how much I hate the TSL
- Thread starter LSD-Studio
- Start date
IronApe
Member
I've never really liked marshalls (although i haven't tried that many), but 4 years ago I saw Dissection here in Italy. Jon was playing his Les Paul Custom through a DSL, and his tone was absolutely fabulous!!! Guess it's all about a little tweaking, and a lot in the hands...
Yeah DSL's and TSL's might look and seem pretty much the same at first glance, but they are not. The TSL is a total piece of shit. The DSL is passable with a TS9 or a RAT. I actually played a DSL "Orange Crunch" Model once... Wasn't bad. But the gain stages are completely different in the TSL model. It's a piece of overpriced garbage. Just like the 900 was when it came out. Worthless amp for High Gain applications and overpriced no matter how you look at it. That's why I've played mostly Peavey's since 1988.
I had an old JCM 800 with drake transfomers..the 50 watt single channel....it was amazing..I also had a 100 watt silver Jubillee...not my thing...
I tried the new 4 channel JVM ...it's the typical modern marshall..alot of gain, thin sounding and definite solid state overtones....
I tried the new 4 channel JVM ...it's the typical modern marshall..alot of gain, thin sounding and definite solid state overtones....
You can get the thin/fizzy over tones out of it though. You've just got work on it for a while. I've probably spent about 5 or 6 hours just tweaking 1 Rhythm and 1 Lead preset on that thing. I think it's probably going to be better for live use and smaller project studios than anything.
that saying , I thought the new Vintage Modern and Kerry King amps were awesome...
The Kerry King is a beast .. the perfect jcm 800 for metal..It has kt-88's a built in gate and the front end is slammed with an onboard overdive ( actually an eq)...it is essentially a boosted 800 in one box....
The vintage modern can do Hendrix and Jimmy page with ease if thats your thing...
The Kerry King is a beast .. the perfect jcm 800 for metal..It has kt-88's a built in gate and the front end is slammed with an onboard overdive ( actually an eq)...it is essentially a boosted 800 in one box....
The vintage modern can do Hendrix and Jimmy page with ease if thats your thing...
cobhc
Amiga Enthusiast
I fail to see how that's the case when many thrash bands back in the day used the 900's, as well as some death metal bands. Always sounded great to me for that. Not a modern sound by any means, but fucking awesome for thrash tones.
You also mentioned Mike using one in that Carcass video, and it sounds fine to me tone wise.
Sure the 900 is fine, when you are running a RAT, Turbo RAT, Boss HM-2, or something of the like in front of it. I've gotten stuck playing a 900 live before. You throw something with better gain in front of it. That's all you CAN do. Tonally, the amp is fine. It's warm and has plenty of midrange bite. But the Gain is what it lacks. So, you get a good tone from the amp at about a 12 o'clock Gain setting and then throw something with a heavy distortion in front of it.
Personally, I don't like having to do that. That's why I like Peavey's and Madison's and so on. I can just plug straight in and go.
Loren Littlejohn
Lover of all boobage.
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TravisW
Member
Exactly correct. That's part of the reason that I'm using an old 5150 now. I had been running a JCM 900 4500, and after 12 o'clock, the gain knob becomes a "thin knob". I was boosting my signal with a Tube Screamer with the output jacked up all the way, and still wound up having to crank the amp to get some power tube breakup. You can hear what it sounded like at http://www.myspace.com/breakthe7thseal --it's the guitar on the right channel most of the time.
I did a relatively simple mod to the solid state section of the pre, which made it some bit better, but it still needed a fair amount of volume to really sound like itself. It was also ridiculously unforgiving if your right hand wasn't absolutely perfectly 'on'.
MetalJonesy
more metal, more booze!!!
Jeff...
you mentioned about the led being used for clipping/distortion purposes, and the red led requires higher voltage to clip. so if i wanted to mod such a thing (say dump a green LED in there) would i also need to change the resistor its coupled with? the reason i asked is that i remember my marshall valvestate using a red LED and it flashing whilst im on the OD channel, so im assuming its using the same method to create some of the distortion as the 4100?
you mentioned about the led being used for clipping/distortion purposes, and the red led requires higher voltage to clip. so if i wanted to mod such a thing (say dump a green LED in there) would i also need to change the resistor its coupled with? the reason i asked is that i remember my marshall valvestate using a red LED and it flashing whilst im on the OD channel, so im assuming its using the same method to create some of the distortion as the 4100?
Torniojaws
They call me Juha
JCM900? Not enough gain?
Even the crappy 4000-series JCM900's had more than usable amounts of gain, not to mention the SL-X. Did you guys turn both gain knobs when tweaking them? Because the amp has two of them which affect each other. First you need to dime the first gain knob to get the amp to real gain 5/10, and then you use the second gain knob to reach the remaining gain range, which takes you to death metal territory.
If you have the first gain at 5/10 of its range, and then the second gain knob at say 6/10 of it's gain range, your real gain will be just over 5/10 overall. Maybe that's why a lot of people think it doesn't have enough gain, because they are barely halfway of the amp's max gain range. Personally I have the first gain at 10/10 and the second gain at 8/10 (or 18/20, as the amp front says) with a Bad Monkey overdrive in front of my SL-X 2500.
Even the crappy 4000-series JCM900's had more than usable amounts of gain, not to mention the SL-X. Did you guys turn both gain knobs when tweaking them? Because the amp has two of them which affect each other. First you need to dime the first gain knob to get the amp to real gain 5/10, and then you use the second gain knob to reach the remaining gain range, which takes you to death metal territory.
If you have the first gain at 5/10 of its range, and then the second gain knob at say 6/10 of it's gain range, your real gain will be just over 5/10 overall. Maybe that's why a lot of people think it doesn't have enough gain, because they are barely halfway of the amp's max gain range. Personally I have the first gain at 10/10 and the second gain at 8/10 (or 18/20, as the amp front says) with a Bad Monkey overdrive in front of my SL-X 2500.
MetalJonesy
more metal, more booze!!!
i had my 4100 for 4 odd years, and it was awful and id tried literally everything to make it sound good. The main thing is not due to the amount of gain, its just you could hardly eq the gain. and i was unable to get anything but a harsh and crunchy tone, however it DID have a really nice clean tone!!
Aaron Smith
Envisage Audio
The first tube amp I ever bought was a TSL, not long after I landed my first job and turned 18 (about four years ago). I'm not entirely sure why I knew I wanted a Marshall, but I wasn't playing metal back then, and the thing that attracted me to the TSL over the DSL was the fact that each channel had independent EQ sections. For a couple years I was pretty satisfied with the sounds I got from it, but as my writing became heavier and I began actually playing metal (rather than merely listening to it), I eventually became very unhappy with the utterly weak sounding palm muting tone I got from it, and I ended up selling it. A tube screamer helped the tone a bit, but not nearly enough...
At this point I do still think it's a fairly decent amp for rock rhythm guitar, but it lacks an awful lot of character that older, more classic Marshall amps will deliver. At one point I was serious about getting it biased to run 6L6s instead of the EL30s (thinking that it might sound heavier, haha), but there is no bias pot, and there are overlapping layers of circuit boards inside, making a bias job a HUGE pain in the ass. It seems that these days, Marshall is much more in the business of mass production and cost cutting, more than they are about building legitimately admirable products...
At this point I do still think it's a fairly decent amp for rock rhythm guitar, but it lacks an awful lot of character that older, more classic Marshall amps will deliver. At one point I was serious about getting it biased to run 6L6s instead of the EL30s (thinking that it might sound heavier, haha), but there is no bias pot, and there are overlapping layers of circuit boards inside, making a bias job a HUGE pain in the ass. It seems that these days, Marshall is much more in the business of mass production and cost cutting, more than they are about building legitimately admirable products...
JoeJackson
Member
MetalJonesy
more metal, more booze!!!
TravisW
Member
SL-X and Dual Reverb are two entirely different animals. The pre section of the SL-X is completely different from the Dual Reverb, and the controls are also completely different. The SL-X has plenty of gain, to be sure. The Dual Reverb, in stock form, has about enough usable gain for a pretty decent hard rock tone and anything beyond that becomes thin, clunky, and unusable.
