The Marshall JCM 800 has grown onto one of the most desireable Marshall amps. It’s a little funny beause at one time guitarists did not really care for the master volume marshall amps.

The 2203 is the 100w version. The 50w is the 2204.

The JCM 800 was a direct descendant of the JMP series of amplifiers. In the picture below notice the horizontal jacks. Earlier 800’s had vertical jacks. There were some very minor circuit changes when they switched to horizontal jacks. Many consider the vertical jack model more desireable.

I saw Extreme last night at Toads’s Place in New Haven. They were fantastic and at the top of their game. It was great to see them in such an intimate setting.

I took a few pics of Nuno’s amps setting on his new Randall signature series amp.

Also Nuno was using a Boss GT-8 primarily for effects and volume boost. Next to the GT-8 is a Boss OC-3 Octave pedal. I really didn’t notice if he kicked on the octave pedal.

Overall his tone was great. He had two heads on stage but one was a backup.

Vox has entered the low power tube amp market with the introduction of the Night Train. The amp features two 12AX7 preamp tubes and two EL84 power tubes which deliver 15 watts of power. The amp is switchable to deliver 7.5 watts in trio mode.

The preamp is pretty cool and has Treble, Middle and Bass control along with a switchable Bright and Thick mode. I haven’t seen a schematic but I imagine the bright and thick modes are accomplished by modifying the stock tone stack.

The amp is pretty nice looking and Vox has a matching 1-12 cabinet with a custom VOX Celestion ‘greenback’ speaker.

I haven’t had the chance to hear one in person. Vox has posted some excellent clips on their web site.

This is a pretty review on Youtube.

Overall I kind of dig how this amp sounds. To me it seems to have that Vox vibe (duh) and can get pretty snarly too.

The Bugera line of amps have been out for a while now. I wrote a little overview of the 6262 here. I went to my local Sam Ash and luckily they had a 333xl head in stock. The head was connected to a Bugera 4×12 cabinet.

I’ll start out by saying that the clean channel is what impressed me most about this amp. I started out on the clean channel just to dial in some volume levels and I didn’t expect to spend any time on the clean channel. But to my surprise the clean channnel sounded really great. It was about as clean as a tube amp could get with lots of headroom. It is a very dynamic channel that was a lot of fun to play with.

My next stop was the crunch channel. At the lower settings you can get a classic rock crunch tone like AC/DC. As you increase the gain you move more into an 80’s metal gain. The built in reverb sounds really nice.

The tone controls are active and very responsive. You can really hear a difference just by moving the tone controls a little bit. The lead and crunch channels have an “XL” button. I think it’s Bugeras attempt at a loudness control to make the amp sound fuller at lower volumes. I can’t say I heard that much of a difference with it in or out. I will say that this amp sounds perfectly fine at bedroom volumes though unlike a lot of other tube amps.

Another cool feature of this amp is a noise gate. It works well and the model I tried was pretty quite even with the noise gate turned off.

I really enjoyed the crunch channel and I would probably spend most of my time on it.

My next stop was the lead channel and it has more gain on tap than even I knew what to do with. Let’s just say it is teh br00talz.

Overall I am really impressed by this amp. The clean channel is excellent and the crunch and lead channels deliver in spades. I don’t think I would gig with it if I was a working musician due to an unproven reliability track record. However it is a no brainer for the home musician.

The Marshall Lead 100 Mosfet model 3210 amp was produced in the mid to late 80’s. It was one of Marshall earliest solid state amplifies and predates the Valvestate and MG series of solid state amplifiers.

A mosfet is a type of solid state transistor. Mosfet is an acronym for
Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor

The lead 100 mosfet is loosely associated with the JCM 800 line of tube amps. The physical size of the head is a little smaller than a JCM 800. There are two channels that share a common EQ. The amp has an reverb and effects loop. There is an optional two button footswitch for boost or reverb. Without the footswitch plugged in you can actually combine the clean and gain channels for some different tones.

The voicing is similar to a JCM 800. It’s not a modern high gain amp and delivers more of a crunch tone. The amp is quite capable to pull off classic rock tones such as AC/DC and Aerosmith and early Def Leppard. To get more modern distortion tones or a real singing lead a boost is required. The clean is not totally clean and has some grit to it.

Like most older Marshall the tone controls are basically useless. The treble has the most effect on the tone. The mids and bass are much more subtle. Thanks in part to the limited tone controls it’s hard to dial in a bad tone. There seems to be a high pass filter which limits the bass response compared to some modern amps.

Another thing I really like about the amp is that it is a great head to run a POD or floor processor through. All you have to do is plug the modeler into the effect return and you bypass the preamp and go straight into the power amp. The bass response is totally happening when bypassing the preamp in this manner.

In the picture below my head is sitting on top of a MG412A cabinet. I know a lot of people knock the MG cabs but this setup sounds pretty good to my ears.

Overall this amp is a steal for the price. They sell all day on ebay for about $200-$225. It can get classic Marshall tones on a budget and it looks cools as hell. Thanks to the effect return you can also plug a modeler into this head which really adds to the versatility.