Razorjack said:
No love for the TSL on here then?
I like the TSL. I used to have the 60 watt head. It sounded great once I re-biased it and replaced the preamp tubes. They come from the factory with genuinely good power tubes- the winged C Svetlanas- but they're biased pretty cold. The stock preamp tubes are thin and fizzy. JJ ECC83s tamed the highs and fattened the amp up quite a bit. Combined with properly biased EL34s in the power section, it was a growly, percussive beast.
Even though they're high gainers, they're still Marshalls, and they suffer from the same disadvantage every Marshall I've ever used does- they sound neutered at low volumes. They're not a Dual Recto, 5150, or similar modern amp- you
have to push the power section and you need to crank up the mids and bass to really get heavy. They're bright and a little light on the bottom end, and scooping them makes them sound weak- you can't dial 'em in like you would a Recto, for example.
The plus side, though- they're extremely easy to bias. All you need is a multimeter; there's test points and bias pots easily acessable without pulling the chassis. All you have to do is take off the back panel. They need some work to get them sounding their best, but by "some work" I mean about 10 minutes and some preamp tubes. They're cool amps if you like the Marshall upper mid bite.
