SillyOctpuss
Well-known member
Well new recent amp I suppose as I actually picked this up about a week ago. Having only played through a Helix for the last 8 months it's been really really great having an amp in the house again. I didn't realise how much I'd missed it tbh. The Helix does sound great but hearing a proper cab is a nice change from studio monitors or headphones.
I've been keeping an eye out for one of these for a few months now and thankfully this one popped up only an hrs drive away, the guy bought it in 2018 and it's lived in his bedroom since. He's basically only run it on whisper quiet bedroom settings for the last five years so it's absolutely mint and was an absolute bargain. All in including fuel to get there and back this cost me less than £500. We picked it up on the Saturday and I used it at my bands rehearsal on Sunday and having spent literally no time with it had no trouble dialling in a few sounds for the day. I took MrsOctpuss and our kid out for a roadtrip to go pick it up because the guy lived on the coast next to the Mourne mountains but we didn't get the cold yet sunny day we were expecting, it was a bit colder and a lot windier like a lot.
Still a fun day out though.
It's a Marshall JVM205C and here's the good parts.
Basically two channels with three modes each, a clean/crunch channel and an OD channel. It has independent reverbs for each channel, two master volumes and two effects loops. All of this can be toggled using a really clever footswitch, it remembers the state of each channel so it's a doddle to program. A pleasant surprise was just how good the master volume is, it easily kept up with my Oran's drums and Bo's bass at rehearsal but it also sounds great at really low bedroom volumes. Oh and a dedicated power amp insert so I can bypass the preamp and run my helix through the power amp and cab. Just turn the cab modelling/IR off and away you go, the Helix's princeton and the voxes actually sound great this way.
The not great
Unfortunately it's not all good. The four channel version of the JVM has separate clean, crunch, OD1 and OD2 channels and annoyingly they fitted the OD2 channel to the 50 watt model. This channel is Marshalls attempt at getting a more American boogie kind of tone and it's not great, thankfully the only difference between OD1 and OD2 is a resistor and two caps. These shift the midrange to the same place as every other marshall and having played the four channel I already know I really liked OD1. Just need to decide if I'm going to swop the parts myself or take it to an amp tech in Belfast called Tony Hamilton, I'm leaning towards getting Tony to do it and checking the amp over while it's there.
All in I'm super happy with it and can't wait to get it out for some gigs, next step is a load box so I can record it in the house.
For those interested here's a demo by Paul from the Studio Rats.
I've been keeping an eye out for one of these for a few months now and thankfully this one popped up only an hrs drive away, the guy bought it in 2018 and it's lived in his bedroom since. He's basically only run it on whisper quiet bedroom settings for the last five years so it's absolutely mint and was an absolute bargain. All in including fuel to get there and back this cost me less than £500. We picked it up on the Saturday and I used it at my bands rehearsal on Sunday and having spent literally no time with it had no trouble dialling in a few sounds for the day. I took MrsOctpuss and our kid out for a roadtrip to go pick it up because the guy lived on the coast next to the Mourne mountains but we didn't get the cold yet sunny day we were expecting, it was a bit colder and a lot windier like a lot.
Still a fun day out though.
It's a Marshall JVM205C and here's the good parts.
Basically two channels with three modes each, a clean/crunch channel and an OD channel. It has independent reverbs for each channel, two master volumes and two effects loops. All of this can be toggled using a really clever footswitch, it remembers the state of each channel so it's a doddle to program. A pleasant surprise was just how good the master volume is, it easily kept up with my Oran's drums and Bo's bass at rehearsal but it also sounds great at really low bedroom volumes. Oh and a dedicated power amp insert so I can bypass the preamp and run my helix through the power amp and cab. Just turn the cab modelling/IR off and away you go, the Helix's princeton and the voxes actually sound great this way.
The not great
Unfortunately it's not all good. The four channel version of the JVM has separate clean, crunch, OD1 and OD2 channels and annoyingly they fitted the OD2 channel to the 50 watt model. This channel is Marshalls attempt at getting a more American boogie kind of tone and it's not great, thankfully the only difference between OD1 and OD2 is a resistor and two caps. These shift the midrange to the same place as every other marshall and having played the four channel I already know I really liked OD1. Just need to decide if I'm going to swop the parts myself or take it to an amp tech in Belfast called Tony Hamilton, I'm leaning towards getting Tony to do it and checking the amp over while it's there.
All in I'm super happy with it and can't wait to get it out for some gigs, next step is a load box so I can record it in the house.
For those interested here's a demo by Paul from the Studio Rats.
