I swore off modeling amps a while ago, and even posted that I wasn't keen on the Marshall Code series, but the early reviews and clips sounded really awesome and the 1x12 combo version was only 249 bucks, so I took the plunge. Well, it arrived via FedEx yesterday.
My first impressions are very good. It is a 50 watt solid state/digital preamp 1-12 combo. Weighs about 35 pounds. Made in Vietnam, like many of Marshall latest 'lower end' stuff in recent years. Build quality is pretty good for 250 bucks, but you can see in the pics that there are no corner protectors, no grill piping, and so on. It is a closed back cabinet, and the back board is some sort of strong fiberboard, rather than MDF or plywood. No idea what the chassis is made of, perhaps old Chinese newspapers and glue. The tolex is more of a rubbery material cover and not actually tolex. No idea about the guts and speaker inside, other than they work and can make loud noises just fine. Anyway, it looks decent enough and is destined for my music room, so road worthiness isn't a concern. Has iPod in, headphone out, USB in so you can connect it to stuff.
The sounds are surprisingly nice...and some of them are downright fantastic. My playing isn't so good right now, with the tendon tumor thing, but I had to give it a bit of a workout as best as I could. The amp is similar to other modelers out there, you have preFx, pre-amp, power-amp, mod effects, and cab functions that can be mixed and matched. The amps of significance include mostly marshall amps, but there are a boogie like model and a blackface fender and a 50's tweed sounding amp in there too. The marshall preamp models are the JTM45, the Plexi, the Bluesbreaker, the Jubilee, JCM800, DSL, and the JVM. This includes models of a couple of different channels for some of these amps. The power amp section includes a 100 watt marshall EL34, a 30 watt 5881 marshall, a class A 30 watt EL84, and a Fender style 100 watt 6L6 class A/B. I turned off all the Fx and spent an hour or two pairing up different amp pre and power sections, and this produced some awesome tones. The plexi is fantastic, as is the JTM45. The jubilee is amazing. Heck, they are all really good models of the original amps (I've played through the originals, well, reissues in many cases, but I know what a JTM45 sounds like). The presets, like all modelers, are a little over the top, but you can edit patches to create some great marshall style tones using just the pre-power-cab settings. There are a lot of great sounds in this amp. A really impressive thing for the money.
I ran a US strat with classic 50's and a Gbison SG with classic 57s through it and both sounded excellent on the stripped down patches. Oh, the FX's sound good, but they are pretty limited. Reverb, delay, flange, phase, chorus, pitch shift and noise gate and the mod fx. The pre effects include three stomp box distortions and an autowah and compressor. Nothing too fancy or anything that really stands out, but the fx are usable.
It has a lot of cool stuff, like Bluetooth so you can edit patches on an iPad/iphone, save them in your phone, then upload them to any code amp. You can also backup patches you made on the amp onto your phone or computer. Editing is a lot faster with the phone app compared to the knobs/menu system on the amp.
Now for some negatives. I wish it had included a footswitch, but you have to pay around 70 bucks extra for a footswitch that can store 36 presets "off the amp", basically acting like expanded user memory. This also has a tap tempo switch that would be nice to have. I don't need the storage feature, but it still would be nice to have. I also thing as the presence and resonance knobs are really an important part of a lot of marshall sounds, there should be knobs for these on the amp. As it is now, these are buried in the power amp editing block, and are not super easy to get to unless you are using the phone ap. Finally, although the amp has some good models of marshall amps, it seems they didn't dig too deep in the marshall history. For example, they have one model for a plexi preamp. It would be an epic amp if it had stuff like channel jumped plexi, narrow plexi, early vs late circuits, etc. A lot of stuff is also missing like super leads, MKI, MKII, JCM900, country club, etc. Marshall made a ton of different amps, and you would expect a marshall modeler would include more marshall details. I don't think this amp has any more marshall stuff than my old line 6 flextone, although it does sound a lot better. I guess a few good sounding models is better than a lot of bad ones.
My first impressions are very good. It is a 50 watt solid state/digital preamp 1-12 combo. Weighs about 35 pounds. Made in Vietnam, like many of Marshall latest 'lower end' stuff in recent years. Build quality is pretty good for 250 bucks, but you can see in the pics that there are no corner protectors, no grill piping, and so on. It is a closed back cabinet, and the back board is some sort of strong fiberboard, rather than MDF or plywood. No idea what the chassis is made of, perhaps old Chinese newspapers and glue. The tolex is more of a rubbery material cover and not actually tolex. No idea about the guts and speaker inside, other than they work and can make loud noises just fine. Anyway, it looks decent enough and is destined for my music room, so road worthiness isn't a concern. Has iPod in, headphone out, USB in so you can connect it to stuff.
The sounds are surprisingly nice...and some of them are downright fantastic. My playing isn't so good right now, with the tendon tumor thing, but I had to give it a bit of a workout as best as I could. The amp is similar to other modelers out there, you have preFx, pre-amp, power-amp, mod effects, and cab functions that can be mixed and matched. The amps of significance include mostly marshall amps, but there are a boogie like model and a blackface fender and a 50's tweed sounding amp in there too. The marshall preamp models are the JTM45, the Plexi, the Bluesbreaker, the Jubilee, JCM800, DSL, and the JVM. This includes models of a couple of different channels for some of these amps. The power amp section includes a 100 watt marshall EL34, a 30 watt 5881 marshall, a class A 30 watt EL84, and a Fender style 100 watt 6L6 class A/B. I turned off all the Fx and spent an hour or two pairing up different amp pre and power sections, and this produced some awesome tones. The plexi is fantastic, as is the JTM45. The jubilee is amazing. Heck, they are all really good models of the original amps (I've played through the originals, well, reissues in many cases, but I know what a JTM45 sounds like). The presets, like all modelers, are a little over the top, but you can edit patches to create some great marshall style tones using just the pre-power-cab settings. There are a lot of great sounds in this amp. A really impressive thing for the money.
I ran a US strat with classic 50's and a Gbison SG with classic 57s through it and both sounded excellent on the stripped down patches. Oh, the FX's sound good, but they are pretty limited. Reverb, delay, flange, phase, chorus, pitch shift and noise gate and the mod fx. The pre effects include three stomp box distortions and an autowah and compressor. Nothing too fancy or anything that really stands out, but the fx are usable.It has a lot of cool stuff, like Bluetooth so you can edit patches on an iPad/iphone, save them in your phone, then upload them to any code amp. You can also backup patches you made on the amp onto your phone or computer. Editing is a lot faster with the phone app compared to the knobs/menu system on the amp.
Now for some negatives. I wish it had included a footswitch, but you have to pay around 70 bucks extra for a footswitch that can store 36 presets "off the amp", basically acting like expanded user memory. This also has a tap tempo switch that would be nice to have. I don't need the storage feature, but it still would be nice to have. I also thing as the presence and resonance knobs are really an important part of a lot of marshall sounds, there should be knobs for these on the amp. As it is now, these are buried in the power amp editing block, and are not super easy to get to unless you are using the phone ap. Finally, although the amp has some good models of marshall amps, it seems they didn't dig too deep in the marshall history. For example, they have one model for a plexi preamp. It would be an epic amp if it had stuff like channel jumped plexi, narrow plexi, early vs late circuits, etc. A lot of stuff is also missing like super leads, MKI, MKII, JCM900, country club, etc. Marshall made a ton of different amps, and you would expect a marshall modeler would include more marshall details. I don't think this amp has any more marshall stuff than my old line 6 flextone, although it does sound a lot better. I guess a few good sounding models is better than a lot of bad ones.
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. They have been scarce, although SW just got some in.
