marshall2553
Member
I posted this on TGP and figured I'd drop it here too. TLDR: So far I love it.
I just got my BE-50 and was able to spend about half an hour with it. I'm not going to say any amp is really worth $3,500, but so far it lives up to the hype IMO. Obviously I need to spend more time with it, but my initial impression is very positive.
Fit and finish are perfect and luckily everything works out of the box. Whew!
Clean channel: I had a Buxom Betty combo for a while and the BE-50's clean channel through an open back cab with a Creamback sounds exactly like I remember the BB sounding. I've been thinking about picking up a Fender combo but I think this channel could kill that GAS. Takes pedals well and sounds freaking awesome with a TS9 pushing it.
BE/HBE channels: These channels give me what I was missing with my SmallBox. It can still nail SB tones (and I'm guessing BE-100 tones, though I've never played one), but by setting the response knob high and the thump low you can get more traditional Marshall tones. Plenty of punch, bark, bite, kerrang on tap. Increasing the thump and lowering the response gets you back to what I think of as "the" Friedman tone (tighter, darker and more compressed).
My other amp is a Dirty Shirley with the 3-position gain switch and I love that feature on the DS. On the BE-50 it provides awesome low or mid gain tones in the middle and up positions. I struggled with those tones on the SB for some reason, it seems like the switches work better than simply lowering the gain knob. I really haven't had time to play much with the SAT/FAT/VOICE switches beyond verifying that they work. Between those and the thump/response knobs this amp is ridiculously versatile, yet it still seems hard to get a bad tone out of it.
I just got my BE-50 and was able to spend about half an hour with it. I'm not going to say any amp is really worth $3,500, but so far it lives up to the hype IMO. Obviously I need to spend more time with it, but my initial impression is very positive.
Fit and finish are perfect and luckily everything works out of the box. Whew!
Clean channel: I had a Buxom Betty combo for a while and the BE-50's clean channel through an open back cab with a Creamback sounds exactly like I remember the BB sounding. I've been thinking about picking up a Fender combo but I think this channel could kill that GAS. Takes pedals well and sounds freaking awesome with a TS9 pushing it.
BE/HBE channels: These channels give me what I was missing with my SmallBox. It can still nail SB tones (and I'm guessing BE-100 tones, though I've never played one), but by setting the response knob high and the thump low you can get more traditional Marshall tones. Plenty of punch, bark, bite, kerrang on tap. Increasing the thump and lowering the response gets you back to what I think of as "the" Friedman tone (tighter, darker and more compressed).
My other amp is a Dirty Shirley with the 3-position gain switch and I love that feature on the DS. On the BE-50 it provides awesome low or mid gain tones in the middle and up positions. I struggled with those tones on the SB for some reason, it seems like the switches work better than simply lowering the gain knob. I really haven't had time to play much with the SAT/FAT/VOICE switches beyond verifying that they work. Between those and the thump/response knobs this amp is ridiculously versatile, yet it still seems hard to get a bad tone out of it.
