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That British Thing...


LucSulla

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Let's talk about the "British Sound."

Is the British Sound pretty much just a phrase to use in order to not say Marshall all the time - seems pretty much no one uses it for Vox amps really - or (ride with me here) is there a particular sound that arose in Britain due to KT-88s and EL-34s simply being cheaper to use than their American counterparts, the 6550 and 6L6, that:

A.  Happened to be really great for the more aggressive tones starting to get used in rock
B.  Marshall just happened to accidentally pioneer due to being thrifty and subsequently became THE amp associated with THE sound. 

That was a very long sentence of questionable grammar, but you get my point.  

In that vein, I've owned a:

JCM 2000 TSL 60 (which everyone hated but I thought was a pretty great)
Mesa Mark V (swapped out the 6L6s immediately) 
JCM 800 2205 (diode schmiode - thing was bad ass)
Bogner Shiva (What JCM 800s sound like in my head but don't really sound like in person)
Mesa Royal Atlantic (So far, so good, so what....)

Obviously, the Mark V is a dicey inclusion, but It's supposed to kinda do that if you switch the tubes.  Honestly, the Mark III with the 2 6L6s and EL34 in simul-class does a better Marshall impersonation on the rhythm channel than the Mark V did.  But I digress. 

I think today, among most people, what we're really talking about with the Marshall sound are JMPs from the late 70s and JCM 800s with a good bit of Super Lead in there too.  But there were other great amps in the 70s as we all know.  My personal favorite lead tone from that decade is David Gilmour's "Time" solo, which is a fuzzface through a Hiwatt DR103.

Anyway, where this is all going is that I think ultimately those vert input JCM 800s always end up the reference point for modern amps going for this mythical "British Sound."  Maybe JMPs, but I really feel like it is always a JCM 800 2203 that gets named dropped when people review anything with an EL-34 power section.  But is that amp really what the standard should be for British tones, or is the British tone just nothing more than a way for people to say "JCM 800" without actually saying it?  For my money, all those amps, aside from the V, are definitely in the same family, but they don't all sound exactly like Marshall's, particularly an 800.  Two of them actually make the noise I want to hear out of an 800 better than an 800, IMO.  But I don't think that noise is an 800 specifically as much as that is the first place everyone goes when you mention it. 

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To me, the "British sound" is more of what one would associate with the early Bluesbreaker Marshall and the original Vox AC-30:  chimey, warm, and very noticeably mid-heavy.  Now, the "Marshall sound" is the tonally more aggressive and with the mildly dirty "clang" you get out of a Model 1987 or Model 1959 (or a Hiwatt). The "JMP" sound is the Marshall sound boosted to impart the more saturated and boingy upper mid-range character found in the 2203 and 2204.  What these all share in common (beyond the EL34 and EL84 platforms--the Bluesbreaker used KT66) is relatively moderate overdrive with lots of emphasis on mids and upper mids in the EQ spectrum. YMMV.

Examples of each that, IMHO, summarize their tonal identities:

 

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In modern gear parlance I think you're correct. Makers like Tech 21 and Egnater and Line6 never mean Vox when they say British.

I'm not sure exactly where that distinction comes from...  Like, was it already established but British sound meant Marshall before we had modelers?  I seem to remember Paul Reed Smith early amps had a British and American character switch that was meant to go from Marshall to Fender, but I was hardly up on all the gear in those days and I was grateful for the Peavey amp that I had.  :D

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Biz Prof nailed it,  it it is all up to interpretation as there are no hard and fast rules about what is “British” in reference to amps....especially since Marshall came out of Fender...but I digress...

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54 minutes ago, mrjamiam said:

But isn't that the core of it?  What the Marshall does that the Fender doesn't IS the British part.

That's the majority of it, I'd say.  The notched mids of the Fenders are absent in the Marshalls.  Curiously, the pre-notch Fenders, such as many of the tweeds, share this characteristic.

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58 minutes ago, Jakeboy said:

Biz Prof nailed it,  it it is all up to interpretation as there are no hard and fast rules about what is “British” in reference to amps....especially since Marshall came out of Fender...but I digress...

While it is true Marshall came out of trying to clone Fender, there were some differences that went deeper than just the tubes.  The JTM45 had KT66s instead of 6L6s, admittedly a small difference and a 12AX7 first in the preamp chain rather than a 12AY7, a plug and play difference, but Jim Marshall did make some changes to the circuit so that it runs backward to the way a Bassman runs, which he apparently did because he felt it made for a harmonically richer sound.  The transformers were different too along with a lot of the other parts.  Then there is Marshall's further drifting from beam tetrodes to pentode (KT88 and EL34) tubes that make a pretty big difference. 

I agree with @Biz Prof that the chimey, AC30 sounds are really far more distinct and have been fueling British rock for years. My favorite album from STP was Tiny Music precisely because how much Dean DeLeo's use of AC30s just sounded so different than all the other JCM900 and Dual Rec grunge stuff running around in 96. 

But I think @sixesandsevens brings up a great point.  Does the modern use of the term - the one that seems to exclude the most British of British tones - get kicked off when modelers hit the scene and needed a way to say Marshall without saying Marshall.  They usually say Vox without saying Vox by calling it "Class A" or similar.

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1 hour ago, LucSulla said:

While it is true Marshall came out of trying to clone Fender, there were some differences that went deeper than just the tubes.  The JTM45 had KT66s instead of 6L6s, admittedly a small difference and a 12AX7 first in the preamp chain rather than a 12AY7, a plug and play difference, but Jim Marshall did make some changes to the circuit so that it runs backward to the way a Bassman runs, which he apparently did because he felt it made for a harmonically richer sound.  The transformers were different too along with a lot of the other parts.  Then there is Marshall's further drifting from beam tetrodes to pentode (KT88 and EL34) tubes that make a pretty big difference. 

I agree with @Biz Prof that the chimey, AC30 sounds are really far more distinct and have been fueling British rock for years. My favorite album from STP was Tiny Music precisely because how much Dean DeLeo's use of AC30s just sounded so different than all the other JCM900 and Dual Rec grunge stuff running around in 96. 

But I think @sixesandsevens brings up a great point.  Does the modern use of the term - the one that seems to exclude the most British of British tones - get kicked off when modelers hit the scene and needed a way to say Marshall without saying Marshall.  They usually say Vox without saying Vox by calling it "Class A" or similar.

Yup to all.

and what do we call a Watkins Dominator that Marshall copied for the 18 watt 1974? Surely that is British. 

Fender suffers the same fate sometimes...most people, (the 5e3’s popularity notwithstanding)  are referring to Blackface Fenders when they speaking of “Fender tone” or American tone....yet my tweeds and especially my Brown 6g3 Deluxe sound more like Marshall’s than they do BF Fenders. My Blonde Bassman bass channel too, for that matter.

It can certainly get confusing.

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4 hours ago, LucSulla said:

when modelers hit the scene and needed a way to say Marshall without saying Marshall.  They usually say Vox without saying Vox by calling it "Class A" or similar.

Possibly for trademark/other legal reasons?

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2 hours ago, aknapp said:

Possibly for trademark/other legal reasons?

I've no doubt that is precisely why, but I think an unintended consequence is a generation of guitarist who started playing after the first Line 6 Pods came out probably think British = Marshall, and more specifically a 2203. 

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You know, I think it's also about the amp's tone stack.

I had a friend mod my Mesa Maverick's (4x EL84 power amp) dirt channel (some resistor change to kill the bass mud) and ever since this dude sounds pretty marshally and a bit voxy. Then, if I compare my Mesa Express 5:50 +'s lead channel (burn mode) with my Marshall's 2525H lead channel, it's night and day as far as the bass response is concerned - the 5:50 gets muddy pretty quick if I engage the bass control, while the Marshall stays tight and just gets that huge bottom. I don't know - maybe what Jim Marshall changed about the original Fender design (which Mesa also uses, of course) was the tone stack?

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On 12/11/2017 at 4:48 PM, dgstandard said:

I have Murkats old jmp.  What is this british sound?  I cant hear anything.

It has a British ACCENT.

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49 minutes ago, cmatthes said:

It has a British ACCENT.

...or that Victorian attitude to it.

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On 12/11/2017 at 12:29 PM, bubs_42 said:

..... Or American amps with British Speakers. 

I was gonna post something along the lines of...
when discussing american VS british; besides 6L6 VS EL34, I personally tend to think open back 1x12 jensen VS sealed 4x12 celestions

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After Saturdays Fun Fest of Speaker Swaps, Cabinet Swaps with different amps with different tubes it was enough to realize that it all matters and doesn't at the same time. Putting different speakers into the same cab in the same place with the same amp yielded differenced in volume, breakup and responsiveness. What it did not do was change that you were running Amp X into cabinet Y. Dramatic differences were hear when chaining cabinets, open back, closed back 2x12, 4x12, 1x12. IMHO if you have an amp you like you just need to find the right cabinet/speaker combination to compliment the amp and your ears. I do not care for closed back cabinets as much as I do open or ported. We had a semi open 4x12 that I though sounded very good, but the Dr Z 1x12 Combo Shell sounded the best out of everything with a G12H30 Anniversary. 

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37 minutes ago, bubs_42 said:

After Saturdays Fun Fest of Speaker Swaps, Cabinet Swaps with different amps with different tubes it was enough to realize that it all matters and doesn't at the same time. Putting different speakers into the same cab in the same place with the same amp yielded differenced in volume, breakup and responsiveness. What it did not do was change that you were running Amp X into cabinet Y. Dramatic differences were hear when chaining cabinets, open back, closed back 2x12, 4x12, 1x12. IMHO if you have an amp you like you just need to find the right cabinet/speaker combination to compliment the amp and your ears. I do not care for closed back cabinets as much as I do open or ported. We had a semi open 4x12 that I though sounded very good, but the Dr Z 1x12 Combo Shell sounded the best out of everything with a G12H30 Anniversary. 

Xs and Ys? Damn, I knew that algebra would come in handy one day!

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2 hours ago, django49 said:

Xs and Ys? Damn, I knew that algebra would come in handy one day!

What I was able to realize after all of that, was I am pretty damn happy with what I have. Which is a nice feeling. ;) I want to by another amp just to have something to go when I need something different. 

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