I just received my 2266 Head about a week ago. This is my first Marshall and also my first valve amp. I wasn't able to test a VM before purchasing as no local suppliers carried the amp. Lots of people are claiming they can get a good sound at bedroom volume, so I purchased the VM based on tone demos I'd heard online, and also as I figured I could use it as a practice amp outside of rehersals and gigs. However, whilst it sounded awesome at our last rehersal session, I can't get a good sound at practice volumes.
The cab I purchased for home use was a Randall 2x12 R212CX , which is a 16 ohm cab with two Celection custom 80's (basically seventy 80's), as the local retailer was doing it very cheap, the plan being to replace the stock celestions with something better further down the line. When I run the head set to 16 ohms into this cab, I can get a good clean sound, but if I try and dial in any gain at all, the volume becomes gig level before I get a decent distortion, which just isn't practical for in the house.
In our rehersal room, I ran the head into an 8 ohm Marshall (pretty sure it was an MG412B). I managed to get some fantastic tone from this configuration (my drummer said "it sounds like you've sold your soul at the crossroads!"
'nuff said!), and it was at a reasonable volume too. I'm wondering, if I run the head into an 8 ohm cab, will I get better tone at a lower SPL? It certainly seemed that way, or was it just that after four hours of playing loud my ears had adjusted to the higher volume?I've got an 8 ohm celestion G12P-80 taken from a Line 6 Flextone, so I could sling this into the Randall cab and run the head at 8 ohms if it will allow me to bring the SPL down and the gain up, but just thought I'd get the input from you guys first incase I'm wasting my time.
Now, I know and valve amp has to be cranked, but if I dial it in justnow so its distorted, if I put the amp out in my garage (which has 1ft thick concrete walls), run a cable into the kitchen in the house and strum a chord, its still "the police are on the way" loud!
