Marshall JVM410C

I've been playing electric guitar for over 50 years; this amp is what I've always wanted in the back of my mind: Sound wise it covers every corner of every style I've ever played be it teeny pop or thrash metal with some Jazz thrown in between. It's versatile to say the least; The clean sound has that Fender in-your-face kind of spank to it while the Marshall sounds, in varying degrees of distortion, have a bite I've never encountered in amps that I've played in the past. The number of knobs may be bewildering at first but really most get sorted out by intuition as soon as you plug in. Clean sounds for Jazz and Country music sound terrific, as a matter of fact glancing at the electric schematic, I notice that the clean channel is wired the same way classic Fender amps are. For more gain you would go to the Crunch and Overdrive 1 & 2 channels. On the extreme level there's enough gain here to turn the sound into a swarming beehive; it gets difficult to discern single notes. So, metal players, forget about your external distortion pedals there's no need for them with this amp.

Flip side:

- The weight! As already the box says: "This is a two-man lift."
- The digital reverb sounds tinny and with no controls to shape it