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I've played guitar for 41 years. I'm a lead guitarist and lead singer, but don't mind playing rhythm to help the band out. I was in a Country Western band about 8 years ago which was fun, doing Top 40 C/W. I've played the blues in bars, which is great fun, and consider myself a bluesman first. I'm a songwriter and I've recorded demos of about 100 of my songs for publication/albums in the future. I play primarily in church now, keeping my chops up, 20 years of that so far! But when I retire in a few years I plan to perform locally and/or as far as it will take me.



I paid $2,634 for this half stack in 1990. Bought it new at Ace Music in Santa Monica. That was as much a chunk of change then as it is now, but I am REALLY glad I bought it and kept it.

What I like the most about this amp is it has an acoustic/airy sound to it at lower volumes and acoustic guitars w/ pickups sound excellent through it. Even when you crank it up with your Strat or Les Paul, it seems to have that quality to it, which I love. The loudest I've played it is at 7, but look forward to cranking it up to 10 some time in the future. It has that great solid chunky sound, and it screams like a banshee when you want it to. Plus, it has an amazing unpredictable element to it because of its tubes. It's really a fine instrument, very high quality, and any kind of music you play sounds fantastic through it. Use the Marshall Power Brake and you can crank it up as far as you want and attnuate it down to the speakers so you get that loud tube tone but save your ears.

Well, it IS quite heavy. Lugging it to gigs over and over makes you wish you had a roadie to do it instead. But I think that's the price of its great, unbeatable sound. I do think metal jacks would have been better than the plastic ones, which are cheesy. I suppose one could replace them if needed. The plastic channel/reverb foot pedal switch that came with the unit was crap, but the steel Marshall pedal switch I replaced it with is much better.

This thing is built to last and has lasted. I've had it for 16 years now and love it as much as when I first bought it new. It's very versatile and just a blast to use. Very solid construction and high quality.

I very much like the dual channel, footswitchable, allowing you to dial in your distortion on one channel and punch in and out of your clean channel. It's a world class amp and I hope to tour the world with it some day.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com