My advice: Skip to the end if you don't want to read all of the details!
The amp:
Today I dug into my old love and first guitar amp, a Marshall JTM-60. It was a little brittle and acting weird as it turns out the phase inverter (vintage RCA 12AX7A) was going out. I had a USA rebranded Lowrey 12AX7A from an old organ that does the job nicely after my spare (NOS Sylvania) ended up being DOA. I replaced the three Sovtek 12AX7A in the pre with NOS 6201 and it's cleaned up this amp considerably. It went from thin and brittle to fat and clean with a sweet breakup. It's incredibly punchy through the cab as it is now. It makes a wonderful bass/guitar amp with an OD channel that can be used for a touch sensitive light breakup on the six string or vintage fat/round/punchy tones on the four. Love it!
The cab:
I picked up a JTM410C which was the 410 cab from the JTM head/cab line. I had the 112 with my head already and wanted to see if the 410 would cut it. It had some terrible sounding Marshall/Celestion 30w speakers in there, think V30's mids plus some without the brittle highs or low end. Yuck!
I had some CTS 10" from an SVT cabinet that Randy sold me so after a little reinforcement, cleanup, and a handle upgrade to replace the resonant and cracked plastic handles it became an incredibly punchy guitar cab or a baby Ampeg SVT cab. The dimensions were just about right and my ears are telling me that it sounds incredible. My roomie and I have been playing on it since 11 am this morning and haven't stopped.
Overall:
We're in love. Our drummer seems to have been having problems picking up on our rhythms if we tap, use harmonics, or anything on guitar when we jam but this guy has so much punch to it that he'll actually be able to tell right where to play. Those CTS 10's just caress you with low mids if you play the guitar percussively. As a bass amp, oh jeez. I'm both gigging and recording with this some time, I'm sure of it. I will certainly enjoy my time with Marshall and Marsha.
Isn't it nice when you run into an old flame and it goes well? What old loves have you guys had come back into your life? Instruments and amps please good people!
