Compressed and squashed can also be tight and focused, depending on what you like! (And the speakers...) I like closed-back 2x12"s too, in fact a friend has an old 1970s Marshall 'shallow' 1936 with a Heritage G12H-30 and a G12M-25, and it's one of the best-sounding cabs I've ever heard. I don't rea...

I'm not that 'brilliant' :-). I just have an unusually retentive obsession with this sort of stuff and I've been doing it for about a quarter of a century! Some of it sticks eventually :-).

The V30 isn't strictly 'twice as loud' as the G12M - it's 3dB more sensitive, which is equivalent to doubling the amp power - not the same thing at all. In volume terms it's louder, but not *that* much. (*Double* the volume is equivalent to an extra 10dB, or ten times the amp power.) Frank is right ...

Try a better speaker in the DSL401 and you may be surprised - a Vintage 30 or a Classic Lead 80 sounds really good in them. (Sorry for thread diversion!)

If the hiss on the VM is on the Low range too, it's definitely *not* just V2 alone, since that's only used in the High mode.

No, I'm not at all a 'natural guy' :-). I like that sort of tone sometimes, but not always. I use a ton of pedals and prefer control over pure tone - although tone is important - but it's never made sense to me to deliberately do away with useful features like master volumes and channel switching, w...

Exactly...! The difference between a *professional* and someone who just gets paid for performing is that the professional carries backup. It's about making sure you can still get the job done even when things go wrong. The backup doesn't have to be a complete spare amp - valves, fuses, tools, a ped...

It's not usually physical shock which tends to blow them - JJs and Sovteks in particular are actually quite robust - it's just that they aren't made very well electrically and often don't even meet the design spec correctly. They more normally blow in use, and especially in amps designed to the limi...

Unfortunately new valves don't guarantee you won't blow one - quite the opposite! Valves most often 'blow' (ie fail suddenly and outright) when they're very new, because they just weren't made right. After a short period (called 'burn-in', when it's deliberately done), the failure rate falls off, an...

Yes, it's crazy. €8 for a power valve? It's no wonder they're such total junk compared to the old ones! That's about the price of a set of guitar strings. No surprise they last about as long... And JJs are *good* by the standards of current production - but even then, I've had quite a few fail right...

The *maximum* current draw is the same, but the proportion of the cycle above cutoff is greater with hotter bias (even beyond the point of forward clipping) and so the total power developed in the valve is higher. This is effectively what you're saying too! :-) But it certainly changes the overall p...

Yes, the Orange is a real birch ply cabinet, as phoenix78 said. It is also heavy, probably comparable in weight to the Marshall 4x12", although maybe not quite and still easier to move because it's smaller. But I would choose *any* professionally-made ply 2x12" over the 1936. I didn't try the Vintag...

Those are excellent observations, especially on the quite unique sound of the V30, which is indeed described as 'bright' or 'harsh' by some people and yet 'dark' or 'smooth' by others. It's both... and can be very amp-dependent as to which part of the character dominates. If the amp has a natural up...

Firstly, that's a 2210, not a 2203 - a very different amp - and secondly that's an awful recording! There's nothing other than midrange there, no indication of the range of tone of *either* amp is capable of, and extreme compression at the recording stage (which you can hear as the noise floor comes...

I think there's a lot of difference in how we hear and describe tones. I agree with SteveD that the JCM800s can be very bright amps - painfully so, if you set them to be (which I would never do) - but they also have a very powerful, tight bass response which makes them really huge and thunderous. I ...

The cabinet will have two jacks, one for 4 ohms and one for 16 ohms, and a switch to select mono or stereo (8 ohms each side). You need to use it in mono. If you're running just the cabinet with the combo speakers unplugged, set the amp to 4 ohms and use the 4-ohm jack on the cab, since the amp does...