Sensible Erection | R.I.P. Jim Marshall

Thursday, 5 April 2012

quote [ Marshall was a larger than life figure with a taste for single malt Scotch whiskey and Cuban Montecristo cigars. Even in his 70s, when he was already suffering from some serious health problems, he thought nothing of hopping a plane to catch an Iron Maiden concert. ]

[by Kat@6:30pmGMT] [+10 Informative]

Comments

KingPellinore said @ 6:36pm GMT on 5th Apr [Score:1 Underrated]
Thanks, Jim. You made my Fender P Bass sounds awesome in High School.

arrowhen said @ 7:10pm GMT on 5th Apr
I was just gonna post this.

DarkShadowRavenDragonGrrl69 said @ 7:17pm GMT on 5th Apr
Got to talk to (or at) him a few years ago. Though I was never a big fan of Marshall amps myself I'm still grateful for what he's done for music. R.I.P.

sanepride said @ 7:28pm GMT on 5th Apr [Score:4 Funny]
He's gone up to 11.

incpenners said @ 11:11pm GMT on 5th Apr
Apparently

- 30 -

comes after 11.

half said @ 8:47am GMT on 6th Apr
I own a 100 watts JCM900 bought in the 90's. the gain knob goes up to 20. \m/

moriati said @ 8:23pm GMT on 5th Apr
Bloody Hell Viv ... it's a Marshall.

joe_mannix said @ 10:30pm GMT on 5th Apr
Number two is Ferdinand Porsche, grandson of the founder of the company and designer of the original 911.

He was 76.

mechanical contrivance said @ 12:06am GMT on 6th Apr [Score:5 Funny]

Mr. Langosta said @ 1:21am GMT on 6th Apr
Dude you got back stage at a Façade concert!?

blibblob said @ 1:47am GMT on 6th Apr
Yeah, that's pretty common. Most people have difficulty realizing that a 100 watt amp is only 3db louder than a 50 watt amp and that a 10 watt amp is plenty fucking loud enough to power a decently sized venue. A dozen full stacks is excessively excessive overkill for even a massive festival...

arrowhen said @ 2:26am GMT on 6th Apr
A wall of these seems more practical.

arrowhen said @ 5:37am GMT on 6th Apr

mechanical contrivance said @ 3:01am GMT on 6th Apr
My friend's drums drown out my old 15 watt amp pretty easily.

blibblob said @ 4:45am GMT on 6th Apr
More speakers(or more efficient ones) and even order distortion and it can be louder. Loudness is a logarithmic scale, a 100 watt amp is twice as loud as a 10 watt amp and the first 100 watt amps were designed for arenas. Before that 30 watt or less was the norm, and old amps had significantly less efficient power supplies and speakers.
Higher wattage amps do sound better though, the speakers behave better.
Drums are also ear damagingly loud, mostly the cymbals since we're so sensitive to those higher frequencies.

I haven't smoked in a while and I've lost my train of thought here, but if you buy more than a 50 watt 2x12" and you don't have an absurdly soundproofed room or play huge places, you're being silly. Super silly. You'll never turn it more than a quarter of the way up.

arrowhen said @ 7:18am GMT on 6th Apr
...but if you buy more than a 50 watt 2x12" and you don't have an absurdly soundproofed room or play huge places, you're being silly. Super silly. You'll never turn it more than a quarter of the way up.

I'm assuming you mean more than a 50 watt tube amp, and you're absolutely right; those things are designed to sound their best when they're turned up loud and if you never get to do that, you're wasting most of the amp's capacity. If you're talking solid state amps, though, where you're shaping your tone with, and getting your distortion from, pedals or modelling devices and using the amp mostly for volume, higher wattage just means you'll have more volume available if you need to scale up for a larger venue, so there's really no reasons not to get as many watts as you a) can afford and b) feel like carrying around.

(Full disclosure: I am not, nor have I ever been, a gigging musician; I'm just a bedroom poseur who's had lots of friends in the business and spent way too much time on guitar forums.)

mechanical contrivance said @ 1:15pm GMT on 6th Apr
I have a solid state 120 watt 2x12 Peavey. I didn't buy it because it's 120 watts. I bought for the other features. I've never turned it up all the way and probably never will.

blibblob said @ 2:00pm GMT on 6th Apr
Even with solid state, your best sound will be approaching full volume. People tend to forget speaker involvement in distortion discussions. Although once people start bringing that up, the discussion quickly turns to "good enough."

Besides that note, I deny the existence of solid state amps. A couple people I've recorded have brought in Peavy 5150s and been like "this is MY sound." Until during setup when they noticed there's was a Triple Rectifier and asked to, you know, just fiddle, not for, like, serious purposes. 10 minutes later and there's a different amp on the album.

I do like emulation though, I just think there's too much going on in the physical realm for solid state circuitry to ever sound as good tube. They just behave too differently when pushed to distortion. Emulation-wise I like Amplitube the best, none of the other ones handle harmonics that well. I'd like to get an AxeFX system, but it seems silly to buy an emulator for the same price as a couple really nice tube amps.

mrcucumber said @ 2:11pm GMT on 6th Apr
How about one of these? Always wanted one, but were always too expensive.

blibblob said @ 3:01pm GMT on 6th Apr
The OR120 is my favorite amp ever made. I kick myself in the ass consistently and repeatedly for passing on a black tolex 70s one previously owned by Sleep and buying a Marshall JVM 410 instead. The Marshall was awesome but I ended up selling it. If I had the OR120 I would have rather sold the souls of my future children(hopefully Satan would be oblivious to the fact that I don't want any) then give it up.

But that was the difference between having one for studio work and one personally. Orange amps have a rather specific and dark tone, it's just my personal ideal since when I sit down to play guitar I play either blues or doom/stoner metal.

DarkShadowRavenDragonGrrl69 said @ 9:44pm GMT on 6th Apr
Ditto, fucking love the Orange sound. Especially playing my bass through their amps, both regular and bass-specific.

pleaides said @ 9:13am GMT on 6th Apr [Score:2]
I would my Marshall out all the way at an outdoor gig just north of Sydney about 5 years ago. I never thought I'd get anywhere near that and gee it was fun. We got noise complaints from 15 kilometres away :)

half said @ 12:45pm GMT on 6th Apr
where is the "+1 rock on!" when you need it ?

mrcucumber said @ 2:07pm GMT on 6th Apr
I live in an apartment in nYc. I would definitely crank up my fender twin (yes, tube amps need volume to maximize the sound), but amazingly never got any complaints. You'd think someone would have called the cops since my living room faced the back, where there were dozens of other buildings very nearby. I'm sure the sound bounced around.

I apologized to my landlady (who was in her late 80's, since died) and she responded with "I like guitar music." I now have a roland micro cube (which is awesome, btw. I has both marshall and fender modelers) while using headphones. I wish I could crank up the twin, though. There's nothing like real tubes and spring reverb.

pleaides said @ 12:24am GMT on 6th Apr
Makes me wish my amp wasn't in storage. It's a 1977 Master Lead 100w stack with the 10" celestions. Nothing else does justice to my Les Paul, but my Telecaster doesn't get along with it at all.

arrowhen said @ 12:44am GMT on 6th Apr
Never had enough money (or deaf enough neighbors!) for a Marshall. These days my "amplifier" is my computer, more often than not. But, while I dearly enjoy fucking around with 200+ virtual amp models, switching out effects, running different amp/cabinet model combos, etc., when it comes time to actually *play the guitar* instead of just fiddling with virtual gear, nine times out of ten it's a Marshall model I end up choosing (almost always the JCM800, to be exact). It is, to me, the definition of what rock guitar is "supposed to" sound like.

Nostrildamus said @ 4:10am GMT on 6th Apr [Score:1 Underrated]
.

mrcucumber said @ 3:49pm GMT on 6th Apr

RailRoader said @ 7:29am GMT on 7th Apr [Score:1 Interesting]
Everyone drink a beer for the man who has ruined our hearing and made our concert seats vibrate.