Guitar Combo

[John Bell]

I am looking into purchasing a new guitar combo for my rehearsal studio, as my guitarist has relocated his Marshall Valvestate combo to Wiltshire. Pete has left his vintage Marshall JMP 50w valve head and 4x12 cab, but it nails you to the far wall.

I am thinking on the lines of....

a Line 6 Spider III 75
www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/shop/flypage3/product_id/15566

or a Marshall MG50FX
www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/shop/flypage3/product_id/39865

The Spider is a wicked and very flexible tool but there are a quite a few complaints about reliability. It's well loud enough to gig with and has a fully emulated DI output.

The Marshall, is a new British designed and built, quality piece of kit. It will produce that great Marshall sound. but will not be as flexible as the Line 6.

Any thoughts from studio guitarists? Cheers, John.

[John Bell]

I finally went for a Marshall Haze MHZ40C, a 40w all valve combo with built in, very good but defeat-able effects and a 4x way foot controller.

www.dv247.com/guitars/marshall-mhz40c-haze40-all-valve-guitar-amp-combo--63790

After hearing the demonstration from the video, on the Digital Village web site, it won me over.

You can't beat the all valve Marshall sound, so why settle for imitations. My only gripe, is that this is a great English company, but this combo was made in India.
John.

[John Bell]

We tried out the HAZE at our last band rehearsal, but we didn't have the time to fully exploit all of it's sounds.

It produced a very nice warm tone with a semi-acoustic electric guitar and when we tried it with a Gibson SG, it was kin loud and fat. "Angus".

It will be a while before we take it on the road, but in the mean time, it is another very welcome tool in my studio's armory.
Cheers, John.

[John Bell]

"The Shed" now uses my Marshall Haze combo as his first choice in the studio and gets a great sound from it.

However, he still uses his Marshall Shred Master overdrive stomp box on the input, as he can't be asked to pre-program the 4x way foot controller to use the internal settings and effects.

The overall result is tracked without any elaborate processing, just using an SM57 and it fits in the mix just how we like it.

Cheers, John

[John Bell]

Following a quick rehearsal in the studio, prior to their Halloween gig at The Knaphill Working Mens Club in Woking, The Twentyfour Fighting Camels were very impressed with the Marshal Haze 40w combo.
So much so, that we used it live at the gig and Michael Coe is now actively looking for a Marshall combo to replace his Fender Hot Rod.

Rock on.