Live amp tones - Marshall vs Fender

Haych

I've been to quite a few gigs recently at smallish clubs and have been lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to be in the firing line of the backline - proper backline; loud valve amps.

Here's what I thought to the amps used by various bands.

Marshall Plexi (presumably a reissue) - didn't like so much, not that it sounded bad, just didn't sound anywhere near as good as the Victory amp the other guitarist was using. 

Fender Super Reverb - I've owned one and think it's possibly one of the best amps ever made but in the hands of one quite well known player, I didn't like it.  It just sounded dry and lifeless.

Marshall Silver Jubilee - likey, very nice classic rock tones with either lots of gain or with a cleaner profile.  Chuffing loud too!

Fender Supersonic - nice but nothing really outstanding.  I heard this mainly with high gain settings and it wasn't bad but was nothing special.

Marshall 30th Anniversary - Yuck.  Dark, mushy, indistinct and bland.

Fender Hot Rod DeVille - nice, liked a lot, I can't explain why but it just worked very well clean and with moderate gain.  No idea what version it was.

The best 'till last.......... Fender Bassman reissue - just incredible.  Pretty much only one sound but what a sound and how can one tone be so versatile and work with everything and sonically complement everything the rest of the band were doing and not care what guitar was plugged into it?   

jellybelly

Haych said:

I've been to quite a few gigs recently at smallish clubs and have been lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to be in the firing line of the backline - proper backline; loud valve amps.

Here's what I thought to the amps used by various bands.

Marshall Plexi (presumably a reissue) - didn't like so much, not that it sounded bad, just didn't sound anywhere near as good as the Victory amp the other guitarist was using. 

Fender Super Reverb - I've owned one and think it's possibly one of the best amps ever made but in the hands of one quite well known player, I didn't like it.  It just sounded dry and lifeless.

Marshall Silver Jubilee - likey, very nice classic rock tones with either lots of gain or with a cleaner profile.  Chuffing loud too!

Fender Supersonic - nice but nothing really outstanding.  I heard this mainly with high gain settings and it wasn't bad but was nothing special.

Marshall 30th Anniversary - Yuck.  Dark, mushy, indistinct and bland.

Fender Hot Rod DeVille - nice, liked a lot, I can't explain why but it just worked very well clean and with moderate gain.  No idea what version it was.

The best 'till last.......... Fender Bassman reissue - just incredible.  Pretty much only one sound but what a sound and how can one tone be so versatile and work with everything and sonically complement everything the rest of the band were doing and not care what guitar was plugged into it?   

Interesting! Are we talking a tweed Bassman? I always thought 10 inch speakers came through well in a live mix...

Haych

Yes, it was a tweed Bassman with 4x10 config. Sounded really, really good. 

Voxman

Interesting post and insights. Needless to say, so much depends on how the amp is set, amp/speaker height, effects, guitar type and settings, etc.  But none of that makes your observations any less valid.

I've always liked Fender Bassmans because in addition to a great warm clean they can deliver a glorious low end 'grind' breakup that only a JTM45 can also do ( not surprising as Jim Marshall basically nicked the Bassman circuit).  Plus, they work really well with pedals e.g. a tubescreamer  

ESBlonde

I'd say that the player, guitar, amp and loudspeaker are a package. Put the same chain together but change the player and you might be convinced (in a blind test) that there was another amplifier in there. How we as players interact with the gear is critical and one of the reasons some players won't go digital. 

This is why it sometimes seems silly to buy the exact same gear as your hero in order to sound like them, you won't. Certain gear has a signature sound for sure, but everyones ears (and fingers) are different.

Haych

ESBlonde said:

I'd say that the player, guitar, amp and loudspeaker are a package. Put the same chain together but change the player and you might be convinced (in a blind test) that there was another amplifier in there. How we as players interact with the gear is critical and one of the reasons some players won't go digital. 

This is why it sometimes seems silly to buy the exact same gear as your hero in order to sound like them, you won't. Certain gear has a signature sound for sure, but everyones ears (and fingers) are different.

This is very true mate, can’t disagree one bit. 

That Bassman though was something else. It’s hard to describe how an amp can sound clean and dirty at the same time, just a gorgeous tone. 

As for the Super Reverb, I have noticed that while I do respect the player I don’t always respect her tone - even on the albums the tone is sometimes grim - assuming of course the same amps are used. 

Overall though I do tend to prefer Fender tones to Marshall, that silver jubilee was quite an exception though - it’d sound awful with me playing it (Marshall’s always have) and maybe a reason why I prefer Fender as a rule. 

roberty

I know a guy who plays a strat through a bassman 4x10 reissue and it's honestly one of the best guitar sounds I've heard.  He's an exceptional player, been round the world touring on massive stages.  He says the bassman is like an instrument to him, more so than his guitar

monquixote

I suspect if you switched the guitarists around the tone might follow the player rather than the amp.

p90fool

Haych said:

The best 'till last.......... Fender Bassman reissue - just incredible.  Pretty much only one sound but what a sound and how can one tone be so versatile and work with everything and sonically complement everything the rest of the band were doing and not care what guitar was plugged into it?   

That's the hallmark of a really good player - I'm willing to bet that guitarist could've got similar results from at least three of the other amps on your list. 

Danny1969

I gigged on Saturday with a Marshall, the first time I've used one in 100 or so gigs which have all been done on a Fender Hot Rod. Quite enjoyed it but listening back to the recording of the gig I don't really sound any different from what I did with the Hot Rod. If someone mixed up that recording with a gig the week before and asked me which was Marshall and which was Fender I probably couldn't tell myself. 
I'm not saying all amps sound the same, they don't but there's less difference between valve amps of a similar size played dirty than you might think. It's certainly more the player that you hear .... there's a couple of  guys I know who just make everything sound better just by intonating themselves better and having better dynamic control. That's one of the reasons I've never really lusted after any gear, too many nights at The Salutation in Portsmouth watching a guy playing a Hondo Explorer copy with an EMG pickup into an old Marshall end through an EQ pedal. 

Modulus_Amps

as most of those amps can do lots of different tones, the guitarist/guitar/pedal/cables may be to blame, not the amp.

But the Tweed bassman is a fantastic amp and on my to own list too

TTBZ

I've always wanted to try a Bassman thanks to the tones in Social Distortion. I suspect I'd need a modded one to do that though.

The Jubilee is an excellent amp in either form. It's my favourite Marshall for the sheer versatility, anything from clean up to metal with a boost. Nice responsive EQ. As a bonus the grey/silver looks cooler to me than the standard black and gold. I think it'd get more "internet respect" if people didn't know it had diodes in it.

DrJazzTap

I had a marshall tsl and when  switched to a blues deluxe, the horn section said "it actually sounds like an instrument now".

ICBM

DrJazzTap said:

I had a marshall tsl and when  switched to a blues deluxe, the horn section said "it actually sounds like an instrument now".

To be fair, the TSL is one of Marshall's worst amps - especially the '60W' version, which is even more dreadful than the 100.

I'm not a fan of Jubilees either, they always sound buzzy and a bit thin to me - and I don't think it's the diodes. (I actually think it's more to do with the EQ section.) I know a lot of people love them though.

Some amps just work for some players and not others, and some of it is down to how you set them... I was once told by a friend that there wasn't really any difference in my sound when I used a borrowed Marshall AVT150 instead of my Mesa DC-5. Admittedly I used my V-1 pedal in front of the amp.

ESBlonde

It's wise to remember too that a lot of us older gits are just plain deaf! It might be cool to let a marshall non MV head have its ...er..head, but standing in front of it night after night will change the perceived tone so you might be tempted to add a little brightness over time and end up cutting the face off the first eight rows. Especially if the cab is airing thier jeans all night!

The classic amps are renowned for good reason, BUT there are some people that doent know how to exploit them. Also there are a few examples that have been 'modded/repaired' along the way and are not really representative of the breed any longer.

I know a great guitarist that only had a 60s strat and a modded AC30, that simple rig got dragged all over and thrashed hard several nights a week for decades. The sound was to die for, sadly the Vox got retired about a decade ago and then sold to help fund his new pub business. Other people played that rig and it never quite had that magic, but the owner had it in spades.

DrJazzTap

ICBM said:

DrJazzTap said:

I had a marshall tsl and when  switched to a blues deluxe, the horn section said "it actually sounds like an instrument now".

To be fair, the TSL is one of Marshall's worst amps - especially the '60W' version, which is even more dreadful than the 100.

I'm not a fan of Jubilees either, they always sound buzzy and a bit thin to me - and I don't think it's the diodes. (I actually think it's more to do with the EQ section.) I know a lot of people love them though.

Some amps just work for some players and not others, and some of it is down to how you set them... I was once told by a friend that there wasn't really any difference in my sound when I used a borrowed Marshall AVT150 instead of my Mesa DC-5. Admittedly I used my V-1 pedal in front of the amp.

But the tsl has so many switches and pots, how could it sound so bad

Tat2dstesh

I've been fortunate to have owned more amps than I care to remember and still to this day the one brand I just can not get away with no matter what is Marshall. 
I've had the 800, 900, jmp, and 2000 and all of them to me just did not work. I thought they always sounded thin and way to edgey in the gain. 
On the other hand I have owned Laney which is meant to be a poor mans marshall and always thought they sounded amazing. But these days I seem to have gone over to the other big UK maker Orange which I think have the sound I have always been after, Big and raw. UK wise I would only ever go for those two makes now. 

ICBM

Tat2dstesh said:

I've been fortunate to have owned more amps than I care to remember and still to this day the one brand I just can not get away with no matter what is Marshall. 
I've had the 800, 900, jmp, and 2000 and all of them to me just did not work. I thought they always sounded thin and way to edgey in the gain. 
On the other hand I have owned Laney which is meant to be a poor mans marshall and always thought they sounded amazing. But these days I seem to have gone over to the other big UK maker Orange which I think have the sound I have always been after, Big and raw. UK wise I would only ever go for those two makes now. 

Laneys are definitely darker and grittier than Marshalls, even though many of the circuits are near or exact copies - I've never been totally sure why! It must be the transformers I think, or maybe the cabs. Oranges even more so, even when they use 'Marshall type' EQ (eg the Rocker 30) - much fatter and thicker than a Marshall.

The funny think about this is that the Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret pedal is billed as a 'Marshall In A Box' - it even has two settings marked 'Super Lead' and 'Super Bass'. They're wrong... it should be marked Laney and Orange, exactly because it has that grittier, darker sound of those two amps and doesn't really sound like a Marshall at all.

TTBZ

Laney's have more of a lower mid girth but don't seem to quite nail that upper mid "kerrang" or roar that you get with a Marshall. I tried for the best part of 10 years to get that out of my GH50L before finally submitting and buying a Marshall good amps though and I'd own one again. It's more of a gritty sound and I found mine quite stiff/unforgiving to play which wasn't the most fun.