Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Marshall: JCM800 1W (Part 1)

I've just received my Marshall JCM800 1W head some days ago, still in the discovery stage; it's a mere 1W, so I'm not expecting too much from it.

The control panel features a 3-band EQ, a booster switch & a pair of volume controls- Master/ Pre-amp. There isn't a channel switching button here so you effectively have to turn up the pre-amp in order to hear the drive coming through, more of it is achieved by activating the boost button. At lower pre-amp levels, the boost isn't apparent but adding more master volume would work things up. So we have, effectively, a trio of controls influencing one another in terms drive voicings, I took my time to know what works so it's not exhaustive.

Unlike its full-sized counterparts, this 1-watter sounds rather midrange/treble excessive, I had to trim them down, in fact, to minimum performance to hear accepable tones, otherwise, it sounds sharper than a hissing cobra.

Alright, enough feature highlights (I think)- tone highlights in next installment :-)

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