New Toys

[zentropa]

Picked up these recently.

Marshall SV20H UK.jpg (382.47 KiB) Viewed 940 times

Marshall SC20H UK.jpg (367.47 KiB) Viewed 940 times

[bigtone23]

Great amps! They did a great job with these.

My longtime friend and bandmate loves his 1987X on a 1960A Greenback cab. He also has the SV20 combo, as it's more practical for mic’ed up gigs. The half stack is the go to for practice.

I love the SC20. I'd get one, but my DSL50 head is scratching that itch.

When we met 30 years ago, we both had early 80s 2203 heads on 800 era 1960A cabs! We both wish we had our 2203 heads, but are very happy with our current Marshalls.

[Pepe]

Oh, these look like tons of fun. Enjoy!

[laurie]

They are very nice amps.

[zentropa]

Thanks. I managed to get both of them for the low end of going rate.

I had a Marshall Origin 20 that I was using for Plexi type tones but I have 2 8-ohm 1x12 speaker cabs and the Origin 20 doesn't have 4-ohm outputs so I decided to get an SV20 instead.

I have a JCM800 2205, but had been wanting a 2204 for a few years, but when those went from ~$1200-1400 to $2k+ I shifted sights towards the SC20.

A part of me was debating to go with a 20-watt Friedman instead since they are built better, but I was wanting to have these specific tones on hand.

[bigtone23]

Yeah, 2204 pricing went through the roof! Understandably so. Such a great amp!

After having and letting a couple really bad ass Marshalls go in the late 90s (83 2203 and 69 1959T), I did find a cool substitute: the DSL50. Green Crunch mode gives me 85-90% of what a JCM800 2204 provides. Best part is that I got mine 12 years ago when they flew under the radar for $300 or less. Not anymore, now they are $700+. Still a good deal for a great head. 2204 were $1000 at the time. If I didn't have the DSL50, I'm sure a SC20 would be in my music room.

Saw a demo video for the new Friedman Plex. It's killer! However, it's $2700. Same with the Dirty Shirley, so nice, too much $$ for me.

[Dirk]

Very cool amps

[fernieite]

Congrats!
I really like my SV20H. Great amp. I have a couple of 1980s Marshall 4x10 cabs, or a vintage Vox 2x12 to use with it.

[zentropa]

Yeah, 2204 pricing went through the roof! Understandably so. Such a great amp!

After having and letting a couple really bad ass Marshalls go in the late 90s (83 2203 and 69 1959T), I did find a cool substitute: the DSL50. Green Crunch mode gives me 85-90% of what a JCM800 2204 provides. Best part is that I got mine 12 years ago when they flew under the radar for $300 or less. Not anymore, now they are $700+. Still a good deal for a great head. 2204 were $1000 at the time. If I didn't have the DSL50, I'm sure a SC20 would be in my music room.

Saw a demo video for the new Friedman Plex. It's killer! However, it's $2700. Same with the Dirty Shirley, so nice, too much $$ for me.

Sadly most of the popular 80s gear sort of peaked with its era-appropriate midlife-crisis coinciding price-spike, which led to a price spike in all of 80s/90s JCM800 clones as well. I never really play loud enough to get a Plexi or single channel JCM800 sounding great, so the 20-watt ones ended up scratching the itch without being bank-breaking. I usually end up using an effects loop attenuator on the SV20 even in 5 watt mode.

I do have a DSL50, although I ended up having to overpay a bit to get a later production model. I have had and seen enough JCM2000 stuff blow up to where after a ton of research I decided not to bother with anything made before 2005, although hardly anyone was buying them new by that point since the earlier iterations had so many issues and were cheap used. Granted, the DSL50 and TSL60 had far fewer catastrophic failures than the DSL100 and TSL100, but I didn't want to risk needing a mainboard replacement. I had a TSL122 do its runaway bias thing on me and it melted/deformed the power tubes before blowing a fuse.

[bigtone23]

Yeah, 2204 pricing went through the roof! Understandably so. Such a great amp!

After having and letting a couple really bad ass Marshalls go in the late 90s (83 2203 and 69 1959T), I did find a cool substitute: the DSL50. Green Crunch mode gives me 85-90% of what a JCM800 2204 provides. Best part is that I got mine 12 years ago when they flew under the radar for $300 or less. Not anymore, now they are $700+. Still a good deal for a great head. 2204 were $1000 at the time. If I didn't have the DSL50, I'm sure a SC20 would be in my music room.

Saw a demo video for the new Friedman Plex. It's killer! However, it's $2700. Same with the Dirty Shirley, so nice, too much $$ for me.

Sadly most of the popular 80s gear sort of peaked with its era-appropriate midlife-crisis coinciding price-spike, which led to a price spike in all of 80s/90s JCM800 clones as well. I never really play loud enough to get a Plexi or single channel JCM800 sounding great, so the 20-watt ones ended up scratching the itch without being bank-breaking. I usually end up using an effects loop attenuator on the SV20 even in 5 watt mode.

I do have a DSL50, although I ended up having to overpay a bit to get a later production model. I have had and seen enough JCM2000 stuff blow up to where after a ton of research I decided not to bother with anything made before 2005, although hardly anyone was buying them new by that point since the earlier iterations had so many issues and were cheap used. Granted, the DSL50 and TSL60 had far fewer catastrophic failures than the DSL100 and TSL100, but I didn't want to risk needing a mainboard replacement. I had a TSL122 do its runaway bias thing on me and it melted/deformed the power tubes before blowing a fuse.

I totally get that. My Boogies are my main jam, but I do love Marshalls. The pre-JCM2000 Marshalls really do need to be loud to sound their best. Oh the days of loud stage volume in a moderately sized music venue! haha.
When I went Marshall hunting in 2012, a 2203/2204 was top of the list. They were mostly $1000+ at the time (even the 2203X), and I couldn't really justify paying that, considering that it was just scratching an itch. I looked into Marshall adjacent amps. The Peavey VTM 60 & 120, 80s Butcher and the like being big contenders. However, these (typically) $250-400 amps were nowhere to be found, which I found odd, as they were usually everywhere. This was during the Peavey renaissance, and they were jumping in price and pretty scarce. Probably some midlife crisis purchases, but also younger players and Doomers realizing that these products are much better than they were told by older family members, etc..
Read some horror stories about the DSL100, but great things about the DSL50 online, and put that on the radar. One popped up locally for a deal, which turned into a steal once the seller had to move and made a fire sale price for me ($250!). It's from 98, but it's been rock solid. After 8 years of playing it, I took it in to a reliable tech 4 years ago for a check up and he found nothing to fix other than a weak preamp tube.
Knock on wood. I hope this is not a jinx by saying it.