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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
me thinking fo buying a JCM900 SLX.
What do you guys think..
me thinking fo buying a JCM900 SLX.
What do you guys think..
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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
Noooooooooo........Comment
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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
......... I was thinking of getting one and use my Fulltone FDII for boosting the amp sound a bit......Comment
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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
Spend possibly a bit more, and buy a nice old 800. You will be mucho el grande happy. Unless you are going to mod it to death, I hear those sound ok from guys here. THey replace the transformer and bunch of other stuff. Then again, a properly modded 800 can be way smokin... soooo...
I've had an SLX here and hated it. Too flubby on the low end. I liked my 900 4100 series considerably better, and they were basically pretty lame without input boost. I had a lot of cold solder joint troubles with them and they really couldn't hold a candle to the good 800s I've had here.Comment
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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
I was thinking of which way to go with.
I have been thinking of Mesa Road King, then I found this to be too much money at this moment.
Just sold my VHT combo and I am with my 2150 and Chameleon now..
I need an amp that has at least 2 CHs.
Don't care too much for clean but would be great to have crunch and lead instead..
I don't want to go back with modded Marshall.
I am thinking of asking John Suhr to mod a Marshall head.
That would be another choice for me.
I love his amp and he could do 2CH with depth and lead boost(volume up).Comment
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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
Would there be a problem seeking out a better preamp?
You already have the holy grail of power amps. A nice upper end ENGL, a CAE3+ or CAE3+se pretty awesome. I could just never get the flexibilty out of a head that I got from my rig. Although some newer ENGL heads are pretty outstanding.
My CAE3+se first channel is angelic classic fender clean. The channel two is classic rock like foreigner perfect, old marshall-esque I guess. and the lead channel is even more serious. I mixed up some tubes in it, and I use a EMG PA-2 onboard preamp, it sounds great. I'm sometimes using a parametric, but it is because I'm nuts in the tweakablity area.Comment
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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
CAE preamps would be very interesting.
If I were to look for a preamp to go with my 2150, that will be the best choice.
I used to use a Bogner Fish which I didn't care much consider what I paid for it, I wasn't impressed.
Also Mike Morin custom preamp which sounded killer as hell.
I have been looking for one and I missed one when a guy from Beatiful Creatures was selling his on E-bay...
I am still looking for one.
Another choice would be Engl 1 space 4CHs preamp.
I see these sometimes on E-bay selling around $300-500.
I love that preamp.
I think you are right.
I should probably look for a preamp that I can use with my power amp.That would be cool too.
I sold my 12space Mesa Rack long time ago so I will probably have to buy a smal rack again though..
[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]Comment
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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
Also to add, if I were to go back with Rack, I will probably buy a BBE.
I love that unit too.
It worked great with my Bogner mod Marshall and Morin preamp.Comment
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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
Cleveland, found a cool Bradshaw article/interview you'll dig (if you have not seen it). Talks about the soldano/CAE relationship with the x88r. He makes it sound like the relationship was somewhat frosty.
http://www.richardhallebeek.com/interviews/bradshaw.phpComment
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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
I know the story.
Brandshaw helped SOldano to design the preamp that went huge.
Steve Lukather had the first prototype Soldano pre with Black face back in 88 or 89.Comment
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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
Yeah, I love my rig, and will till I find better I guess.
Of course, the rack think vs head thing is a very legitimate debate. Heads usually sound more alive and the racks are more flexible.
At least the CAE3+ stuff is the closest thing I've found to a head, guess it's just the decent quality. Funny thing is about the CAE is my friend wants to rebuild it with better quality semiconductors. Yeesh. At least build quality is outstanding, and you really can't find anything quite like the CAE3+/CAE3+se stuff.
SLO, thank you! I'd seen either that article or excerpts I guess maybe. But, cool to read through that again for sure. I'd sure like to knwo a bit more about the relationship between Suhr and Bradshaw actually.
I can say that if I were have work done on my CAE, unless my friend does it, I'd be sending it off to Suhr and not Bradshaw. Bradshaw has dropped the ball on every attempt I've had at communication with his company.
I would so NOT use a BBE with that sort of equipment. BBEs are best used to to correct defiencies in lesser equipment. And you really won't have many deficiencies with this type of equipment at all. I have several here, 411, 422a, and had 362s and 462s. Tried them all occassionally, and they just ruin the sound. I used to love the BBE things and now I pretty much consider them to be tone coffins.
With that type of equipment, which truly is the best of the best in that scheme of equipment, the only thing I would really use with a CAE3+se/VHT2150 combo, would be a TC Electronics 1140 Parametric (maybe) and a G Major or G force for time based effects. Of course there is a lot other cool stuff as people use much much more, it's just that have had the best experiences for what I'm looking for with those units.
You would be quite well served by tube crafting (as I do) to get any improvements on what you want tonally. And the CAE preamps really display tube idiosynchrasies VERY intensely. Actually, they show up quirks in every damn thing very intensely, from cables to pickups and effects. Why, in fact, you'll probably see glaring deficiencies in just about every thing you own!
Ya gotta love that...Comment
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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
It is an interesting read. I remember a Japanese amp site that is now down that had a comparison of the 88 and CAE3 schematics and they were really similar. It appears from this article the 88 was Bob's idea, Mike designed it (from the SLO as a working model), and then Bob and John tailored it into the CAE3 as we know it now. Cool story.
I'd like to find an 88, CAE, or Bogner Fish to replace my little SP77 someday.Comment
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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
I'd like to get an SP-77 and mod the hell out of it!!
I may send my CAE to Suhr and have him mod channel 2 to sound like channel 3 as I really don't use the classic rock channel (2) as I call it and maybe a couple other things he does to them. I realllly like ch3 with a little extra hit on the front end.
I really need to borrow friends CAD mics and record a couple tracks...Comment
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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
Hey CM my JCM 800 is a horizontal input. From what I see inside (I have had a vertical 2204 as well in the past) the only difference is that the pots and jacks are board mounted instead of chassis mounted. All the caps and trannys look identical. Drake trannys.... I know with the 2203's they cut back on the caps and added some filters and changed the tranny's from Drakes to ? but as far as I cn see the 2204 stayed the same in design pretty much with the exception of adding a master volume (from the JMP 2204) to PC board mounting the jacks and pots. Is there anyone else that can find anything else??? That makes the 2204 a real deal on the horizontals because they pretty much have the same guts and tone as the original design unlike its big brother 2203. Good deals can still be had on the horizontal input 2204's from what I have seen. I got mine for around $500 which is cheap considering I am seeing many 2204 verticals going from $800 to over a grand and some imaculate examples at the $1200 mark. Yikes!
As for the 100W sounding better I think maybe you are on the right track with your thinking but I also have heard 2203 versions that sound really lame in comparison to the 2204. I like the 2204 better for the earlier break up but that is because I like to lay down tracks with 50W heads because of the earlier saturation that occurs when turning them up. That is a tonal preference I guess... And as you always point out, No 2 Marshalls sound the same... Very good points. I would like to hear/play a modded SP-77. I have never owned one but a guitarist in a band that rented space next to the room my band was in a loooooooooooooong time ago had one and I thought it was pretty good on it's own paired with a VHT 2150.Comment
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Re: Hot Rodded Marshalls vs. Soldano slo\'s
Okay. Jammed with 3 heads for a long time. I ran them all through the Same cabs with the same speakers and with the same guitar/. The SLO still is the amp for me and sounds much better to my ears than both the MIG and the JCM 800 with or without the mod. THe Mod in The MIG 100(I had one of these a month or so ago with the mod in it) was great. The Mod in the MIG 100H is not necessary and just adds noise. With that said, Everything about the SLO in a live setting just is flat out better sounding to my ears. You could instantly tell when I switched heads. I ran two seperate cabs and always had the SLO plugged into one. I had all the heads on standby and played each one for 10 minutes or so before switching. I went back and forth and ran the Marshall and just the MIG100H for a while too. I would say that the Marshall with the mod had better definition at lower volumes but mushed up at higher volumes. This is most likely due to that it is a 50W and the others are 100W. The Marshall also has a fresh set of el34's in it. The SLO has a pretty good set of kt66's in it and the Sovtek was switched between 6l6 Svets and 5881 Sovteks. To my surprise and I can't believe I am writing this but I actually liked the Sovtek 5881 tubes in the Sovtek MIG 100H!
It sounded deeper and fuller than the 6l6 Svets. They had more roundness and highs... Just all around great. Maybe I just got a really stellar quad of these because every other amp or set of these I have ever had Sovtek tubes in just sound dull... The Svet made 6l6gc's are my very favorite tube of choice (I rave about these tubes all the time so that is why I am so surprised that the did not kill the Sovteks) but I do like the KT66's I have in the SLO right now. Anyway.. That is all I have to say about it. The SLO is still tops with me. The Marshall had some great tones with the mod but was just too "got lost in the mix" and the Sovtek MIG100h Really sounded great on it's own without the Hot Mod. I have had a MIG 100 (not an H version which has very little gain) and that sounded pretty good with the mod. From what I remember the Sovtek MIG 100H sounds alot like the MIG 100 with the Soldano Hot Mod in it.
I tweaked each head to death and got great stuff out of them but with a band it just does not have the "it" that the SLO has. I guess what I am trying to say is that I really like the SLO and could not get the others with the mod to sound like it. I could tweak the SLO and get it to sound like the other amps but not the reverse.
One more thing. If you have a Marshall JCM 800 and not willing to run a overdrive or distrtion pedal with it, I would not hesitate to buy a Hot Mod. It adds more than just gain and really makes these heads come alive. Same goes with the MIG100.(Not the MIG100H) The plus is that you don't kill the value of the head by hacking it up and it is internal so no pedals/batteries/power supply to mess with. They really change the tone of the amp in a good way. They don't make it sound like an SLO. I guess depending on whether or not you like the SLO tone that is a good or bad thing but it does make the tone better in spades than either MIG100 or the JCM 800 stock.Comment
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