ShortScale.org

I've been eyeing this amp down for some time, played it a couple times at GC and really liked the sound of it. To me, it seemed to have a lot of tonal versatility for a Marshall. Beautiful cleans ranging from vintage sounding Marshalls to JCM 800's. The gain drives on it sounded fantastic to me. You can play anything from blues, classic rock, hard rock to metal on its own gain. And it made my fuzz pedals sounds orgasmic compared to fenders; I think the extra midrange, high headroom, and heavy low end helps that out tremendously for the fuzz. This blew away my other combos, so I decided to sell them off and buy this. And today is the day I did.


I've heard mixed reviews online but overall I am overwhelmed with happiness because it feels like I finally found an amp I actually really love. I literally couldn't stop playing with it for hours. It has a lot of great features to help shape its tone to your desire. Had to play some Hendrix stuff and Pumpkins stuff on it and with this amp after you tweak some with the eq and other features can nail their sounds almost pitch perfect.

Also, this pedal is tons of fun.

It does come with an amp pedal board switcher for reverb and the Super lead channel gain. But I would rather switch the reverb for the clean crunch gain or tone shift knob.
Only complaint/recommendation.

Congrats! It seems like a fun amp
What does this Lo-Fi pedal do? Is it a fuzz?

sunshiner wrote:Congrats! It seems like a fun amp
What does this Lo-Fi pedal do? Is it a fuzz?

Thanks, dude!
It can be a compressor when the middle knob (comp/lo-fi knob) is set all the way counter-clockwise. In the noon position, it turns into a chorus pedal with a three-way toggle switch at the top right-hand corner with three different wave sounds (sine, triangle, and square) which when adjusted the speed and depth can turn it from chorus into a pulsating vibrato. And when you lower it completely down to the lo-fi position it begins to sound like a vintage stereo, which is what I like most about it. Throw in a very wet reverb that colors your tone a bit or other modulation pedals like pitch shifters and it creates a lot of unique cool tunes coming from a guitar. Very similar sounds to Boards of Canada but coming from your guitar and amp with this pedal. All around a really versatile fun pedal to play with.

[youtube][/youtube]
He gives a really good demonstration of some of the pedal's capabilities but mostly focuses on the Lo-Fi mode.
P.S. If you check out what he does at 8:50 in the video you'll see why I say boards of Canada.

Nice! I'm a big fan of the DSL series, have owned a DSL50 for 15 years, still my favourite clean-ish amp for pedals (might be Stockholm Syndrome, not sure).

I'd be interested to see how these newer combos size up; I know the original ones had problems with heat dissipation, fucking up tube sockets etc. Hopefully they'll sussed it all out now!

Corsair wrote: Thanks, dude!
It can be a compressor when the middle knob (comp/lo-fi knob) is set all the way counter-clockwise. In the noon position, it turns into a chorus pedal with a three-way toggle switch at the top right-hand corner with three different wave sounds (sine, triangle, and square) which when adjusted the speed and depth can turn it from chorus into a pulsating vibrato. And when you lower it completely down to the lo-fi position it begins to sound like a vintage stereo, which is what I like most about it. Throw in a very wet reverb that colors your tone a bit or other modulation pedals like pitch shifters and it creates a lot of unique cool tunes coming from a guitar. Very similar sounds to Boards of Canada but coming from your guitar and amp with this pedal. All around a really versatile fun pedal to play with.

► Show Spoiler

[youtube][/youtube]

He gives a really good demonstration of some of the pedal's capabilities but mostly focuses on the Lo-Fi mode.
P.S. If you check out what he does at 8:50 in the video you'll see why I say boards of Canada.

Nice demo and it is crazy how many different sounds modern pedals can offer in one package

Doog wrote:Nice! I'm a big fan of the DSL series, have owned a DSL50 for 15 years, still my favourite clean-ish amp for pedals (might be Stockholm Syndrome, not sure).

I'd be interested to see how these newer combos size up; I know the original ones had problems with heat dissipation, fucking up tube sockets etc. Hopefully they'll sussed it all out now!

Thanks, Doog!
I can totally see why you would say that, one the biggest things that sold me was how much of a drastic difference my fuzz pedals sounded compared to my other amps, as well as distortion. Felt like it brought new life to my big muff and its clones like they finally sounded the way I've truly always wanted them to sound like. A roaring fuzz with a punch from the mids and boom from the bottom end. I've played it through various fenders and other great "clean" sounding amps and while it would get close, felt like there was something always missing. And this combo has tons of headroom and bass which don't flap or fart out like my other amps did.
Plus I find the cleans on this amp to sound fantastic. Love how I can get that cherub rock clean sound from my strat and it sounds 100% spot on. Or tweak around the settings a tad and get more Hendrix sounding clean.

I think they finally resolved all those problems, at least from what I've read those seem to be the least of your worries.
Although I could be wrong. But mine does have a pretty big open back.

sunshiner wrote:

Corsair wrote: Thanks, dude!
It can be a compressor when the middle knob (comp/lo-fi knob) is set all the way counter-clockwise. In the noon position, it turns into a chorus pedal with a three-way toggle switch at the top right-hand corner with three different wave sounds (sine, triangle, and square) which when adjusted the speed and depth can turn it from chorus into a pulsating vibrato. And when you lower it completely down to the lo-fi position it begins to sound like a vintage stereo, which is what I like most about it. Throw in a very wet reverb that colors your tone a bit or other modulation pedals like pitch shifters and it creates a lot of unique cool tunes coming from a guitar. Very similar sounds to Boards of Canada but coming from your guitar and amp with this pedal. All around a really versatile fun pedal to play with.

► Show Spoiler

[youtube][/youtube]

He gives a really good demonstration of some of the pedal's capabilities but mostly focuses on the Lo-Fi mode.
P.S. If you check out what he does at 8:50 in the video you'll see why I say boards of Canada.

Nice demo and it is crazy how many different sounds modern pedals can offer in one package

Yeah man, its crazy to see how far they have come, compared to how it was 10 years ago. Not only just that but a number of pedal companies out there not is getting crazy. I do love how it's creating a market for competition and giving us players more variety and some innovations.

Also, interestingly enough. The guy that designed and created the Lo-Fi Junky for Zvex, parted ways after being with them for a while and created his own pedal company, "Chase Audio Bliss". Which now makes a pedal based on his original one from Zvex but holy shit, it's loaded with a FUCK ton of features compared to his original.

This is the pedal (Warped Vinyl mkII) and the owner/creator. "DISCLAIMER: Joel stutters." Just to give you a heads up if you watch, it appears he has a stuttering speech impediment. Glad to see the guy up promoting his products despite his stuttering, I must give the guy kudos for not being shy and having great confidence to do so.
[youtube][/youtube]

Doog wrote:I'd be interested to see how these newer combos size up; I know the original ones had problems with heat dissipation, fucking up tube sockets etc. Hopefully they'll sussed it all out now!

Aye, that was the issue I had with my old DSL401. Fortunately it was still under warranty at the time. The problem was with having four ACC83s and four EL84s burning away (the power amp section was in cathode biased mode, which may or may not have made the thing run hotter...can anyone chime in on that?), which created a whole load of heat. In my case it caused a catastrophic failure of a dry solder joint in the circuitry that powered the preamp valve heaters.

It was a quite a nice-sounding amp though. The usual modern-ish Marshall crunch channel, but the clean channel sounded pretty great.

Corsair wrote:"DISCLAIMER: Joel stutters."

aw dude you missed the best part of the disclaimer, the rest of it: "If this is somehow upsetting or otherwise unpleasant for you, kindly piss off and buy a different pedal."

fuck yeah dude

I tried a similar one in a shop, I think it was a JVM though.

Great distortion, the reverb wasn't bad for a digital reverb either. Cool idea there's a reverb knob for each channel, although I would have preferred 2 fx loops.

Too bad they discontinued the 1 Watt series, those were awesome.

Nice amp!

I always loved Marshalls and still kind of lost after one (probably the JVM). I think Marshalls were one of the first things I realised I liked as a guitarist and in my head a Marshall half stack is always what I think guitar should sound like.

There's no way I could justify having one around though.

It's definitely a great pedal platform, I generally run the clean channel with the gain dimed; I find amps always need a little bit of grunt to 'round out' the sound of pedals going into it. Haet clean amps.

My JTM60's also a valve 1x12 combo but 2x EL34, and has had problems with effects loop jack sockets and melted valve sockets. It's just developed a problem with a huge pop on switching between clean and dirty channels that I need to sort out.

The more I play it the more I find things I like and some things I don't. Which is good because it helps me narrow down what I'm looking for in an amp that suits me and what I play.

After playing with it for a while now, I've slowly realized some things I miss that this amp doesn't have. I miss my fender cleans and their reverb, especially, after playing a Fender Reissue '65 Deluxe reverb today at GC, I was reminded of some of the subtle things that fenders are great and well known for.
I'm gonna sit on this for a bit and think about it before I do anything. I will also note I play mostly clean stuff with reverb and sometimes delay and/or modulation but I also like to bust out my fuzz a good amount too and distortion. They had a '68 Deluxe reverb but didn't have a chance to try it.

Someday, I'll have one of each but for now, I'll figure out what suits my playing and style the most.

With all of this in mind, I have good news. I FINALLY got my tax returns! yay! (about damn time)
And I popped into GC today to try out other amps, before I settle down with what I have and try out some other things I can now afford to get.

Well, I found a used Fender reissue '65 deluxe reverb about an hour away for a really good price (800$) and drove out to try it out with the idea of buying it and indeed I did.
This amp gave me fond memories of playing my buddies Fender Twin reverbs which two of my close Jam buddies used. I envied them for having that amp and they've had it now for years, both are vintage too and silverfaces. My one friend sold his years ago when he completely changed his genre style of music from blues/classic rock to 7-8 string doom/sludge/stoner stuff and bought Sun 0))) amps and cabs. But my other buddy still has his twin and used to let me borrow it for months since we would all jam at my place cause I had porch that was converted into a room where we had a drum set. It was a fantastic chill spot for all my buddies to come over and hang out, play cards, video games, watch TV, smoked tons of weed and jammed a ton. Those were the golden years of college/highschool.
Ahh sorry went off into old man fond memory mode. Anyways, here she is.



I think I've truly finally found an amp that has quenched my thirst for what I've been looking for. It sounds amazing, easily beats my blues jr, no longer harsh twangy highs with a farty low end.
Cleans are beautiful and the amp has a beautiful sensitivity to your picking. Unless this thing for whatever reason breaks on me. I'm perfectly content.