MirrorProfiles
Rock Star
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- 3,243
Bought this one off my tech. Started life as a 1987x, which he modded to a stock 2204. Years later, he did the JEL mods with each tweak on a seperately switch.
When I planned on buying it, I decided that I don’t need the stock 2204 sound as I have that pretty well covered, so I decided to hard wire the JEL mods in place and use the switches for additional mods.
The underlying circuit is the JEL, and then the switches:
- coupling cap ( 0.02uF vs 0.0022uF) to filter more or less bass early in the preamp. Can go for a more fat sound, or more tight and modern
- gain boost (JEL circuit attenuates after a gain stage, this has it unattenuated - sounds like more gain and bass)
- 3-way bright cap switch (middle position is no bright cap). Super handy with varying levels of gain, as well as the different coupling cap values.
- 3-way diode clipping (symmetrical and asymmetrical).
- tone switch, revoiced the tone stack. Goes from Marshall to something pretty unique
- NFB switch, can have standard marshall negative feedback or have it wide open like a dual rectifier
- depth pot
The stock sound is like a perfectly tuned JCM800 with a bit more gain (stock they’re a bit lighter on gain than people usually think - this sounds more like a boosted 800).
LOVING the bright cap switch more than I thought - with the diode clipping things can get a bit to spanky and removing it can balance things out nicely. Conversely, on other settings having a strong bright cap really gives the Marshall kerrang.
No NFB seemed like a bit of a gamble as it means the presence and depth do nothing. The amp sounds really open and dynamic and the chugs just bloom out like this. It’s loose and wild in a good way.
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“When you’re ripe, you’ll bleed out of control”
as long as blackstar isn’t in your black book i’ll take it as a compliment!
