I purchased a mint used WW20 February 2021
Cool amp for a Marshally gain thing
Gain channel is awesome as expected. Having Gain, Saturation (pull) and Gain Cut switch makes this channel quite tweakable. I really like this amp for the gain channel.
I agree with Gyver66, it's quite loud! It can be a challenge to arrive at a decent practice level on the Master knob. It goes from inaudible to piss the neighbors off with the slightest turn of the knob.
Also, because the Master knob doubles as a Voice switch (pull) it's nearly impossible to change voice without changing the setting once the precarious balance between off and too loud is established. BTW the voices don't sound significantly different to my well aged ears.
Clean channel lacks personality. The only reason I bought this over other Freidman 20 watters, was the clean channel and I've quickly discovered I prefer to use the gain channel and my guitar volume. This channel is a disappointment.
The EQ section is quite powerful when used with the gain channel. However it seems to have very little impact on the clean channel. Additionally, it seems to my well aged ears that the few sweet spots that can be achieved just happen to be the worst possible settings when switching back to the gain channel.
As for the Presence control noise, Friedman states this is normal when turning the control
The bright switch options are interesting, but along with whatever pleasing character they add to the clean channel it seems they have equally unpleasing characteristics. If the EQ section was more impactful to the clean channel, the bright settings could probably be really cool or unnecessary.
The cabinet voiced output is nice, but in my experience there is something odd about it. I can set the clean and gain channel volumes to a balance I like through a 4x12, but through the cabinet voiced output the levels are WAY different. The clean is MUCH louder than the gain channel.
User experience
While I understand aesthetics and the importance of having a visual pleasing design, the choice of faceplate and lettering colors and the use of gold knobs makes the controls very difficult to read and impossible in poor lighting. I switched out the knobs for white knobs with black pointers and memorized the control layout, which helped.
The next weird design choices were to put the pull Saturation on the Bass control and pull Fat on the Gain control. The obvious and more contextual choice would have been to swap these
Not enough Bass? Pull the Bass knob for Fat
Not enough Saturation? Pull the Gain knob for more saturation
Not only would this make more sense, it would also aid in memorizing the difficult to read control layout
While I was at it I'd have placed the Gain cut above the Gain knob
So while this sounds like a negative review, its not. I really like the gain channel a lot!!!
Yes the clean channel is a disappointment, but I can get 85% of what I need using the gain channel and guitar volume.
Usability seems an after thought to me, or perhaps Dave didn't want to layout a completely new circuit for WW's requests and just made it work.
That said, the amp styling does look good if that's your main thing.
Cheers!
