DC is a given, but dialing in any depth and warmth seems hard. I did manage to get a pretty good sound finally by really digging deep into EQ, but it is nothing extraordinary. I think I will be able to get a very good driven rhythm sound out of the green mode, if I can get it a little punchier&warmer still without adding buzz.
OD1 channel was much better, then. In green mode, I could immediately dial in a helluva lead tone that wails very well - again more on the cold side than warm, but great definition and sustain, very easy to play with notes just jumping out like only a classic Marshall does, and screams and feedbacks beautifully, superb sustainand no noise whatsoever. Gain has to be like only halfway up for a good sound. Amber and red versions of the channel only add too much saturated buzz to it, and on those you need to almost cut off gain and still it gets noisey.
Od2, well, very hard to find uses for that channel for me. Green mode and gain almost off it is still way more drive than you need for, say, Metallica etc, and any more or the other modes, it just becomes a thick singing but not too clean a buzz I don't know for what I'd use. Waaaayyyyy too much drive for anything really, IMO.
But to sum it all up, on the plus side I did manage to get a very nice variation of sounds, and I really really like the lead tone I get from OD1 green.
I could not find a single thing where I'd have liked amber and red modes though...on all channels, they just add an extra layer of buzziness to the sounds, and it seems to me I'll likely only be using green modes and the first three channels with masters high and gains low and also EQ's drastically cut to give it some warmth.
Overall the amp is a bit too bright and not very deep sounding at all - but the built-in reverb helps battle it some. I think it will prove to yield good sounds for recording and band playing though, and I'm happy so far!
