October 03, 2009

By Robert Renman - www.dolphinstreet.com

Marshall MA Amps

Marshall has a new series of amps out called the MA Series. They are entry level all tube amps, so they will cost less and have fewer bells and whistles than other Marshall amps like the JVM or VM amps, while still not sacrificing tone. Classic Marshall tone in a simple, affordable way. Sounds like a great idea to me!

There are 50 watt and 100 watt combos, and 50 watt and 100 watts heads available. All models have the same features and controls.

The amps have 2 channels, clean and overdrive. There is also a switch for boosted overdrive, which is almost like having a 3rd channel.

The clean channel has eq for bass, treble, middle and volume.

The overdrive channel has eq for crunch balance, gain, bass, middle, treble, volume.

The master section consists of reverb, resonance and presence.

This amp doesn't use digital reverb - it comes with a spring reverb instead.

There is an effects loop available as well, and the MA amps also come with a 2 way footswitch.

The boosted overdrive switch will take the overdriven tone into higher gain territory for solos and heavy riffs, a nice feature and it makes the amp very versatile for gigging musicians. The included footswitch will let you switch between clean and overdrive, as well as between normal overdrive and boosted overdrive.

On the rear panel, you will find speaker outputs, effects loop and the amp uses ECC83 preamp tubes and EL34 power tubes.

This is an interesting move by Marshall. I think it is a good move, since the good sounding powerful tube amps by Marshall tend to be quite expensive, until now, that is. So much are they? Well, I wish I knew. At the time of writing, I have not found any pricing information, so keep your eyes peeled on the online guitar stores or ask your local dealer.

See also the product page for the Marshall MA amps.

By Robert Renman - www.dolphinstreet.com

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