Robert said:
I think I had a Studio 15 when I was 15. I can't quite remember, but I think so. I was young and dumb(er) and traded it away of course. :thwap:
Not that much of a loss, IMHO. I've owned two, briefly.
The first one I got on a trade back when I started guitar in the late 80s. The Studio 15 is set up to be like a plexi, not a lot of gain on tap. The amp has to be turned up to ear-bleeding levels to get nice crunchy OD. I was able to get nice OD in the store using an ESP shredder guitar with a humbucker and an active boost circuit. When I got it home, I couldn't get a decent OD sound with my relatively weak stock strat pickups. IIRC, the amp did not like pedals, either. I ended up taking it back.
Than back in the late 90s I bought another one from Elderly online, I heard the developing hype, and since I tried the first one when I was relatively inexperienced, I thought I might give the amp another chance. Unfortunately, it was just as I remembered it. So I ended up sending it back.
The amp has a weird hybrid fixed bias and cathode bias circuit. It also has a balanced DI output and a headphone out, both post OT. From what I understand, you can plug the speaker into the headphone out and crank the amp to get OD at lower volumes. I did not try this feature.
I believe Marshall only exported around 600 units to North America, so it is a relatively rare amp. Had Marshall made a 15W version of the 2204 circuit using 6V6s, they would have sold thousands of them, IMHO.
To my ears the new Marshall Haze 15W amp sounds much better, at least in the clip on Marshall's site.
tung
