Marshall Studio Series Opinions

UPDATE Time!

I had the SC20C at jam night/rehearsal last evening. It sounded GREAT! It is definitely a "set it and forget it" kind of scenario and I am very pleased with it.

We are prepping for a small gig (4 songs) we are doing in October. I won't bore you with the back story but they are four Tragically Hip songs that we are doing. Two are clean and two are overdriven songs. The SC20C cleaned up very well with just my guitar (Gibson LP Special Plus) volume control. I had the bridge pickup full up and the neck pickup volume backed off. I selected the neck pickup for the cleaner songs and the bridge for the rockers! It worked out very well and sounded exceptionally good considering it was not only our first time back together after the lockdowns here, but also the first time playing two of the songs together.

For those of you "in the know" and for my Canuck brothers on here, the 4 songs we are doing are "Bobcaygeon", "Grace. Too", "Blow At High Dough" and "New Orleans Is Sinking".

 
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One thing I should say is that in the recent past I had a Marshall DSL40C that I really tried to like. I did some mods to get it to match what I thought it should sound like. I tried to tell myself that it sounded great and that it was just my perception that was somewhat skewed. In the end, I sold it and convinced myself that maybe a Marshall wasn't my best choice.

Well, lo and behold, this SC20C is the sound I have been looking for! I am so happy to have the tones that I have been hearing in my head! (Not voices! TONES!) :ROFLMAO:
 
ninjaking67 said:
Has anyone here got one of the Studio Series amps, either the SV20 or SC20?

I am seriously considering a trade for one. The online reviews and demos sound great but I am looking for some real world operating experience. Anybody?
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I just ordered an SV20H and SV212 about two days ago. The SV20H is on the road headed to my house. The SV212 is on back order. I might not get it until November. You are right both the SC20H and SV20H have it going on. Scaled down Plexi tone.
 
ninjaking67 said:
One thing I should say is that in the recent past I had a Marshall DSL40C that I really tried to like. I did some mods to get it to match what I thought it should sound like. I tried to tell myself that it sounded great and that it was just my perception that was somewhat skewed. In the end, I sold it and convinced myself that maybe a Marshall wasn't my best choice.

Well, lo and behold, this SC20C is the sound I have been looking for! I am so happy to have the tones that I have been hearing in my head! (Not voices! TONES!) :ROFLMAO:
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It's a long journey sometimes, but I'm glad to hear you fond something you like!!!!

I had a matching pair of DSL40C's (a 2015 and a 2016) and I used and gigged with both for a couple of years. I sold one (built a DSL40C head from a Mission Engineering kit) and gave the other away to a bandmate.

Live Rig 2019.jpg

The DSL40C - IMHO - is an amp that really doesn't "fit' in the traditional Marshall tonal spectrum. It actually has better clean tones than it does overdriven tones. Fitting both with an ECC823 made them both very useable and it is a modification that I do to every single DSL40C that comes across my workbench.

I liked the compactness (as opposed to a stack) and the power was more than enough for live use, but the gain channel had this "unusable range" right about where I wanted to use it (on Lead 2) and on the 'Green Channel' there just wasn't enough gain beyond the AC/DC-ish tones. I was able to get a decent live tone out of them and they were my main amps for several years, but I just felt like there was something missing somewhere, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Then, I went on a 'boutique amp kick' where I started playing all my colleague's really ultra expensive amps looking for 'that tone.' But what I experienced - repeatedly - was guys with a Trainwreck, McIntosh, Fargen, Two Rock, Friedmann, Park, Matchless and many others, would say, "Listen to that!!!!" and there was nothing remarkable there in the tone that they were raving about.

Guitars and amps in Bob's studio.jpg

On the extreme end of that spectrum, I was able to play a collector friend's 'Dumbleland Special' and to say that it was uber-ordinary would be an understatement. On the lower end of the spectrum, I tried vintage Mesa's, JCM800's, Engl's, Kemper, Selmer, Magnatone, Suhr, Soldano, XITS and just about every oddball amp you can name, including The Elroy, Kaos and Milkman.

None of them gave me what I was looking for, although some did have some pretty decent tones, none of them had anything even remotely worthy of their price tag.

I was in a position where I needed an amp for work and I wanted to get a head/combo because it was lighter. Eventually, I found the Marshall Origin to be a great pedal platform and with the right combo, I could get a decent sound out of it - but it was still short of what I was "hearing in my head" as you have said in your post.

Finally, I found Australian Amp Guru Jason Tong. Jason did his research on how many famous makers modified their amps (like the Jose Arredondo diode mod) and he developed a modification for the Origin that converts the FX Loop Tube to an extra gain stage ( like Tim Caswell's #39 JCM800) and then converts the amp to a SS FX Loop.

Jason's mod was the first time I have ever heard an amp deliver the "sound in my head" without FX pedals. It's taken a few months to gather the parts and our esteemed amp guru @syscokid will be performing the mods, but it's nice to finally know that what I was hearing wasn't impossible to find....

P.S. Listen to Jason's mods on the SCH-20!!!!

 
Robert Herndon said:
P.S. Listen to Jason's mods on the SCH-20!!!!
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Honestly, in the comparison clips presented in the video, I actually preferred the sound of the stock head, versus the modified head.

Now, it is entirely possible that if I had the modified head and had opportunity to play around with it and make more back and forth comparisons with different settings, I would see the value in the mod and much prefer it. As it is, I’m only hearing via YouTube; real life can be very different.

But, based solely off the clips presented, each of the modified sound samples seemed to progressively take a bit more of the edge out of the sound, to my ears. I mean it didn‘t sound bad! By itself, I would probably say it sounds good. But, in a direct comparison of only the samples presented, I think I have to give the nod to the stock head.

Of course, as I always stress, music is very individual and it is completely unrealistic (and arrogant) to expect that we all will or should have the same tastes and preferences in sound. There is no right and wrong, here! If you like the sound of the mods, go for it!
 
smitty_p said:
Honestly, in the comparison clips presented in the video, I actually preferred the sound of the stock head, versus the modified head.

Now, it is entirely possible that if I had the modified head and had opportunity to play around with it and make more back and forth comparisons with different settings, I would see the value in the mod and much prefer it. As it is, I’m only hearing via YouTube; real life can be very different.

But, based solely off the clips presented, each of the modified sound samples seemed to progressively take a bit more of the edge out of the sound, to my ears. I mean it didn‘t sound bad! By itself, I would probably say it sounds good. But, in a direct comparison of only the samples presented, I think I have to give the nod to the stock head.

Of course, as I always stress, music is very individual and it is completely unrealistic (and arrogant) to expect that we all will or should have the same tastes and preferences in sound. There is no right and wrong, here! If you like the sound of the mods, go for it!
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Some people love the Marshall Origin because it produces virtually no gain in stock form...
 
Robert Herndon said:
Some people love the Marshall Origin because it produces virtually no gain in stock form...
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I’m sure. There are a lot of tonal opportunities in the world today, aren’t there!

In reviewing my above post, I will say that I can conceive of situations where the Tong mods would actually be preferable to the stock sound. If I had an amp with these mods, I’d like a way to foot switch between the mods and the stock sound.
 
smitty_p said:
I’m sure. There are a lot of tonal opportunities in the world today, aren’t there!

In reviewing my above post, I will say that I can conceive of situations where the Tong mods would actually be preferable to the stock sound. If I had an amp with these mods, I’d like a way to foot switch between the mods and the stock sound.
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The Origin Mods are footswitchable.
 
@smitty - Thought you might get a kick out of this....

Last night, we recorded a breakout CD for a Los Angeles artist. There were a few covers on the CD. but one in particular that I liked was Adam Lamberts 'Whataya Want From me.' You probably know that this was written by the team of Pink/Shellback and Max Martin, and it's a really great song. Everything we were doing on this record was very "hip" as in modern pop...Think Arianna Grande and Britney Spears. I honestly felt like 'Whataya Want From Me' was just dragging along. For one thing, the song has no guitar solo, except when Adam performed it with Queen and even then, it's just not anything near the song's hidden potential.

During one of the breaks, we were chatting and the subject of the lack of a solo in the song came up and I was asked for input. I answered, "The song, in it's original form, really doesn't lend itself to a solo. It's very reserved musically and a killer solo is going to stick out in a bad way. Honestly, the entire song needs to be re-recorded...."

The producer asked me, "What would you do to it?"

I said, "Well, I would dial in a very hard, mid-range guitar for the rhythm, while being faithful to the original arrangement. For the solo, I would probably just ad-lib something....make it sound closer to a live club recording and not something over-produced that's hard to pull off live with a three or four piece band. I'd also play the guitar and bass parts differently throughout the song to give it a more spontaneous feel."

A few minutes later, they told me this over the intercom, "Hey, Rob. Jeff (producer du jour) likes your ideas. Just smoke this track. You dial in whatever you want. You play whatever you want. We are also scrapping the synthesizer bass lines. I want you to play the bass on this track tool. Just go balls out on this."

I was using YelloStrat for the entire project (Custom DiMarzio 16.5k/44awg/A9 Neanderthal Bridge) and I just pulled up a screenshot of my SOP settings (saved on my phone) from the Steinberg Amp Rack VST and dialed in a super basic tone in Blue Cat Destructor. My 'tone' is basically a hot rodded JCM 800/2204 with a mid range hump in the EQ and a virtual noise gate. A 4x12" cabinet is used (in the simulation) with a virtual Neumann U87 off-axis and a virtual Royer 121 in the virtual room. I use a simple virtual delay set to 50ms. That's it. Super basic.

For the intro, I intentionally played it in a different register than the original recording to give it a more 'naked feel' and make it more unique. I didn't change any of my 'virtual amp settings' for the clean parts - I just rolled the volume off to about 3 on the pointer and had the engineer boost the volume.

So, I proceed to lay the rhythm down in one take, followed by the solo, also in one take, after a few minutes of noodling around to get a feel for what would sound good. At the end of the solo, the engineer added a brief touch of onboard delay set to .489Ms with 3 repeats at -11Db. That rate is (basically) dotted 1/8 notes, based on the 92bpm of the song.

So, the producer and the artist come back from a break and we play the track for them, totally naked without vocals. I was watching the artist and she had this wild look on her face - one that I couldn't tell was good or bad. They whispered for a few minutes and then the artist said, "I absolutely love this!!! I had no idea this song could sound like this!!!! I need to re-track the vocals!!!!"

I took a WAV 32Bit Float file home of the song and I plan on recording my own version of it just to see if it would be a good addition to my own CD.

Here's the song as we recorded it.

https://soundcloud.com/id%3Drobert-h-herndon%252Fwhataya-want-from-me-studio-outtake-improvised-solo-08-22-2021%3Btrack_id%3D1110887815

@Kerry Brown
 
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Robert Herndon said:
@smitty - Thought you might get a kick out of this....

Last night, we recorded a breakout CD for a Los Angeles artist. There were a few covers on the CD. but one in particular that I liked was Adam Lamberts 'Whataya Want From me.' You probably know that this was written by the team of Pink/Shellback and Max Martin, and it's a really great song. Everything we were doing on this record was very "hip" as in modern pop...Think Arianna Grande and Britney Spears. I honestly felt like 'Whataya Want From Me' was just dragging along. For one thing, the song has no guitar solo, except when Adam performed it with Queen and even then, it's just not anything near the song's hidden potential.

During one of the breaks, we were chatting and the subject of the lack of a solo in the song came up and I was asked for input. I answered, "The song, in it's original form, really doesn't lend itself to a solo. It's very reserved musically and a killer solo is going to stick out in a bad way. Honestly, the entire song needs to be re-recorded...."

The producer asked me, "What would you do to it?"

I said, "Well, I would dial in a very hard, mid-range guitar for the rhythm, while being faithful to the original arrangement. For the solo, I would probably just ad-lib something....make it sound closer to a live club recording and not something over-produced that's hard to pull off live with a three or four piece band. I'd also play the guitar and bass parts differently throughout the song to give it a more spontaneous feel."

A few minutes later, they told me this over the intercom, "Hey, Rob. Jeff (producer du jour) likes your ideas. Just smoke this track. You dial in whatever you want. You play whatever you want. We are also scrapping the synthesizer bass lines. I want you to play the bass on this track tool. Just go balls out on this."

I was using YelloStrat for the entire project (Custom DiMarzio 16.5k/44awg/A9 Neanderthal Bridge) and I just pulled up a screenshot of my SOP settings (saved on my phone) from the Steinberg Amp Rack VST and dialed in a super basic tone in Blue Cat Destructor. My 'tone' is basically a hot rodded JCM 800/2204 with a mid range hump in the EQ and a virtual noise gate. A 4x12" cabinet is used (in the simulation) with a virtual Neumann U87 off-axis and a virtual Royer 121 in the virtual room. I use a simple virtual delay set to 50ms. That's it. Super basic.

For the intro, I intentionally played it in a different register than the original recording to give it a more 'naked feel' and make it more unique. I didn't change any of my 'virtual amp settings' for the clean parts - I just rolled the volume off to about 3 on the pointer and had the engineer boost the volume.

So, I proceed to lay the rhythm down in one take, followed by the solo, also in one take, after a few minutes of noodling around to get a feel for what would sound good. At the end of the solo, the engineer added a brief touch of onboard delay set to .489Ms with 3 repeats at -11Db. That rate is (basically) dotted 1/8 notes, based on the 92bpm of the song.

So, the producer and the artist come back from a break and we play the track for them, totally naked without vocals. I was watching the artist and she had this wild look on her face - one that I couldn't tell was good or bad. They whispered for a few minutes and then the artist said, "I absolutely love this!!! I had no idea this song could sound like this!!!! I need to re-track the vocals!!!!"

I took a WAV 32Bit Float file home of the song and I plan on recording my own version of it just to see if it would be a good addition to my own CD.

Here's the song as we recorded it.

https://soundcloud.com/id%3Drobert-h-herndon%252Fwhataya-want-from-me-studio-outtake-improvised-solo-08-22-2021%3Btrack_id%3D1110887815
Click to expand...
Sounds great Robert
:beers:
 
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