Marshall 30th Anniversary 6100LM...any good or run away? NAD

[skoora]

I had one in '97 or so and it sounded great. Was tight and chunky (mainly lived on CH 3). It replaced an Ultra Lead. I played through a couple over the recent years to see if I wanted to revisit it and always come away very disappointed and wonder did I have an anomaly back then or is my perception of how it sounded wrong. I was plugging straight in with a Les Paul in drop C and the band was a punk metal hybrid that required a tight sound. The ones I've played are ill defined and fizzy on the high gain settings. But I don't think I've been able to play an LM which I think my 90's one was because I bought it new in '97. I would like to think if it knocked off an Ultra Lead it must have been better than what I've experienced recently.

The amp might need to be re tube and I'm sure it would have been fine

Maybe, but I've played two non Lm's in as many years and both were this way.

 

[SpiderWars]

Does anyone who has owned these have problems with the series fx loop? It seems no matter how I set the level switch or level controls I get distortion and weaker output.

Luckily, the parallel loop works great with my delay. There is also a Line In/Line Out that can be used as a second series loop, and that works fine. I have an always-ON EQ and an RC Boost in that loop. That's all I intend to put in the loop(s), maybe an H9 in the future. Doing it this way sounds really good but there is the added complexity/cabling of a second loop.

With the midi capability of this amp, the notion of replacing all my modulation pedals with a Mobius, using my Nemesis delay, and then adding a midi controller is enticing (but expensive). Adding an H9 would be the cherry. Maybe it's time I moved into the 21st century.

 

[BackCrack]

I had a blue 6101 combo in the late 90's that developed at a gig what you're describing. I eliminated all external effects and made it thru the gig with no more issues. The next day at home while trying to diagnose the problem, the amp just stopped putting out all sound. I pulled the chassis to see if anything on the board had fried. To my surprise, there were 5 PCB's nested inside the thing, all connected with a pile of ribbon cables. Yay. For some reason I'd remembered a tech telling me years prior that the plastic Cliff jacks that Marshall used would sometimes fail. On a hunch I replaced the two jacks for the series loop and that fixed the issue. Probably shoulda kept that little amp along with it's cousin (6912 cab).

And if you ever gig a 6101 or plan on playing it for more than 15 minutes, do yourself a favor and have a fan blowing into the back of it. 11 tubes all close together and hanging upside down generates a lot of chassis heat.

 

[SpiderWars]

Thanks. Yeah, I had read that about the the combos. I've ran the amp for hours and felt the chassis near the power tubes and both transformers and it doesn't get that hot at all. My BF Fender gets way hotter.

It is a bit daunting looking at all that stuff in there. However, considering this amp model was released in 1992 and has MIDI, 3 independent channels, switchable parallel/series loops with separate level controls for channels 1/2, Line In/Out for a second loop, 11 tubes; I'm looking at some of the current popular high-dollar, high-gain heads (from smaller companies usually) and thinking that they seem WAY over-priced. I'm talking about amps that don't have MIDI, don't have independent channels (sometimes not even separate MVs), only have 7-8 tubes max, no LEDs on front panel to indicate channel, etc. That was fine when the SLO came out, it's 2017 fer cryin' out loud. But those amps are selling fine so what do I know.

 

[Hamer95USA]

Congratulations and HNAD on the Marshall 6100LM amp head. $500 used is a great deal on that amp. Make sure the power tubes are biased properly and that the preamp tubes are in good shape. I own and use a blue vinyl 6101 combo amp equipped with an EV12L for 24 years, gigging in cover bands. It's one of the best Marshall combo amps for my musical needs. 3 channels with seperate EQ, Channel 2 that can change from vintage tone to high gain, hot rod tone, and Ch.3 is high gain city. I've always set the Ch.2 and Ch.3 treble control around 10 o'clock since the EV12L can get bright at times. I also have the matching blue vinyl 1912 closed back cab and have run it as a full combo stack onstage which improves the sound & projection. I use mine with either a Zoom G9.2tt (as a MIDI controller/effects before the amp) and a Korg DL8000R in the effects loop for delay/chorus/reverb in parallel or a TC Electronics Nova System before the amp, a Rocktron Intellifex in the effects loop, and a Ground Control Pro to MIDI switch.

My issues are similiar to some of the other users of this amp here. The combo amp cabinet has no ventilation at the top of the cabinet like the 6100 amp head cabinet so running a fan on the back helps it out immensely. I've had the channel switching fail due to the heat on the components and had it repaired. It has worked properly ever since. I've had either Ch.2 or Ch.3 get microphonic during a show. I always make sure I have an extra 12AX7 preamp packed up in my gig bag, so I can swap out a bad preamp tube on my break.

Guitar George

 

[JSutter]

Does anyone who has owned these have problems with the series fx loop? It seems no matter how I set the level switch or level controls I get distortion and weaker output.

Luckily, the parallel loop works great with my delay. There is also a Line In/Line Out that can be used as a second series loop, and that works fine. I have an always-ON EQ and an RC Boost in that loop.

I have a 6100LM, an early 5881 to be exact. EDIT, I lied its a 1996 with different bias resistors installed. Early on I liked the tone of my pedals through the line in/out better. I stopped doing that when I used the recording output which does not use that loop. Now I only have a 10 band in the line in/out. The regular loop is still really good on mine.

 

[SpiderWars]

Does anyone who has owned these have problems with the series fx loop? It seems no matter how I set the level switch or level controls I get distortion and weaker output.

Luckily, the parallel loop works great with my delay. There is also a Line In/Line Out that can be used as a second series loop, and that works fine. I have an always-ON EQ and an RC Boost in that loop.

I have a 6100LM, an early 5881 to be exact. Early on I liked the tone of my pedals through the line in/out better. I stopped doing that when I used the recording output which does not use that loop. Now I only have a 10 band in the line in/out. The regular loop is still really good on mine.

Yeah, I need to revisit that at some point. If I didn't have a workaround it would be more pressing.

I played a gig with it this past weekend using only the Line Out/In with a loop chain that went: always on MXR 10band EQ-Nemesis delay-Tuner-RC Boost. That set-up had low level hum that seemed too much in my quiet home so I added a Decimator after the RC Boost...but at the gig I couldn't even hear the hum so didn't need it.

Anyway, the amp performed better than expected. I think this amp is highly under-rated. Maybe because it has so many switches and knobs people don't tend to boost it like you would many (most) other Marshalls. But I have a Cusack Screamer, Klon, and Koko Boost on my board and with those options you can really shape the distortion to a ton of different flavors. I almost don't even need channel 3 but it's great to have that one screaming channel. And the clean! I love good clean and again, with all those boost/OD options, there are a ton of great tones just on that channel. I get lost on the clean channel at home.

 

[JSutter]

I stick to channel 2 mode C with an SD1. I couldn't get a tone I loved out of channel 3. I started rolling tubes again and made a big improvement on tone and feel. This amp really likes certain tubes in specific spots.

 

[SpiderWars]

I stick to channel 2 mode C with an SD1. I couldn't get a tone I loved out of channel 3. I started rolling tubes again and made a big improvement on tone and feel. This amp really likes certain tubes in specific spots.

That's prob my favorite tone in the whole thing...boosted Chan 2/Mode C. But I need lower gain for my band so I use Mode B in Chan 2 and then boost that, sometimes double-boost. I didn't like Chan 3 at first but once I dialed it in I like it quite a bit now. That Low Comp button has to be pushed, mids pretty cranked, gain just past noon or so, Channel master high.

I'm running mostly NOS Shuguang preamp tubes and TAD 6L6GC. I think this amp was originally fitted with Shuguang preamp tubes and those tubes definitely sound better than the new C5 Shuguangs that were in it when I got it. Chan 3 was practically unuseable with the C5s.

 

[Wizard of Ozz]

I always liked these. Lots of gain.