Marshall Studio 15

[Kongels]

Anyone have any experience with this amp they can share?

[MKB]

I had one for a few days. Apparently it's the only stock Marshall amp in history to use 6V6 tubes (like a Fender Princeton or Deluxe). I wasn't too thrilled with it, it didn't have a lot of gain and was very bright sounding with the stock Celestion Vintage 30 in it. They do have some vintage value though, and they are very well built amps with all the quality of anything else in the JCM800 line. It was a good sounding amp overall, just not my cup of tea FWIW.

[ClubAndCountry]

I used one for a few years in the early 90s. It's an extremely loud, 'present' 15W! Not very vintage-voiced, it does sound more like a small JCM800 Master Volume or a bit like a Jubilee, but without as much gain. Exceptional build quality like all the 800s, but they do apparently have a tendency to blow power transformers - I've never seen fail one personally, and I ran mine with EL34s for a while (before I knew that this was a risk!), so I think they must have had just a few bad ones rather than them all being under-spec. There are proper replacements available.

I tried it with some more vintage speakers including a G12M-25 and a G12H-30, but actually I thought it sounded best with the stock Vintage 30 - it was more chunky as well as quite cutting. This amp was the very first to ever use the V30 by the way - the earliest version of this speaker, with a vent in the magnet (like the G12-65 and G12-80) and they do sound slightly different from the later ones. (If you buy an amp with the 'original' speaker, make sure it's one of these and not a later replacement.)

The EL34 mod did make it much more 'Marshally', as well as even louder, but I would have to not recommend it based on the reports of transformers failing - the filament current draw of an EL34 is almost four times that of a 6V6.

They're also quite rare, only about 500 were ever made. Martin Barre of Jethro Tull apparently used four of them in his rig!