The Marshall JTM45: A Short History

This is a silghtly different post from me.

As you'm in my honey moon with the Brit 70 - PLEXI model, i've come across this video: 

https://youtu.be/D91v5fBvfKg

That i really suggest you to watch. A lot of interesting information.

But i will spoil you one of the most interesting.

All the Marshall thing was born by pure accidental. The JTM45 was developed to be a cheap british option to the bassbreaker. The change in valve type and consequentially their ability to push more the power amp, the adoption of the 4x12 (witch it stills a must today), the overall midrange push. All was done to make the product more affordable to the uk musicians.

But go watch the video by yourself!

What we have learned so far about modeling: 3 simple rules

 So, here is how i understand it:

There a 3 stages:

1) Pre amp

2) Power Amp

3) Cab and Mic

1) Pre amp is the first and easiest thing to emulate. Indeed there are also simple analogic pedals that mimic the functioning of valve preamp with nice results. What make the diffrence in the preamp stage are gain stages and EQ stack.

2) Power Amp: a valve power amp works in a way that you can get output and headroom 3 times than  solid state amps. So you should compare a 20w solid state with a 5w valve, a 50w solid state with a 15w valve, a 100w solid state with a 30watt valve. In the same way, to get the push of a 100w valve you will need 300w of solid state power, and so on. This make comparisions a bit more difficult. So, set your expectations to one third of the nominal power.

3) Cab and Mic or impulse response. The result of this element of the equation is a powerful eq filtert. Cab and Mic (or IR) are a core stage in crafiting your tone.

the legend of the guitar woods and pickup voicing

 While my crush for the British 70 model AKA MArshall Plexi takes its course i realized where all the fuss about the relevance of that type of wood and that pickups cames from.

With certains amps the difference in tone from one guitar to the other is about a notch of the tone knobs.

But when you have a Marshall style amp that knobs need to be maxed so there is no EQ tweak to be done. Only gain adjustment is an option.

On the other side my suggestion is: when you use a marshal style amp or model, let your guitar tone bloom. Dont let you be underwelmed by differences and peculiarity of your guitars. Just enjoy what you have!