Marshall Sounding Boxes??

[logdrum]

British – Tech 21 NYC

 

[Peaveylover]

My wife just got me a Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret MKIII for my birthday last week. At first I was worried that it was a guitar only OD, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised with it on bass. With the internal switch on super bass/jtm mode and the gain past 9:00 I actually find myself rolling bass off. Great pedal!

The Cbread amps in boxes are all pretty great on bass. The formula 5f6 (or something like that) was amazing on bass.

 

[Freddy T]

Consider a Marshall Jackhammer. It has two modes: OD mode which is great for hot-rodded jmp tones and the other mode (which is only good for scooped nu-metal tones). The Bass and Treble tone controls are really effective in the bass range and the Contour and Frequency knobs let you pick different eq shapes at your selected frequency range for tone sculpting. This pedal worked well for me in a project where I was driving it with an active EMG P pickup and boosted active tone controls (hot signal). I'm guessing this pedal and a graphic eq would probably be a great combo for what you're looking for.

 

[sunbeast]

I play Marshall Bass 8 x 10 stacks. I always have. Nothing else will give you that tone. My advice would be to (what I do) skip the pedals. I use No pedals. Just my bass through a Marshall Bass amp. I have several 50w 100w & 200w Marshall heads. Nothing else will give you that sound. Nothing. You can put more money into a bunch of pedals, than a real Marshall would cost. A real Marshall is the Marshall sound.

There is no magic mojo to a Marshall- fundamentally they started and have mostly remained a tweaked version of the Fender passive tonestack into various iterations of different gain/power topologies. You are right that the cabinet used usually plays a larger part in any particular tone than usually given credit for- especially if it’s breaking up at all like older speakers used for bass often were (and my buddy’s Marshall 810 sounds nothing like my old SVT fridge did), and is harder to recreate, but a pedal or two into a fairly neutral amp is gonna be significantly cheaper and more practical for most players than a heavy low wattage tube head and huge cabinet to scratch one particular tone itch. If you decide that’s “your tone”, then it may be worth the upgrade/investment down the line. Someone considering a Joyo pedal is probably a couple degrees of magnitude from making that leap just yet!

 

[Guild B301]

There is no magic mojo to a Marshall- fundamentally they started and have mostly remained a tweaked version of the Fender passive tonestack into various iterations of different gain/power topologies. You are right that the cabinet used usually plays a larger part in any particular tone than usually given credit for- especially if it’s breaking up at all like older speakers used for bass often were (and my buddy’s Marshall 810 sounds nothing like my old SVT fridge did), and is harder to recreate, but a pedal or two into a fairly neutral amp is gonna be significantly cheaper and more practical for most players than a heavy low wattage tube head and huge cabinet to scratch one particular tone itch. If you decide that’s “your tone”, then it may be worth the upgrade/investment down the line. Someone considering a Joyo pedal is probably a couple degrees of magnitude from making that leap just yet!

My point was, if you want the real Marshall sound - pedals won’t cut it. My next point was, I know people who have over $3,000 in pedals and boards. You can buy a real Marshall stack for that much.
Have you ever played through a Marshall Bass head and cabinet? Not a guitar amp. The Bass version?

 

[sunbeast]

My point was, if you want the real Marshall sound - pedals won’t cut it. My next point was, I know people who have over $3,000 in pedals and boards. You can buy a real Marshall stack for that much.
Have you ever played through a Marshall Bass head and cabinet? Not a guitar amp. The Bass version?

The only bass-specific Marshall amp I've played through was the VBA400, and it was undoubtedly a great head. I have played bass through a number of vintage Marshall heads, including some "Super Bass" variations, but my understanding of these (like the Fender Bassman they were the descendents of) was that they tended to be used for bass and guitar (they belonged to a guitarist I knew). I have played through some Marshall 15s specified for bass use, as well as a vintage 810 that I believe was intended for bass/guitar/whatever, and even some modern Marshal 412s that sounded great with bass as long as you were careful with EQ and volume.

I am certainly not arguing that Marshall didn't make (and maybe still makes?) some great bass gear, just that for most players a single $200 +/- pedal is probably sufficient to scratch that itch the same way that the VT Bass pre scratches the SVT itch for countless bassists that aren't going to find an actual SVT practical. I doubt there are very many people fooled into thinking that a pedal can exactly replicate a 200 pound rig, but thats usually not the purpose. I've never seen an entire pedalboard used only to cop one particular tone in my life- variety/versatility of sound/tone and portability are the purpose of most pedalboards. None of the recommended pedals on this thread apart from the custom tube numbers are likely to cost more than a couple hundred dollars, and most much less than that.

 

[Zbysek]

I bought a Tech 21 British character pedal on eBay. I've seen them on Reverb from time to time. It's not a bass specific pedal. I blend it with clean tone with an Xotic X Blender. Great distortion.

Do you still use this setup?