New Doug and Pat Show (old vs new Marshall with speaker/tube swap)

not_the_dj

New and really interesting vid from @TheDougandPatShow ;

 

matt1973

Interesting vid. They all sounded good to me but I'm a big fan of the 18w Marshall.

samzadgan

good video...the old one sounds so much better to start with. The new one just has so much high end to horrible sounding. After all the changes i guess the new one gets close, but not quite there...but good enough maybe. 

but it begs the question...when Marshall is re-issueing the amp...and I'm sure they have an old one at the factory to compare against, why would they make a re-issue that doesn't sound like the amp they are re-issueing? I get that the tubes and speaker swaps make amps sound similar, and those things may not be something that Marshall would put into new amps...but i'm sure they could make changes to the tones to cut out some of the high end and get it out of fizz territory...so when someone does buy the new one, they get something that similar to the older one...

Voxman

Couldn't bear to watch. Had an original 2x10 1958, nearly 30 yrs ago at a time when I knew nothing about rare amps, didn't know what I had, and stupidly sold it to Vintage and Rare for £200...saw me coming!! Biggest gear faux pas of my life!

ChrisMusic

Great, and entertaining video from Doug and Pat (as always), I really look forward to them.

That was a very educational set of clips, I was astounded at the difference in tone, and enjoyed the valve swap, very interesting, especially after some of my recent questions on amp tone & design.  Still nowhere near as sweet though.

Top marks I reckon to D&P, thanks for posting this not_the_dj.

richardhomer

It seems to my ears that nothing made made the newer amp sound as good as the old one.

I suppose it's conceivable that if Marshall used an old one to develop the reissue that the sample they had was voiced brighter than the one Doug and Pat used for the comparison. Or perhaps they felt a brighter sound was more in tune with modern players' tastes and was therefore likely to be a better seller?

I have little personal experience of vintage amps - but I was genuinely surprised how different they sounded.

ThePrettyDamned

The old one was consistently nicer sounding.

As in, the amp itself, not the speaker.

Maybe it's component drift? So if you measures each part, you'd get a slightly different circuit to what it once was?

Would love to hear some amp tech thoughts.

p90fool

samzadgan;457869" said:

good video...the old one sounds so much better to start with. The new one just has so much high end to horrible sounding. After all the changes i guess the new one gets close, but not quite there...but good enough maybe. 

but it begs the question...when Marshall is re-issueing the amp...and I'm sure they have an old one at the factory to compare against, why would they make a re-issue that doesn't sound like the amp they are re-issueing? I get that the tubes and speaker swaps make amps sound similar, and those things may not be something that Marshall would put into new amps...but i'm sure they could make changes to the tones to cut out some of the high end and get it out of fizz territory...so when someone does buy the new one, they get something that similar to the older one...

All they can realistically be expected to do is to reissue the circuit. Altering the component values to match one particular 50 year old example in a shed in Portland Oregon opens a whole can of worms.

For all we know the Doug and Pat amp is an extremely dark example, and the reissue actually IS pretty typical, at least of how most of them would've sounded when new.

I'm also never a fan of having the knobs set the same when comparing amps, as a minor difference in measured value of a single £4 pot can send you off barking up all sorts of trees regarding NOS valves, speaker break-in, grill cloth thickness and all that stuff, when for all we know the two amps might have sounded totally identical if they'd simply dialled the tone knob on the reissue back to eight.

If you had the two amps side by side in your house wouldn't that have been the first thing you tried?

ThePrettyDamned

^ actually, yeah, that's a good point. If bringing the tone back a bit gives the same sound, that potentially means the reissue is better because it's more capable.

ICBM

I think the conclusion is accurate and consistent with all the vintage and reissue Marshalls I've worked on (both PCB and hand wired). The reissues are consistently brighter sounding and edgier - not always a lot, but it is there, and it's not the valves or speakers. I've also done that same A/B test of running a reissue fitted with old valves through old speakers and an old one with new valves through new speakers.

It's not just variation in pot tolerances or tapers, the same is true at any setting. I haven't yet gone as far as to swap output transformers to see if it's that - I doubt it, having also played plenty of old amps with replacement transformers. If it isn't, my best guess would be the coupling caps.

It's not a huge difference though, and it *can* be compensated for to a large extent by deliberately setting the amps differently. The reissues are very nice amps - including the PCB ones - and if you hear one without a real vintage example next to it, you probably wouldn't be aware of the difference.

p90fool

@ICBM that's my experience too, though I wonder whether there is a tendency for old amps to naturally darken with age and that a fairly accurate reissue will sound pretty much the same as an old amp would have 50 years ago?

My first non-MV Marshalls were only a couple of years old when I bought them, and when I started using reissues a few decades later the memories came flooding back.
Obviously it's too long a time to make an accurate comparison but tonally they felt absolutely "right" to someone who was using the originals when they were nearly new.

p90fool

In fact call yourself an engineer? Make us a time machine dammit!

ICBM

lol

I think you're right - because among the reissue amps I have played, the oldest ones which have had the most use do sound the closest to the old ones. There was a particular early Fender '65 Twin Reissue I worked on a couple of years ago, which had clearly been hammered for most of its life, and looked so like an original that I thought it was until I turned it round and saw the modern back panel - and it sounded pretty much exactly like one, to my ears… with stock speakers and modern valves.

The appearance changes too, even with much lighter use - when the Marshall reissues first came out I thought the vinyl looked wrong, compared to the old ones - just too new and shiny, and too soft somehow. Now if you see one of those same amps after twenty years it's amazing how accurate it is . I don't know whether it's just the subtle build-up of dirt and slight wear, or whether the vinyl actually hardens and changes texture - which it definitely could, the solvents and plasticisers in it are still slightly volatile.

Cacofonix

ICBM said:

I think the conclusion is accurate and consistent with all the vintage and reissue Marshalls I've worked on (both PCB and hand wired). The reissues are consistently brighter sounding and edgier - not always a lot, but it is there, and it's not the valves or speakers. I've also done that same A/B test of running a reissue fitted with old valves through old speakers and an old one with new valves through new speakers.

So which one are you, Doug or Pat?

ICBM

Hamish.

ThePrettyDamned

On a side note, I love these guys.  I'd love to meet them and say hi. 

ThePrettyDamned

Then rob them silly HA

Moltisanti

it seems like a nice way to spend your later years, i sense that some smelly stuff might get smoked in that pipe too

samzadgan

ThePrettyDamned said:

Then rob them silly HA

you get the amps...i'll get the guitars!