Marshall Studio Series

[Disturber]

14 hours ago, Gino said:

What I know is that the power tubes are cathode biased on these - whatever that may tell the experts other than that no biasing is needed when you drop in a set of matched power tubes. On the Marshall forum it seems to be consesus that you can run different octal power tubes in the studio amps like 6L6s, 6V6s, KT 66s etc.

 

That is interesting. I'd like to hear the JMP version with 6V6's. 

[crunchee]

On 2/9/2021 at 1:54 PM, tbonesullivan said:

Still, the whole two EL34s running at 20 watts thing is a little strange. I would have thought they'd go for EL84s for that level of power, but I guess they wanted the EL34 sound. I wonder if they have them running triode or class A or something like that. I'm not that much of a techie but it seems that running 25 watt tubes at 10 each would run the bias cold, unless they are being biased at a higher dissipation than the amp is capable of??

 

On 2/9/2021 at 3:23 PM, Biz Prof said:

Had similar thoughts.  And my first reaction was, "Why didn't they use 6V6s?", as those seem to be able to cop a old Marshall vibe better than EL84s.

Methinks a shoot-out between these newer Marshalls and the 18 or 20 watt Marshall reissues (or their clones, there's a good number available used on Reverb now and then) might be in order.  I bought HFC member Fractal's handwired Mojotone 18-watt Marshall build that he did in head form several years ago, and it's still my favorite!  It has a pair of EL 84 tubes in cathode bias as well as the original-style tremolo feature.  I've also got a VHT 18-watt TMB (Treble, Middle, Bass) head, built and handwired by the new VHT company in California with Chinese parts, it has two cathode-biased EL 84s but no tremolo (that part of the amp is used by the TMB section), made after Fryette sold VHT.  I use 'em both, and I like 'em both, and right now I'm not looking for anything else.

[black magic]

I was eye balling those Studio 20 JCM 800`s as well. I really want a Marshall SLX 100 watt with EL34`s the most. They are like a 2203 with a 4th tube for another gain stage.

[BillW]

I played through one at a Music Go Round several months ago. It was the Plexi 20 head version (into an orange v30 2x12). I couldn't believe how good it sounded...like a slightly less woolly 1959, tbh dropping the output to the lowest took a little too much off the timbre, but at the top 2 settings - it was a plexi alright!