- 8 minutes ago
Richard Barrett demos Marshall's new Reissue Series of overdrive pedals based on the most popular amps from its history, including the Model 1959 Super Lead, the JCM 800, JCM 900, DSL and JVM. In doing so it aims to beat copyists at their own game - but how do these intriguingly featured pedals stack up tonally? Guitarist reviewer Richard Barrett attempts to dial in several decades of classic tones to find out.
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00:00Hi this is Richard Barrett for Guitarist Magazine and I'm here today with five new Marshall pedals.
00:05Each one of them is based on a classic amp from their lineup and they go in chronological order
00:11from the 1959 Plexi through to the JCM 800, the 900, the DSL and then finally the JVM which is
00:20the
00:20ultimate development of the high gain really. So I've plugged into a clean Fender amp as a base
00:27and we're going to use these as what they're supposed to be a Marshall in a box. Moving as I
00:33said chronologically through the range I've started here with the 1959 Plexi. I'm going to put my readers
00:39on so that I can read the knobs properly and as you can see we have the volume and tone
00:45that's common
00:46to all of these and as a nod to the control lineup on the Plexi it's got a high treble
00:53sensitivity and
00:54normal so that's bright and normal. Let's hear the bass tone that I'm using it's a clean tone
01:06so to my tired old ears that represents a fairly flat clean sound to be working with.
01:12Now if I click this on I've preset kind of sounds on each of these that I think are a
01:17good starting
01:18point it would have been easy to go in with everything facing up but I don't know that
01:22that's the best way to do this because every rig has its own idiosyncrasies and going into the Fender combo
01:29this is what sounded the best to me so I'll start that again without with
01:44so there's what I've decided to start with I should emphasize that the fine adjustment on these
01:51controls really gives you quite a range of sounds a really small amount can make a big difference
01:57so the overall characteristic of this pedal is that slightly loose bottom end especially on the normal
02:04channel and you bring the high treble in and that gives you some definition I'll make a few more
02:10sounds then I'll talk some more
02:18to get more of a focus I'm going to bring the high treble up
02:22and as you're about to hear that can get a little bit sharp
02:29that's a little bit snarly for my taste so I'm going to bring the tone down and change the voicing
02:33of
02:33the pedal
02:41so you can see these are very versatile you can get a lot from a little adjustment
02:53what about if I try this the other way bring the high treble down the normal up this will probably
02:59be quite boomy so in anticipation of that I'm bringing the tone up to just over halfway let's see
03:05what we get it's much louder so I'm going to bring that back down
03:20so there's a lot more bottom and top it's almost a bit scooped there I would be interested
03:26to run this like a 1959 super lead and maybe run a tube screamer into it or something like that
03:32I think that that would give quite an authentic result and the volume the way that I've got these
03:38set the volume seems to be defaulting about six between six and eight on these let's try a little
03:44bit of the sort of straight up see what we get
03:58right right I might see if I can get a bit of a clapton thing happening here
04:23and maybe just to finish off with here let's try a really slight like a bass tone I mean that
04:32b-a-s-e
04:33rather than bass guitar if I go for something that's as close as possible to that clean
04:40well that's off that's not very helpful
04:47like I say really fine adjustment
05:00there is a pedal maker that makes these drive pedals and calls them a foundation drive so
05:07sometimes especially if you're running a super clean rig and you know you want some super clean
05:11sounds but you also want something like this
05:20then that could be an excellent starting point for adding further boosts or drives to stack on top of
05:26it so that's a little overview of the 1959 Plexi let's move on next up I've got the JCM 800
05:34so
05:34what I've done here is I've set up the kind of sound that I feel that people who are going
05:39to buy a pedal
05:40that says JCM 800 on it the kind of tone that they'd be looking for so glasses on let's have
05:46a reminder of the clean tone
05:50and then let's have a look at what I've set up
06:03what I've done here is I've set the sensitivity high now that control represents the low and high inputs
06:12on the original amp but rather than just plugging into the low or the high you can actually dial it
06:18so I've gone for high input 100% so why don't I start perhaps by demonstrating the sweep of that
06:25as you can see I've got the gain set a little bit lower uh here it's below halfway and that
06:32seems to give
06:32a chunkier sound none of these really get that super bright sound with the gain down
06:39but this does tighten up a bit on the low end
06:44you'll see that I've got the tone set quite low I switched between the clean and the distorted sound
06:49to get what I felt was about right and this will go extremely bright actually this one
06:54so let's take that sensitivity down to half
07:00it's not a different world but it is different and then down
07:05and then off
07:08that represents the low gain input and I think you'd need to absolutely max the volume on that to get
07:13parity gain
07:19I mean my preference personally is
07:27then if we get that gain up a little bit now that's going to fatten things up too
07:45let's get it up all the way and see what we get
07:57that gives a nice thickness on the single notes especially in the high register though you will
08:02notice that it loosens up a bit
08:05at the bottom which is what a real Marshall head would do
08:10let's let's hear it with a bit more tone on it I personally find this bright but let's hear it
08:19I'm bearing in mind that what I find too bright might be exactly what someone else is looking for
08:33that's annoying
08:41so let's just check out the
08:51so that's where I'm coming from with this pedal I think if you a bead it with a real JCM
08:57800 then
08:58you're bound to hear some differences but I think if you're plugged into a clean amp which I should
09:02mention is a fender blues deluxe then I'm thinking that's a very credible representation of that type
09:11of sound here we have the JCM 900 then that's the next in the series now this has also got
09:17the four knob
09:18line up and it's got the tone and the volume like all the others have but what we have in
09:24terms of
09:25controls here is we have the gain obviously and we have a contour button now if I'm wrong about this
09:32then somebody please drop in the comment and put me right on which model of the JCM 900 had a
09:37contour
09:38control because I don't remember one but it is nevertheless a very useful control that gives you
09:45a kind of broad boost of the mids or a broad scoop depending which way you have it now I'll
09:51do another
09:52reminder of the basic tone and then we'll hear what I've set up as a default sound on the pedal
10:09you can hear that it's got a bit of that high-end I always call it snark that you get
10:14with the JCM 900
10:15I can probably tune that out
10:17and it gets a little bit more round but the JCM 900 tends it is what it is if you
10:28see what I mean
10:28and I think it's good to work with it so you'll see I've got the contour maxed now that's with
10:33the mids
10:33set high
10:39if I take that down to halfway I don't want to talk and play at the same time because it
10:44makes it very
10:44hard to listen to these videos so
10:49there's the smiley face EQ if we had a graphic EQ
11:00and let's go extreme and go down to zero
11:07I can hear the booming bass and the sharp treble there which might be what you want depends on
11:13the way you've got your amp set up and what rig so halfway I suppose is flat
11:21but I just was happier hearing
11:28your experience may vary so let's have a listen to what happens if we bring the gain up a bit
11:33I've gone down to around about the three mark because doing E A and D and looking to chunk things
11:41up a little bit that works better but if I come up to halfway we start to get quite dirty
11:56you can still get some chunk out of it but you have to be careful and then if I bring
12:00it up to say eight
12:06I'm thinking bring the master volume down a little bit to compensate
12:19what happens if I come down a bit there on that contour
12:29I think it's a bit sweeter with the mids in but that's a lead sound as opposed to a rhythm
12:43there's no shortage of gain there and I'll say again what I said earlier is that these are supposed
12:49to sound like the amp and in the real world using the amp I generally found that I'd set a
12:56rhythm
12:56sound and then I'd set a boost going into the front maybe a tube screamer or a super overdrive
13:02tended to be my preference because it was slightly less honky on the mids but that represents
13:09a JCM 900 type tone for sure now something that I didn't do with the last pedal that I'm going
13:15to
13:15do with this one is zero the gain max the volume and you'll see that like an amp
13:25I mean it's a bit low on the volume there to be honest with that but that will give you
13:32a sound
13:33might be useful for recording
13:41not really designed for running the gain on zero to be honest
13:51so with things straight up we start to get that quite sharp sound that I do associate
13:56rightly or wrongly with the JCM 900 as I say the contour isn't something I remember from the line
14:01up I thought they were bass middle treble presence and gain but what the contour does is it is a
14:06nod
14:06towards giving you that EQ control as well as the tone so it is quite a versatile pedal there are
14:12probably a lot of sounds in this that I haven't managed to show you but that's the 900 moving
14:18forward to the tail end of the 90s about 97 I think we've got the DSL dual super lead they
14:24were the JCM
14:252000s now they were a split channel amp so you had a green channel and a red channel the red
14:33channel quite
14:34famously would get quite bright with the gain set lower and get really full and fruity as as the
14:41gain went up the green channel would keep the base as you go down it didn't seem to have a
14:47bright cap so
14:48I actually had one of these at the time and I had the bright cap snipped on the red channel
14:53I think it
14:53was called the C12 mod that's what this pedal reminds me of it does actually remind me very much of
15:00that
15:00particular amp so I'm going to do the same thing I've done with all the others and that is put
15:06my glasses on
15:08give you a reminder of the clean tone and then we'll have a listen to the default that I've set
15:12up
15:25now something that the DSL did have was a button for the deep switch it also had a mid cut
15:31button
15:31though this pedal doesn't have that so I had set the deep we have a rotary control for that here
15:39so the
15:40deep is continuously variable now going from the clean sound to the distorted sound I'd say I think
15:47I might have left the deep control a little bit low so I'm going to turn that up to almost
15:51halfway
15:55and compare with clean
16:02split the difference
16:06to my mind you can get all kinds of special effecty things almost like if I max that deep
16:12control it really will boom I can't bear to hear too much of that in the room it makes my
16:19head vibrate
16:21so I hope that will be enough for you and then I'll zero it
16:27so I mean that's thinned out the bass end
16:34maybe a little bit actually I think perhaps I was right after all with the deep set about two
16:41getting tones can drive you mad can't it but this tone control
16:44I'd set it at about three and a half let's try dropping it a bit from there
16:53a bit more volume
16:58I suppose without realizing it I'm showing you the process that
17:02you go through to choose your sounds with these pedals
17:10as you can see the gain is down at about two there might be a little bit more gain than
17:15there was on
17:15the original heads actually though you can zero that
17:20again you end up with a bit of a gain drop that's hard to make up with the volume
17:25I don't think that's a design fault I just think that's how the amps were
17:29and I think that if you get a dsl pedal then you're not really looking for it to do the
17:34job of a boss
17:35blues driver for instance so let's take that back up to where it was
17:44it's a very satisfying sound to play there's the right amount of mids there
17:48let's take that gain up to about eight which is going to be extreme
18:18it makes that kind of plane come out
18:21how you would hope to hear it well I would hope to hear it so I'm going to take things
18:25back down to about halfway and then I'm going to just show you a little bit about the tone
18:32control really in the range of sounds with that
18:36I've set it to what I think
18:42is roughly kind of parity so the guitar doesn't suddenly get really bright or really boomy
18:47but if I bring that up to halfway I think we're going to hear quite a lot of brightness
19:00sort of treble high mid it's a shelf really going from about I don't know about 3k perhaps
19:14I'm careful about that kind of eq-ing because sometimes
19:18you get what I've read about as an eq hangover nothing sounds good to you because you've just
19:23gone to so many extremes so just giving all of our ears a moment to settle let's have another
19:36so it's starting to get that real modern rock sound to it it's very focused
19:41I think that you could use this without a boost pedal though I think it would also sound really
19:45good with one if you wanted to do a kind of mini rig pedal board with this functioning as the
19:51amp
19:52so I think that hopefully will give you an idea of what you're getting if you buy the DSL pedal
19:58finally we have the JVM which represents the most recent amp from Marshall's line
20:04now from memory the JVM was a four channel beast and I've got a feeling there was a version with
20:10an
20:10integral noise gate though perhaps somebody will be able to correct me in the comments if that's not
20:16the case now we have a lineup of four controls again now what fooled me at first puts glasses on
20:24is that the volume is at the other end opposite end to the gain with volume tone overall kind of
20:30high
20:30shelf and the gate which is off at the moment and I've put the gain about halfway so I'm going
20:38to recap
20:39the clean tone and then click this on
20:59I couldn't resist doing something a bit chunky there because there is a kind of tuned bass boost
21:04I don't know whether that is actually a fact it feels like there is
21:11it's got that thud that you might expect to hear from a 4x12 cab
21:15it is a Marshall in a box after all so let's compare again
21:26I mean there's a slight lift in volume when I put the pedal on because I've set it that way
21:31I often find
21:32that in isolation dirty tones need to be a little bit louder than clean tones because otherwise the
21:39opposite happens when you're in a band mix the dirty tones tend to disappear it can make sound
21:45technicians nervous but that's just the way of the world and I guess they'll have to get used to it
21:50again here is set about halfway let's try reducing that and seeing what we get
22:01so I think you can get quite a retro ac dc
22:10tone up this is the least bright of all of them actually though I don't mind that personally there's
22:16plenty available at the top
22:20already backing it off that was enough of that
22:27I still haven't used the gate but we'll get there in a minute so let's just go a little bit
22:31higher here
22:32I don't know if you can hear there but in the room I'm hearing some hiss
22:53my habit with tones like that is to roll the volume off immediately because at any serious volume
22:58you're going to get problems you might not though if you bring in this gate so let's see
23:08it's a good gate
23:17well you don't want it set too heavy I mean you might as a special effect we'll go there in
23:22a minute
23:22but I'm thinking
23:32that's a little bit extreme I'm going to back the gain off and put the gate on about halfway and
23:37I'm
23:37just going to see uh doing that kind of time honored thing of using the guitar's volume control to control
23:44the gain let's see how useful it is
24:10I mean you can't expect miracles at some point though the gate will close and if you go too quiet
24:17then it's not going to work but this does a really good job of surfing that line
24:23I mean if I zero the volume there's no hiss there's nothing
24:29I mean that's dirty
24:33that's enough relief
24:44and you can come down to about halfway or three
24:54so you can sort of hear the gate wanting to kick in there
24:56though I reckon with a fine adjustment that could work very well
25:00um let me see uh let's go for absolutely maxed out gain and absolutely maxed out gate
25:26I'm going to take that off for a minute just to show you what the gate's doing
25:30I think there's one one aspect of it
25:42a little bit flabby as you would expect so with the gate on we're doing a bit more of a
25:47dime bag vibe
25:59so it does actually give you some of that sound all right you know I'm not really a metal player
26:04but that will show you the the sort of vibe there but moving back to a more conservative setting
26:10I might just show you the tone control
26:20all right good to know it's there
26:25good to know that's there too but really the sweet spot to my ears with this rig and this guitar
26:36is just a little crack over five I think
26:44a little bit more
26:45if you want to get a little bit more
26:47I mean these aren't emgs and I'm going for that whole zac thing
26:59so um my feeling is that whatever kind of gain sounds you want one of these is going to get
27:07you there
27:08uh they're really heavily built they're designed to be slapped around on pedal boards
27:16nice clear indication of when they're on or off I mean you'll hear the difference probably but we all
27:21know what being on stage with bad monitoring is like so it's nice to have the reassurance of knowing
27:25that it's most definitely on or off um
27:30i think that as with any new amp
27:33there's a period of getting to know it and knowing exactly where the sweet spots are for you on the
27:39controls
27:41and
27:42i'm pretty sure that marshall are going to have a lot of success with these i think they're really good
27:47so i hope that this has been helpful to you and see you another time
27:51you
27:51you
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