MJW Roadstar Sports 36

PhilKing · May 2016

I went to see Martin thinking that I wanted his V6-20, as I was looking for a Marshall with less volume. After spending an afternoon with him, I left an order for a Roadstar. Once I heard what you could do with this, and how well the power scaling works on the 36 watt version, I was sold.

My original request was for a front end to a set of valve preamps in a pedal, but they were set up to feed into a regular amp, so we needed to add in the pre-amp. Once we were doing that, it was an easy option to add the Fat switch too. The amp exceeded all my expectations, and you can hear it on Martin's site (https://youtu.be/85HjdWH-J9c?list=PLA28DECBD884FE0FF). I live in the States so I needed selectable mains voltage and of course we have 60 cycle as well, so I was a little worried that it wouldn't sound as good. I needn't have though. I got it home and set it up and it sounded awsome. I use it into either a 1x12 Ear Candy cab with a Celestion Sidewinder or a 2x12 Bluesbreaker style Splawn cab with Weber Thames and FC12 (copies of Fane speakers). With either cab it sounds great, but with the 2x12 you can get all the driven AC30 tones with a lot of headroom. I have a lot of Juansolo's pedals (I'm 4000 mile Phil), and the Roadstar is a brilliant amp for using pedals with. It probably also helps that John (Juansolo), uses MJW amps too, so when I check things out with him and Andy, I know pretty much how they will sound.

The amp sounds so good that my Godson ordered the same thing (but in purple), with a MJW 2x12. He gigs regularly and also owns a studio, so his amp gets a lot of use and he's had not issues with it at all. My amp doesn't get as much use as I don't gig much anymore and the room I rehearse in has amps.

Martin is great to deal with and will spend a lot of time to make sure you get the amp you need. I have heard many of his amps and they all impress me.

Just to let you know, I have a lot of other amps to choose from (including Fender Deluxe & Princeton Reverbs, Marshall Silver Jubilee and JTM45, Ceriatone Dumble Clone and several McIntyre amps), but the MJW is the most versatile of them all, and when I went on a recording session recently, it was the amp I took with me.