Until you’ve played through a plexi on full you can’t appreciate how magical it is. The story goes when Cream were on stage, that Eric and Jack were so loud, that there were times when they had been playing different songs to each other without realising as all they could hear were themselves. 😅 btw, I totally agree, the sound, drive and feel of this amp was responsible for a change in music style in the 60s.
A mate had l dunno what model (it had 2 KTs in the power section)... from the 70s. Rated at 50w RMS (l think) non master vol...that was loud thru a 4x12... so this thing must blister eardrums! We're not jealous at all Rhett!
"Back in the day." when I used to gig. I used 2 Plexis and 4 cabinets. I used to feel the air pressure from the cabinets under my feet, when I used to walk across the stage and also the air used to shake my jeans!
In 1969 my band opened for Iron Butterfly in Peoria Illinois and the backline, provided by a local music shop, were a Super Lead and a Bass 100 watt Marshall stack. My bass player and I were so enamoured by the sound, had to have them. We gigged with them, all across the midwest for several years, always running them on 9 or 10 on the volume. We used to demonstrate how much air they pushed by blowing out matches and eventually Zippo lighters. I sure miss those days and those amplifiers.
That was when you could go down to the Chrysler dealer and order a Road Runner with a dual quad 426 Hemi, a 4 speed, and a Dana 60 rear end with insane gears, and right across the street was a Sunoco or Pure station with 105 octane gas for 30¢ a gallon. And they gave you dishes and towels if you filled the tank! .....It was a time when giants walked the earth. Days of old when knights were bold. I miss all of it. Every last bit of it.
@@jpalberthoward9 being born at the start of globalization and entering the adult world being surveilled and manipulated; I’ll never be able to miss what you had. It sure sounds nice, though. Must be why there’s so much entertainment surrounding characters living in that time. Stay free. 🇺🇸
@@Ngcarson1337 "Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you've got till it's gone They paved paradise And put up a parking lot" Joni Mitchell
@@jpalberthoward9 I recall hearing that song growing up, but never truly knew its meaning until maybe my mid 20s. Circumstances cannot go back to how they were, but hopefully we can rebuild it back better when the time comes. I wish you and your family well in these changing times. *insert “the times are a changin’” music here*
@@Ngcarson1337 Understood. Time only moves in one direction, forward. The best thing we can do is to try and keep some of the stuff that was cool, and use the past as inspiration, and also as a blueprint for moving ahead.
Standing in front of Johnny Ramone and his stacks of Plexi cabs was the most ear/mind blistering event, a pure heavenly wall of sound in a club that held maybe 500 or so. 78-79 Road to Ruin tour.
I had the honour of touring Australia with AC/DC in 2001 Angus had 10 quads & his brother Malcolm had 9. All of them cranked. It was so loud during sound check, & then they turned the FOH PA on! A few months later I did the same with KISS where they had maybe 50+ quads in rows of terraced and stepped down the stage & only 2 quads were real. All their sound was coming from early red rack Line6 units. I now personally have a Marshall EL34 100/100 into 2 quads combined with a JMP-1. I cranked it up & walked out to my backyard with my guitar. The power, oh the sweet beautiful power. My neighbours must love me. 🤣🤣
AC/DC Let There Be Rock tour is still the loudest concert I've ever been to. Bucketin a scavenge is #2. The concert that pushed my ears over the edge. 60 now.
@castleanthrax1833 not playing mate. I was a roadie working for JANDS looking after their Gladiator Follow spots. As for equipment, I'm just a talentless bedroom hack with only aspirations of annoying my wife & neighbours & depriving them all of a quiet weekend. Although I probably should stop, my wife seems to go shopping a lot when I do & we just can't afford her spending to cope!? 🤣🤣🤣🤣
@llymphs I was on the Stiff Upper Lip Tour. We all had crew shirts made up by the tour manager with Stiff Lower Back printed on them. 🤣 As for loud. Man, I had earplugs & earmuffs on during sound checks. Even with the coms headset like the one used at airports, on I still had to use earplugs. And I'd seen Iron Maiden in the 80s & thought they were loud.
Yep. I have a Marshall 9200 Amp (200W RMS) but the Plexi has so much punch it pushes the air out of your lungs due to it's sound pressure. And it keeps sounding good as far as your ears still can manage to detect it. Quite the revelation that an amp that old is that good at that loudness.
I played through stereo Hiwatts with 4x12s for years doing everything from metal/grunge to post rock and ambient. It's a full body experience and something you just can't replicate any other way. My JCM 800 is just like you said here as well. Be careful of your hearing though! Thanks for all the great content :)
I had the bass version and took it to Marshalls in Milton Keynes for a revalve and service. At the end the engineer bench tested it and it was just over 130watts....
Never had a Plexi but I did have a duel showman and 2 Marshall 4x12 cabs. We played loud 3 or 4 nights a week in a storage unit for about a year back in the late 80s. My ears are still ringing.
Here I am can't imagine my Marshal dsl40cr past about 12 o clock... It blows me away how back in the day they would play 1-5 100 watt Marshall's at full volume... Even with ear protection they must all have to gone deaf and not able to hear for weeks after a show. I guess if you play at that volume once your good to go cause your deaf now
Thanks for the science/ music lesson Rhett! Former Airport Ground Crew here......at an executive Airport, but we could land Anything there, including the Super Guppy Cargo plane, which we did twice! Most Traffic was prop plane, and business jets, but anytime we had Heavy Stuff coming in, we wore in ear plugs, then used the headset attenuators over them. You'd get a pretty good roar anyway, but it always felt like your teeth and ribs were vibrating!
The reason for the plexi and other ridiculously hot amps was because almost all venues of the era were not equipped with a PA system capable of handling the music being played, and that’s only the venues with dedicated PAs a lot of didn’t have any, thus the need to bring the 100w amps to gig with (which is insane to think about in retrospect)
One of my favorite being a sound guy living in LA in the late 80s my roommates went to MIT and every morning before they went to school. They both had a stack of marshals and they had it crank them up to get that and then all I heard for an hour them doing their version of Eddie , jimmy, and other. I learned scales by just listening to them every single day for 6 months. Thank goodness I was able to go on tour. Just to save my ears. lol
Yeah my 1975 MkII 100 watt Super Lead. Phenomenal sounding. So loud yet so beautiful. And I only have a Marshall 1960 4x12. I replaced the speakers with Celestion Vintage 30's 16 ohms. Just incredible amps. I have been told mine is a Holy Grail. Never heard another one that sounds as good as mine does. It's my.main amp. Better than my Mesa Trem-O-Verb. Volume wise no comparison. Marshall at 2 is like the Mesa at full throttle. 🤟😎🤟 The Marshall comes to life, a living and breathing beast. And then it merges with your guitar and then you, the sum is far greater. If you've never had the experience you are truly missing out.
My brother had a jcm800 from the 80's and it was unreal how loud it was. Like razor blades to the ear drums. It was actually painful. Sounded amazing though.
back in the late 80s early 90s I had JCM 800 and quad cranked, my brother used a Peavey VTM60 cranked... we were in the same incredibly LOUD band 😂 ... man, those were the days
Nothing like a real old Marshall. I feel like the chainsaw is cutting through my chest, buddy has a 50w bass head like duane allman. Amazing... also we have an original blues breaker with the aluminum end caps. If your interested hit me up for more info. Cool video!
I have been big on the high gain, 6l6 "American circuit" for a while now... But i have to say that the overdriven tone of that el34 circuit is truly the greatest of all time!
And not mention controlling them. Specially with single coils like a strat for instance. Not an easy task. This is what also makes players like Jeff Beck and Jimmy page and Jimi Hendrix soo soo good. They needed to crank these things in order to get them to break up because there is no master volume, all the break up comes from the power section not the pre amp section like a lot of amps today. Just incredible.
i got an Orange Dual Dark 100 and two PPC412 cabs in 2016. re/tubed/biased in 2021. crazy loud. gonna check the db level later. never thought of that. but i know it’s dangerous and have stopped playing loudly as frequently as i used too. my ears would ring a lot the first year i got the amp.
Roger Daltrey said he Never heard himself sing. Townsend liked it LOUD. I think I remember from 6th grade health class 88db is the danger level or what you should avoid. ROCK AND ROLL!
85 dB is harmless for 8 hours, but it gets dangerous past that according to OSHA. Every 3 dB onward divide the safe time by 2. So 88 = 4 hours safe, 91 = 2 hours and so on until you get a fraction of a second at 140 dB which is about equivalent to .22 LR, quietest firearm caliber when not suppressed.
@@seanwalsh999 I hear that. I live in Cincinnati. 1979 I was working at Sears. Sears had Ticketron in the store. The store was to open at 10am. I got to work at 8am and people were starting to gather around the doors. I asked a co-worker what’s the deal. Said tickets for The Who concert coming up were going on sale that morning at Ticketron. By 10am a Lotta people had gathered outside waiting to get in. When they opened the doors the whole store shook from the crowd headed to the second floor Ticketron. Long long line. Sold out in record time. The line wove through the furniture department. They burned holes in furniture for the hell of it. The night of the concert eleven people died. Suffocated crushed by the crowd. The coliseum had only opened one set of doors for the show and late. The crowd heard the band sound check and thought they were missing the show and started pushing. Large crowd. Eleven kids gone too soon.
Btw that was the end of “Festival Seating.” First come first choice of how close to the stage was a big part of that night. From then on all concerts of any size are reserved seating.
@@gnawbabygnaw Thanks for sharing that story, very sad. Imagine if the second floor of the sears story had of collapsed with all those people on it, I guess it was built pretty well to handle that kind of load. To bad the venue wasn't designed as well.
Can confirm. That amp is Sooo loud before it even breaks up, then it keeps getting louder! I thought my house was going to break! Totally and completely awesome though!
That low mid punch is glorious and very physical. Back off the guitar volume and feel that funk. I have an old 72’ mk2 Superbass which I have used for over 30 years . Also quite loud ✨
I just got my 90’s Carvin X100B working last week. I haven’t measured the db range as of yet ,but I will . After watching this original video I got the app your using ,and love it. Been using it at gigs to test the room during sound check. It works perfect. Both as an analyzer ,and a db meter. Anyhow this Carvin is very similar in the way I’d describe it. “It’ll rip your head off if your not carful.” 🤙
I went to a lot of concerts in the 60’s & 70’s (yes, I’m old). They were generally too loud, even for my teenage ears. I remember one concert had my ears ringing for two days after it was over.
The output circuit in a tube amp is a tank circuit. It stores energy, like the ignition coil in a car.. That 100 watts is something close to double that in peaks. That's a lot of punch.
I had an SLP 100 given to me in the 90s that had set in a barn for 20 years after the orginal owner died in a caar accident and his Uncle gave it to me since we rehearsed in a house near by. The cab's speakers were rotted to dust. I bought some speakers did a tube change and cleaned it and played it for almost 12 years until our practice house burned down from a forest fire. We never dated it because it was the pre-internet days. But I know they bought it used in 1974 and he died in 1976. It was given to me in 1995. It was SO LOUD I bought an amp attenuator to use as a master volume for it.
It’s too bad there isn’t a non-stadium venue around where you can play it dimed out. That’s one of the technological advancements I’m glad happened. Being able to run a tube amp that sounds amazing at a volume that isn’t deafening is a luxury.
Got a '70 in '76. Loud AF but took 9 b4 sounding like a Marshall. An electronics store in A2 installed a master on back panel. Prob solved. Sounded amazing on 2; 4 plenty loud enuff @ avg size gig.
Lordy, when I was a yewt I used a plexi at full steam in the rehearsal room. Eventually down traded to a 50W. But a flat out plexi just shakes the world, nothing quite like it.
Idk how the 100w JCM900 compares in volume but i had one when i was a kid and you could hear me playing in our basement from 2 blocks away. Even switching to the 50w setting i had to turn my amp around at multiple gigs so as to not damage people's ears.
My 1971 Hiwatt DR103 eats old Marshall Plexis for breakfast, lunch and dinner from a volume perspective. Hard to know what they were thinking back then. 😂
These Marshall amps separate the men from the boys - they require their own special technique to play and are akin to the difference between bullriders and barrel racers
😮 I saw Van Halen and the Giants Stadium's back in the day and it was so loud we were totally across the football field and it was painful I couldn't imagine the sound on the stage with those monsters speaker cabinets
Ah, my first Van Halen concert! I couldn't hear right for almost a week afterwards! Was 5 days later in algebra class when my ears popped an I shouted in the middle of class oh my God I can hear again and everyone was cracking up! I was wearing my Van Halen concert shirt! The old black shirt with white sleeves shirts.
I played a gig with my classic rock tribute band with my marshall vintage modern full stack on stage out side at a benefit for woinded wareior project and man its amazing playing with a full marshall tube stack at 8 crabked up and its just co concusive you can feel it thrlugh your whole body you are literally one aith your guitar tone and man it was awsome thats the few gigs i got to do woth my vibtage modern behind me on stage dimed out or cloae to it depends on song. When i do Jimi Hendrix covers i dimed it out with a fender strat.
What is relevant is the sensitivity of the speakers: with a "96dB/m" speaker (typical in those applications), you can generate those 96 dB of sound pressure with only 1 W at 1 m away, or 102 dB at 1 m with 4W. With 8w you get 105dB at 1 m; with 22W you get 111dB at 1 m. With 44W you get 114 dB at 1 meter away ((all this only if the speaker has a sensitivity of 96db/1mt as I said before) Every time you double the electrical power, you only increase 3dB of acoustic pressure, therefore, the curve is logarithmic
You are right on everything, and yes I love this amp as well. But please consider a 1987 Laney AOR pro tube lead 100 full stack. With its push/pull knobs, hot rodded from the factory. It's louder me thinks...
“we started to see Marshall amps coming over from England. Cream played them; we knew Jimi Hendrix used them because we had opened for him. So we bought a load of the original 100-watt Super Lead heads. We got six of them and two 200-watt bass heads. They were terrific-sounding amplifiers, but incredibly inconsistent; we blew them up regularly. You might get two or three shows out of them and then they’d go up in smoke. We’d have two sets of Marshalls with us on the road and one set in the shop all the time.” -Wayne Kramer -MC5
Lately I've been listening to the Jeff Beck Group on their '68 -'69 tours with Jeff, Ronnie Wood, Rod Stewart, Tony Newman and Nicky Hopkins. The bootlegs from Boston's Tea Party, Chicago's Kinetic Circus, etc ... Someone took several Kodak Instamatic pictures of the stage at one (or a few) of the shows; and Ronnie is using two stacks. So is Jeff. And then there's another stack behind Tony's drums. And when Jeff turns up and lets loose during a solo - he so quickly and easily gets a note feeding back and he would just make all sorts of melodies with just that one note ringing back at him. I suggest any guitarist go give those shows a listen.
My favorite amp ever is my Peavey Ranger. I've literally never turned it up past 3 because it's louder than any amp I've ever owned by a lot. It's a Plexi style amp as well so I'm not surprised the original Plexi is a loud amp.
Hasn't anyone introduced him to a Fender Dual Showman Reverb? 2X15" are incredibly loud and have great dynamics even for guitar. Sincerely Mike B. B. From Philly, P.A. U.S.A.
While it is historical, there is no reason for amps to be made this loud anymore. I think it’s honestly a much bigger problem than anyone wants to admit. I tried one of the smaller Friedman Jerry, Cantrell amps a while back, and while it sounded incredible, it had no more than a few millimeters of travel on the volume knob to go from completely silent to unusably loud. I’ve been in a couple situations with my 40 W fender amp where the level I was required to play at was literally just before the power section cut out entirely. Amps, that are this loud are dangerous enough to be considered weapons, and I just don’t understand why the industry hasn’t moved away from it.
I use a Roland JC120 and get some surprisingly Marshall sounding tones with an OCD pedal. I don’t think I’ll ever use another amp as my main rig, i love this setup. I was hesitant to get a Roland because people online say they don’t take drive pedals well but idk what they’re on about. It takes a bit more fine tuning with pedals since every little nuance is so crisp and clear but once it’s dialed in, it can’t be beat imo.
My guitar teacher, who passed away, opened for Deep Purple in the Tacoma Dome back in the day. He said the guitar player had two full stack Marshalls and used actual wax to seal his ears from the volume. He said the entire dome was deafening.
Protect your hearing. It doesn’t get better over time.
He was wearing ear protection headphones in the videos. Can’t imagine Clapton playing it live without ear protection 😮
Tone > volume
@@DrRymanI try to explain to my neighbors that Tone = Volume every night
I race drag cars and have been going drag racing since I was 6 months old. My hearings half gone already and I’m 17 so I’m just screwed anyway 😂
Live a little
Until you’ve played through a plexi on full you can’t appreciate how magical it is. The story goes when Cream were on stage, that Eric and Jack were so loud, that there were times when they had been playing different songs to each other without realising as all they could hear were themselves. 😅 btw, I totally agree, the sound, drive and feel of this amp was responsible for a change in music style in the 60s.
A mate had l dunno what model (it had 2 KTs in the power section)... from the 70s.
Rated at 50w RMS (l think) non master vol...that was loud thru a 4x12... so this thing must blister eardrums!
We're not jealous at all Rhett!
Any relation to Dan Marino of mahogany rush? 🤓 I've been to some shows where that happened.usually trippin so,,, it made it better.
@@victorycrosby4896 no relation. Just a fan of Frank’s. 👍🤘
I honestly think that happened with the jcm800 as well Saxons sound changed as well to accommodate that round 82 83 imho same as priest round 82
My brain went to Eric right away
"Back in the day." when I used to gig. I used 2 Plexis and 4 cabinets. I used to feel the air pressure from the cabinets under my feet, when I used to walk across the stage and also the air used to shake my jeans!
At that point the guitar is literally interacting with its environment.
I long for those days!
Yup
I had 2 100 watt heads
Ran them into a a stereo cab
You could hear me 3 blocks away
What kind of venues were you playing that rig in? Unless you're playing arenas, I can't imagine needing that kind of volume.
Rockanroooooohl !!!!
In 1969 my band opened for Iron Butterfly in Peoria Illinois and the backline, provided by a local music shop, were a Super Lead and a Bass 100 watt Marshall stack. My bass player and I were so enamoured by the sound, had to have them. We gigged with them, all across the midwest for several years, always running them on 9 or 10 on the volume. We used to demonstrate how much air they pushed by blowing out matches and eventually Zippo lighters. I sure miss those days and those amplifiers.
That was when you could go down to the Chrysler dealer and order a Road Runner with a dual quad 426 Hemi, a 4 speed, and a Dana 60 rear end with insane gears, and right across the street was a Sunoco or Pure station with 105 octane gas for 30¢ a gallon. And they gave you dishes and towels if you filled the tank!
.....It was a time when giants walked the earth.
Days of old when knights were bold.
I miss all of it. Every last bit of it.
@@jpalberthoward9 being born at the start of globalization and entering the adult world being surveilled and manipulated; I’ll never be able to miss what you had.
It sure sounds nice, though. Must be why there’s so much entertainment surrounding characters living in that time.
Stay free. 🇺🇸
@@Ngcarson1337
"Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot"
Joni Mitchell
@@jpalberthoward9 I recall hearing that song growing up, but never truly knew its meaning until maybe my mid 20s.
Circumstances cannot go back to how they were, but hopefully we can rebuild it back better when the time comes. I wish you and your family well in these changing times.
*insert “the times are a changin’” music here*
@@Ngcarson1337 Understood. Time only moves in one direction, forward. The best thing we can do is to try and keep some of the stuff that was cool, and use the past as inspiration, and also as a blueprint for moving ahead.
Standing in front of Johnny Ramone and his stacks of Plexi cabs was the most ear/mind blistering event, a pure heavenly wall of sound in a club that held maybe 500 or so. 78-79 Road to Ruin tour.
Saw them in 91- yup loudest guitar experience I’ve ever had besides standing in front of my 2 100 watt heads in my basement lol
Love those old Marshall plexis because the tone is pure magic. The louder these amps are cranked the better they sound.🎸
I had the honour of touring Australia with AC/DC in 2001 Angus had 10 quads & his brother Malcolm had 9. All of them cranked. It was so loud during sound check, & then they turned the FOH PA on!
A few months later I did the same with KISS where they had maybe 50+ quads in rows of terraced and stepped down the stage & only 2 quads were real. All their sound was coming from early red rack Line6 units.
I now personally have a Marshall EL34 100/100 into 2 quads combined with a JMP-1. I cranked it up & walked out to my backyard with my guitar. The power, oh the sweet beautiful power. My neighbours must love me. 🤣🤣
Who were you playing with? I'm Australian and curious?
AC/DC Let There Be Rock tour is still the loudest concert I've ever been to.
Bucketin a scavenge is #2.
The concert that pushed my ears over the edge. 60 now.
@castleanthrax1833 not playing mate. I was a roadie working for JANDS looking after their Gladiator Follow spots. As for equipment, I'm just a talentless bedroom hack with only aspirations of annoying my wife & neighbours & depriving them all of a quiet weekend. Although I probably should stop, my wife seems to go shopping a lot when I do & we just can't afford her spending to cope!? 🤣🤣🤣🤣
@llymphs I was on the Stiff Upper Lip Tour. We all had crew shirts made up by the tour manager with Stiff Lower Back printed on them. 🤣
As for loud. Man, I had earplugs & earmuffs on during sound checks. Even with the coms headset like the one used at airports, on I still had to use earplugs. And I'd seen Iron Maiden in the 80s & thought they were loud.
If your neighbours don't, We do🇦🇺🎸🤘
Yep. I have a Marshall 9200 Amp (200W RMS) but the Plexi has so much punch it pushes the air out of your lungs due to it's sound pressure. And it keeps sounding good as far as your ears still can manage to detect it. Quite the revelation that an amp that old is that good at that loudness.
Protect your ears
Reminds ! Me of my band playings days in the late 60;s and 70;s. Had em ,!;! Played thru em. Good video.
I bought an Ampeg V4 100 watt amp with one 4x12 cab in 1972. On 10 it would make my pants flap but it sounded incredible.
I had the same amp...still have it in fact.
The sound of a cranked Plexi, moments before it’s going to blow, is also quite magical.
100% correct you want that bad boy ready to melt down.
I played through stereo Hiwatts with 4x12s for years doing everything from metal/grunge to post rock and ambient. It's a full body experience and something you just can't replicate any other way. My JCM 800 is just like you said here as well. Be careful of your hearing though! Thanks for all the great content :)
HiWatts are loud, even the 2x12 Fane loaded combos... great amps, built like tanks.
I had the bass version and took it to Marshalls in Milton Keynes for a revalve and service. At the end the engineer bench tested it and it was just over 130watts....
Never had a Plexi but I did have a duel showman and 2 Marshall 4x12 cabs. We played loud 3 or 4 nights a week in a storage unit for about a year back in the late 80s. My ears are still ringing.
Here I am can't imagine my Marshal dsl40cr past about 12 o clock... It blows me away how back in the day they would play 1-5 100 watt Marshall's at full volume... Even with ear protection they must all have to gone deaf and not able to hear for weeks after a show. I guess if you play at that volume once your good to go cause your deaf now
Pete Townshend after using a JTM45 for some time: "Jim, i need bigger weapons!"
Eh!?!
What!?!
Jim Marshall
That's why he f*** up his hearing completely.
it's no wonder that those old guitarheroes are almost deaf ( like pete thowsend ) or have tinnitus , even a 20 W amp is pretty loud when cranked
Brian from acdc lost his hearing too.
“This amp
Is dangerous.”
We know lol
Love me some volume therapy
Thanks for the science/ music lesson Rhett!
Former Airport Ground Crew here......at an executive Airport, but we could land Anything there, including the Super Guppy Cargo plane, which we did twice!
Most Traffic was prop plane, and business jets, but anytime we had Heavy Stuff coming in, we wore in ear plugs, then used the headset attenuators over them.
You'd get a pretty good roar anyway, but it always felt like your teeth and ribs were vibrating!
My dad has a 74 sl 100 full stack and it is easily the loudest the amp I’ve ever played. Way louder than my Rivera m100.
The reason for the plexi and other ridiculously hot amps was because almost all venues of the era were not equipped with a PA system capable of handling the music being played, and that’s only the venues with dedicated PAs a lot of didn’t have any, thus the need to bring the 100w amps to gig with (which is insane to think about in retrospect)
But.... how do you hear the singer?
@@TimpBizkitband supplied their own PA
My former bandmate used to play an old Marshall 100 watt head, super loud. He was a big Blackmore fan so his tone was great.
One of my favorite being a sound guy living in LA in the late 80s my roommates went to MIT and every morning before they went to school. They both had a stack of marshals and they had it crank them up to get that and then all I heard for an hour them doing their version of Eddie , jimmy, and other. I learned scales by just listening to them every single day for 6 months. Thank goodness I was able to go on tour. Just to save my ears. lol
Yeah my 1975 MkII 100 watt Super Lead. Phenomenal sounding. So loud yet so beautiful. And I only have a Marshall 1960 4x12. I replaced the speakers with Celestion Vintage 30's 16 ohms. Just incredible amps. I have been told mine is a Holy Grail. Never heard another one that sounds as good as mine does. It's my.main amp. Better than my Mesa Trem-O-Verb. Volume wise no comparison. Marshall at 2 is like the Mesa at full throttle. 🤟😎🤟
The Marshall comes to life, a living and breathing beast. And then it merges with your guitar and then you, the sum is far greater. If you've never had the experience you are truly missing out.
When you can lean back and the thump in the air keeps you upright... Remember your earplugs!
My brother had a jcm800 from the 80's and it was unreal how loud it was. Like razor blades to the ear drums. It was actually painful. Sounded amazing though.
back in the late 80s early 90s I had JCM 800 and quad cranked, my brother used a Peavey VTM60 cranked... we were in the same incredibly LOUD band 😂 ... man, those were the days
You mentioned singing, look at the passion the sang with just trying th here themselves. Absolutely magic. Drums no problem
Nothing like a real old Marshall. I feel like the chainsaw is cutting through my chest, buddy has a 50w bass head like duane allman. Amazing... also we have an original blues breaker with the aluminum end caps. If your interested hit me up for more info. Cool video!
I have been big on the high gain, 6l6 "American circuit" for a while now... But i have to say that the overdriven tone of that el34 circuit is truly the greatest of all time!
Duane Allman played fully cranked up…great tone…
And not mention controlling them. Specially with single coils like a strat for instance. Not an easy task. This is what also makes players like Jeff Beck and Jimmy page and Jimi Hendrix soo soo good. They needed to crank these things in order to get them to break up because there is no master volume, all the break up comes from the power section not the pre amp section like a lot of amps today. Just incredible.
My guess is that they knew, when more than one Player connected his guitar with this amp, they need power.
i got an Orange Dual Dark 100 and two PPC412 cabs in 2016. re/tubed/biased in 2021. crazy loud. gonna check the db level later. never thought of that. but i know it’s dangerous and have stopped playing loudly as frequently as i used too. my ears would ring a lot the first year i got the amp.
Ritchie Blackmore wants a word.
I stood beside Buddy Guy's stack at a concert, and I was miserable, because it was so loud.
Roger Daltrey said he Never heard himself sing. Townsend liked it LOUD. I think I remember from 6th grade health class 88db is the danger level or what you should avoid. ROCK AND ROLL!
85 dB is harmless for 8 hours, but it gets dangerous past that according to OSHA. Every 3 dB onward divide the safe time by 2. So 88 = 4 hours safe, 91 = 2 hours and so on until you get a fraction of a second at 140 dB which is about equivalent to .22 LR, quietest firearm caliber when not suppressed.
Well that would explain why that Who concert I attended sounded so bad.
@@seanwalsh999 I hear that. I live in Cincinnati. 1979 I was working at Sears. Sears had Ticketron in the store. The store was to open at 10am. I got to work at 8am and people were starting to gather around the doors. I asked a co-worker what’s the deal. Said tickets for The Who concert coming up were going on sale that morning at Ticketron. By 10am a Lotta people had gathered outside waiting to get in. When they opened the doors the whole store shook from the crowd headed to the second floor Ticketron. Long long line. Sold out in record time. The line wove through the furniture department. They burned holes in furniture for the hell of it. The night of the concert eleven people died. Suffocated crushed by the crowd. The coliseum had only opened one set of doors for the show and late. The crowd heard the band sound check and thought they were missing the show and started pushing. Large crowd. Eleven kids gone too soon.
Btw that was the end of “Festival Seating.” First come first choice of how close to the stage was a big part of that night. From then on all concerts of any size are reserved seating.
@@gnawbabygnaw Thanks for sharing that story, very sad. Imagine if the second floor of the sears story had of collapsed with all those people on it, I guess it was built pretty well to handle that kind of load. To bad the venue wasn't designed as well.
Can confirm. That amp is Sooo loud before it even breaks up, then it keeps getting louder! I thought my house was going to break! Totally and completely awesome though!
That low mid punch is glorious and very physical. Back off the guitar volume and feel that funk. I have an old 72’ mk2 Superbass which I have used for over 30 years . Also quite loud ✨
I used to play one in the 70"s, played standing in front a full stack on 10. All my cells would separate and you could see thru me.
I played in a band in early 1970's. Our 2 guitarists each had 100 watt Marshall stacks and my ears are still ringing
I just got my 90’s Carvin X100B working last week. I haven’t measured the db range as of yet ,but I will . After watching this original video I got the app your using ,and love it. Been using it at gigs to test the room during sound check. It works perfect. Both as an analyzer ,and a db meter. Anyhow this Carvin is very similar in the way I’d describe it. “It’ll rip your head off if your not carful.”
🤙
I went to a lot of concerts in the 60’s & 70’s (yes, I’m old). They were generally too loud, even for my teenage ears. I remember one concert had my ears ringing for two days after it was over.
The output circuit in a tube amp is a tank circuit. It stores energy, like the ignition coil in a car.. That 100 watts is something close to double that in peaks. That's a lot of punch.
I had an SLP 100 given to me in the 90s that had set in a barn for 20 years after the orginal owner died in a caar accident and his Uncle gave it to me since we rehearsed in a house near by. The cab's speakers were rotted to dust. I bought some speakers did a tube change and cleaned it and played it for almost 12 years until our practice house burned down from a forest fire. We never dated it because it was the pre-internet days. But I know they bought it used in 1974 and he died in 1976. It was given to me in 1995. It was SO LOUD I bought an amp attenuator to use as a master volume for it.
“Woah is there an earthquake?”
“No honey, Mr. Shull cranked the Marshall again…”
It’s too bad there isn’t a non-stadium venue around where you can play it dimed out. That’s one of the technological advancements I’m glad happened. Being able to run a tube amp that sounds amazing at a volume that isn’t deafening is a luxury.
Even then, the stage volume would probably mess up the mix. In large outdoor gigs you could point it up in the sky I suppose.
Got a '70 in '76. Loud AF but took 9 b4 sounding like a Marshall. An electronics store in A2 installed a master on back panel. Prob solved. Sounded amazing on 2; 4 plenty loud enuff @ avg size gig.
I used to think mine was loud, 'til I got paired up with a dude with a 200 watt Orange for a couple of gigs. THAT was the loudest amp I've ever heard.
It's awesome. I had one 30 years ago. 😎😎
I know the concussive low end will be missing but thst sound profiled would be cool.... because this one goes to 11
We used to use them with the 4-12 cabinet facing backwards and sometime under a moving blanket mic-ed of course.. pretty amazing sounding amp..:)
That was rock and roll baby!
Lordy, when I was a yewt I used a plexi at full steam in the rehearsal room. Eventually down traded to a 50W. But a flat out plexi just shakes the world, nothing quite like it.
These amps are realistically for major outdoor music festivals before the whole micing up the amp thing.
I had one of these as a young rocker back in the early 80s , the half stack was already earth-shaking .
Idk how the 100w JCM900 compares in volume but i had one when i was a kid and you could hear me playing in our basement from 2 blocks away. Even switching to the 50w setting i had to turn my amp around at multiple gigs so as to not damage people's ears.
Ritchie Blackmore ran two of them with full stacks 😳
Marshalls are just the perfect sound!
My brother had this Mesa combo that had a single 12 but could power a cab too. Didn't sound like a plexi though.
“Loud” in the purest definition of the word. There’s something magical about playing as loud as a literal machine gun.
I can hear the piano lows from my phone that tone is straight from the tonewood
My 1971 Hiwatt DR103 eats old Marshall Plexis for breakfast, lunch and dinner from a volume perspective. Hard to know what they were thinking back then. 😂
Stage monitors for vocals have to be good and loud enough to cut through the guitar but blend perfectly. Soundcheck anyone?
Thank God for the Master Volume.
Remember how Kossoff used to lean back against his monitors of his super lead as he played on stage? Holy shit that must have felt crazy!!!!
Nothing like an LP on a classic Marshall
I've been playing out a long time and in 1973 I played through four Fender super Reverb I'll put up against anything
I have a 90's Laney Iommi signature. I can't imagine any amp being louder than that beast.
These Marshall amps separate the men from the boys - they require their own special technique to play and are akin to the difference between bullriders and barrel racers
i remember randy rhoads used to turn up his 100 watt plexi up full volume on blizzard songs!
I had a 100 watt valve state! They are nice! Four twelves speaker cabinet that could break your back carrying it! It could reach out and touch you!
My JCM800 was killer loud, like the Plexi around 125db.
I saw Cream September 1967 at The Villiage Theater NY City. Later it became The Fillmore East. Eric and Jack each had two of those.
The problem is on that level it just eats tubes like a candies.
Best Marshall ever used by Ace Frehley in the early days of Kiss
😮 I saw Van Halen and the Giants Stadium's back in the day and it was so loud we were totally across the football field and it was painful I couldn't imagine the sound on the stage with those monsters speaker cabinets
I have a 1974 50 Carlsboro its Really Mean in a brilliant trouser flapping loud way 😀
I have 3! And i love them!
Hear that? No? Must be my tinnitus.
Ah, my first Van Halen concert! I couldn't hear right for almost a week afterwards! Was 5 days later in algebra class when my ears popped an I shouted in the middle of class oh my God I can hear again and everyone was cracking up! I was wearing my Van Halen concert shirt! The old black shirt with white sleeves shirts.
I played a gig with my classic rock tribute band with my marshall vintage modern full stack on stage out side at a benefit for woinded wareior project and man its amazing playing with a full marshall tube stack at 8 crabked up and its just co concusive you can feel it thrlugh your whole body you are literally one aith your guitar tone and man it was awsome thats the few gigs i got to do woth my vibtage modern behind me on stage dimed out or cloae to it depends on song. When i do Jimi Hendrix covers i dimed it out with a fender strat.
That's why when I was 16 folk wondered why I couldn't hear my vocals 🤣
What is relevant is the sensitivity of the speakers: with a "96dB/m" speaker (typical in those applications), you can generate those 96 dB of sound pressure with only 1 W at 1 m away, or 102 dB at 1 m with 4W. With 8w you get 105dB at 1 m; with 22W you get 111dB at 1 m. With 44W you get 114 dB at 1 meter away ((all this only if the speaker has a sensitivity of 96db/1mt as I said before)
Every time you double the electrical power, you only increase 3dB of acoustic pressure, therefore, the curve is logarithmic
I have one. It’s a tank. These days I stand it on end and use it for a lamp stand.
I played through Acoustic 270 double stack. I was so proud of those caution labels on the back of the cabinets.
You are right on everything, and yes I love this amp as well. But please consider a 1987 Laney AOR pro tube lead 100 full stack. With its push/pull knobs, hot rodded from the factory. It's louder me thinks...
“we started to see Marshall amps coming over from England. Cream played them; we knew Jimi Hendrix used them because we had opened for him. So we bought a load of the original 100-watt Super Lead heads. We got six of them and two 200-watt bass heads. They were terrific-sounding amplifiers, but incredibly inconsistent; we blew them up regularly. You might get two or three shows out of them and then they’d go up in smoke. We’d have two sets of Marshalls with us on the road and one set in the shop all the time.”
-Wayne Kramer -MC5
Lately I've been listening to the Jeff Beck Group on their '68 -'69 tours with Jeff, Ronnie Wood, Rod Stewart, Tony Newman and Nicky Hopkins. The bootlegs from Boston's Tea Party, Chicago's Kinetic Circus, etc ... Someone took several Kodak Instamatic pictures of the stage at one (or a few) of the shows; and Ronnie is using two stacks. So is Jeff. And then there's another stack behind Tony's drums. And when Jeff turns up and lets loose during a solo - he so quickly and easily gets a note feeding back and he would just make all sorts of melodies with just that one note ringing back at him. I suggest any guitarist go give those shows a listen.
My favorite amp ever is my Peavey Ranger. I've literally never turned it up past 3 because it's louder than any amp I've ever owned by a lot. It's a Plexi style amp as well so I'm not surprised the original Plexi is a loud amp.
Hasn't anyone introduced him to a Fender Dual Showman Reverb?
2X15" are incredibly loud and have great dynamics even for guitar.
Sincerely
Mike B. B. From Philly, P.A. U.S.A.
While it is historical, there is no reason for amps to be made this loud anymore. I think it’s honestly a much bigger problem than anyone wants to admit. I tried one of the smaller Friedman Jerry, Cantrell amps a while back, and while it sounded incredible, it had no more than a few millimeters of travel on the volume knob to go from completely silent to unusably loud. I’ve been in a couple situations with my 40 W fender amp where the level I was required to play at was literally just before the power section cut out entirely. Amps, that are this loud are dangerous enough to be considered weapons, and I just don’t understand why the industry hasn’t moved away from it.
Yes, Sir that's the bomb.
I use a Roland JC120 and get some surprisingly Marshall sounding tones with an OCD pedal. I don’t think I’ll ever use another amp as my main rig, i love this setup. I was hesitant to get a Roland because people online say they don’t take drive pedals well but idk what they’re on about. It takes a bit more fine tuning with pedals since every little nuance is so crisp and clear but once it’s dialed in, it can’t be beat imo.
I remember playing through one of those back in late 70s after I've been playing for a while and my pant legs would move.
Angus Young of ACDC plays in front of 4 double stacks on stage, just watch them at the River Platte in Argentina 2009.
My guitar teacher, who passed away, opened for Deep Purple in the Tacoma Dome back in the day. He said the guitar player had two full stack Marshalls and used actual wax to seal his ears from the volume. He said the entire dome was deafening.
I used one in the 70's and a 50 watt which I liked better