Aaah! Marshall GAS attack! But Orange...

[glasshand]

A Marshall Origin 20 has come up for sale in my area, at a pretty good price. This is extremely tempting. As long as I've paid attention to it, virtually all of my favorite artists have played Marshalls. I pretty much never watch a hard rock, punk, or metal concert video and don't see a Marshall. For what I play, hard rock/early punk, at smallish venues, it seems like the Origin 20 should sound just fine, particularly if I goose the front end a bit with a drive. And all this just after I was saying to my wife, "honestly, I don't need anything, but if I were going to get something else it would be a Marshall..."

But I already have the Orange CR120, which I'm extremely fond of. And with the right settings, it does a very credible Marshall-esque tone. And it has inbuilt reverb, which is nice.

But the Marshall is, well, a Marshall!

I keep going back and forth on the factors. The Orange sounds great, has onboard reverb, and I already have it. The Marshall is slightly (only slightly) smaller and somewhat lighter, which is not completely trivial since I live in a fourth-floor NYC walkup apartment and don't have a car. I love the sound of overdriven tubes, but then, tubes are another component you have to worry about a bit. The only real downside to the Orange is that it doesn't take a boost in the effects loop as well as I would like for solos (you don't get anywhere near as much volume boost as you would think or as I have found with other amps).

Stupid GAS...

[toomanycats]

I looked at the Marshall Origin 20 when investigating lower watt combos to use for smaller gigs. It ticks a lot of the boxes for me, but what made me ultimately shy away was the 10" speaker. As you correctly noted, the name and the sound of Marshall looms large in the world of hard rock and all of it's derivative music genres. I know that many people have famously used smaller speakers for recording, but for me there's nothing like a 12" Celestion for live performance. There's a depth, body, girth, whatever you want to call it, associated with a 12" driver like the Greenback, Vintage 30, Alnico Blue, etc., and it is a huge part of what we think of when imagining the classic "Marshall sound."

[glasshand]

I should have clarified, this is the head version that I'm looking at. (The Orange is a head also.) I have a 2x10 cabinet that I use at home and could bring to gigs if I needed, but usually there's a cabinet, usually with 12" speakers, already at the venue.

[deeaa]

The origin is a really good Marshall that really gives that old skool Bluesbreaker type tone with ease. Very nice crunch and semi-cleans and almost totally cleans. I almost bought one too. The speaker is small, but for lower volume playing it does a good job too. I only went with a Blackstar combo because I wanted two channels. Looking back, I shoulda taken the Origin and just use an OD for 2nd channel.

They are also available as heads, and paired with a nice 2x or 1x12" they can sound awesome. I don't particularly like the upright 2x12" Marshall sells for those, but plug it into some nice normal cab and daym. Like toomanycats said, only a real 12" driver will deliver those ultimate Marshall sounds.

I don't know if you've come across the other 20W new Marshalls..the SH and SC20 I mean...they are THE shit I tell you...finally you can get a Plexi or a 2203 in 20W and easy-to carry size and they actually sound exactly like the big ones. I tested my own Plexi head to head with the MiniPlexi and was tempted to swap...but as it's exactly the same I figured I'll keep the real thing since I just maintained it properly.

I would have any of those Marshalls any given day with pleasure. My preferred one is the mini JCM800 - I played that for a while thru in the local music store a nice Fortin 2x12" cabinet and some dude came to me afterwards and wanted to know how the hell did I get the sound of his dreams, he said that was rock at its purest. And it is. I have a Plexi/2203 but if I find some extra money some day and they get those in the local store again...I may cave in. There simply isn't a better rock amp IMO.

But yeah, the Origin 20 is right there with some of the best Marshall tones I've heard in ages. For bluesy rocking stuff it really sounds something totally different than most modern, cold, preamp-sounding amps I know.

[deeaa]

Ah! yes the head version, definitely! Go for it, man!

[glasshand]

I don't know if you've come across the other 20W new Marshalls..the SH and SC20 I mean...they are THE shit I tell you...finally you can get a Plexi or a 2203 in 20W and easy-to carry size and they actually sound exactly like the big ones. I tested my own Plexi head to head with the MiniPlexi and was tempted to swap...but as it's exactly the same I figured I'll keep the real thing since I just maintained it properly.

Yeah, I've looked at those too, and they look great, but they are also way more expensive. Of course, if I wanted to spend the money, I might just get the Mini Silver Jubilee!

On the cheaper side of things, I've messed around with the DSL series and been less than impressed. The "Classic Gain" channel is not gainy enough (maybe unless you max out gain and volume, which I've never gotten the chance to do) and the "Ultra Gain" channel starts off super-high gain, but is thin with the gain set lower and fizzy and compressed to hell with the gain set higher. It feels really weird that there is a big middle-gain gap between the channels. (All strictly IMO, of course.)

I used to have the SL-5C, and I really liked the sound, but the lack of an effects loop and the fact that it was a 45 lb. combo made it less than ideal for me.

[deeaa]

Yes, the mini heads are pretty expensive, made in England and all that...I dunno what they cost over there, but here the mini series are roughly twice the price of an Origin at ~400/800 respectively. And while the minis sound great, I don't think an Origin head sounds any less good than the closest mini counterpart which would probably be the SV20. In fact the Origin has one more preamp tube plus a master volume an as such is easier to dial sounds in with...those mini heads are astonishingly loud like their big brothas...the SV20 doesn't have a master volume and it really isn't an amp you can use at home even, it's even too loud for some bands with a 2x12".

I have yet to play a DSL, 2000, or TSL, or what have you that I liked. Like you indicated, they seem to go from too clean to way too driven just like that, there just isn't any of that old-skool Marshall sound there.

I don't really like preamp style sound that much, I want a sound that has that roundness, drive without much of the bzzz factor.

I had a JVM head for years, and it also suffered some from that problem...four channels and three modes for each, and I never used the red mode of any channel, almost only green modes, and even then just the 3 lowest gain channels.

And even at that, I had to mod it some...did the lesser compression mod by removing some caps, added a real choke, something else I forget what...and then instead of upping the gain I upped the gain to the phase inverter tube and I did get it sounding really great. I suppose I would still have and play that amp, but I quit playing in bands for years and it was just too much to have a halfstack around the house.

Now I've decided I'll never part with my plexi/2203 rig no matter what. If I don't use it any more some day, it goes into storage, period.
But I might indeed get me that mini JCM, and if I had some extra dough I would happily get an Origin 5 for my living room as well.

[golem]

Duplicate?

[golem]

I've only had the Origin 5. I got in trade for two pedals that I probably had $150 into (I don't remember). When Rob and I looked at the the internals the tubes had been swapped. I won't say it's the greatest amp I've ever played, but it sounds better than most 5 watt 8" speaker amps I've tried.

I haven't had the CR120 but I hear good things.

[Rollin Hand]

Almost every favourite recorded tone of mine comes from Marshalls. And yet I have never owned one. I get close through my modeler, and my Bandit can be made to sound Marshallic.

That said, a friend lent me his Valvestate, and it's pretty cool. And I am keeping my eyes open for a good price on a used DSL 20 head. The DSL would work nicely with my Greenback-loaded Peavey 1x12.