MirrorProfiles
Rock Star
- Messages
- 3,387
Cliff’s 2204 information seems a little off to me. There are two versions of a 2204, but it’s only the very early 1976 ones that are like a Plexi circuit with a master volume. Reception on those was lukewarm and the classic cascaded channels+cold clipper circuit took over. All 2203’s have the cascaded channels and cold clipper.
There were several amps in the JMP and JCM800 lines but MOST of the time each different circuit has its own model number (1959/1987/1992/1986/2203/2204/2150/2144/2205/2210/2159/2187). There’s a few i’m missing like the Artistes and Lead and Bass models too. Some of them had circuit tweaks/evolutions over the years. Marshall only ever sold one version of a 2204 at a time, and the circuit remained the same ever since that change in 1976 (besides components changing brands).
2203’s also stayed the same besides the filtering which started to change around 1985 (in the horizontal input era).
FWIW you can get a 2203 by using the 2204 and tinkering with voltages and negative feedback. The main difference in tone between them is because a 2204 has half the NFB of a 2203 (which seems like a mistake to me, Marshall should have swapped a resistor value in the NFB circuit to account for the power section being half the power). I’ve matched it to my 2203 easily just making small tweaks.
There were several amps in the JMP and JCM800 lines but MOST of the time each different circuit has its own model number (1959/1987/1992/1986/2203/2204/2150/2144/2205/2210/2159/2187). There’s a few i’m missing like the Artistes and Lead and Bass models too. Some of them had circuit tweaks/evolutions over the years. Marshall only ever sold one version of a 2204 at a time, and the circuit remained the same ever since that change in 1976 (besides components changing brands).
2203’s also stayed the same besides the filtering which started to change around 1985 (in the horizontal input era).
FWIW you can get a 2203 by using the 2204 and tinkering with voltages and negative feedback. The main difference in tone between them is because a 2204 has half the NFB of a 2203 (which seems like a mistake to me, Marshall should have swapped a resistor value in the NFB circuit to account for the power section being half the power). I’ve matched it to my 2203 easily just making small tweaks.
