Dallas Marlow
Active member
Hey all,
So I got an amp for back up to my DAR, I've got an olddd school marshall clone but it can't do high gain to save it's life. I picked up a decent deal on a nearly mint Marshall 6100LM 30th Anniversary from 97, which is one of it's last years of production.
First off I've got to say that this amp is really great for the marshall sounds, and being a previous owner of a DSL, I really am incredibly surprised Marshall went over to the DSL/TSL line instead of keeping this amp, to me the sounds out of this thing absolutely DESTROY both of those amps, especially the TSL(never liked that amp) the DSL had some good sounds but I never felt I could get a great sound on both channels with the share eq. Not to mention you couldn't switch between clean/crunch.
I honestly can't believe how much gain this thing has on tap, and the options are really impressive, it's like Marshall took a few steps backwards after this amp, it's got a damping switch, two effects loops series or parallel, 3 separate EQ's, pentode triode and low and high power modes. It's also got a variety of options on the front, but those are some really neat features to have, not to mention it's midi (which I hate... but it's still there).
Here's my big PSA - while I got a great deal on a nearly mint 14 year old amp, damn if fedex didn't rough up the thing a bit, every time it got bumped or moved around at all, or was loud enough to vibrate it, it would make a pop like a static discharge. Of course first I looked for tubes, and any loose connections, turned out the lights and checked for arcing, but thankfully none of those were the issue, after about 15 minutes I traced the problem down to the power resistor (no this amp doesn't use a choke more on that later)... Long story short, the thing was basically just sitting in the board, the solder connections has simply snapped, I have no idea how or why, but nothing else was remotely loose.
This is where the fun starts, this amp is an absolute motherfucker to repair, check out these shots... http://www.timeelect.com/mar30.htm - it has SO many boards, and unfortunately the issue I had was on the main power board. I tried my best to get solder to flow down from the top of the board, but there was absolutely no way, not enough room to even get the soldering iron in. I realized I had no choice but to pull the board, let me say right here, I know from previous experience I HATE tube socket retainers with a passion, the whole screw system when it's under a board is a nightmare beyond comprehension to thread those things when you don't have access to them... so I considered desoldering all the connections on the power tube sockets, but at 2a.m. last night, whoever had serviced it previously hot glued all the connectors into place so I had the pleasure of slowly taking all of that out too.. (I spent a couple hours on it late at night dealing with it) I decided it was best to sleep on it. Come this morning, I decide to suck it up and deal with the socket retainer nightmare, and dismantled all of the connections, labeled everything and pulled the main board. Fixing the resistor in place took literally 15 seconds, the repair is a piece of cake and the part wasn't even bad tested right at 100.5ohms for a 100ohm value, close enough for me. It took me forever to get the the damn board back into place, and the majority of the time was spent dealing with those SUCK ASS screws and nuts that you have no access to, and getting the board to drop back in properly. Fortunately the only thing I kind of dicked up a little bit was just a fuse failure led, it's fine but just a little loose because it kind of didn't line up perfectly when the board was put back in.
For the good news, after I reconnected everything, twisted the heater wires, tried to line them up a bit better at a 90 degree crossing to other lines, the amp works perfectly, no noise, no popping, and impressively quite for a marshall with this much gain. That being said, I really do not want to ship it anywhere... ever haha.
As for the resistor vs. choke, I really considered ordering a choke for this thing, and I know some people have done it, but after opening it up and looking inside the amp, 1 I have no idea where the hell I would mount it at this point, I don't really know if putting it by the transformers, or running the lines has any negative impacts on the amp, there is SO little free space in this amp! 2, with all the odd options and features on this amp, I don't know if some how the damping, or any of those type switches would still function properly had I changed the filtering to a choke rather than the 100ohm 5w ceramic resistor. From what I understand the purpose of a choke is to help filter the amp from noise, but now that it's soldered into place, decent pre amp tubes, and a wire movement, honestly it's impressively quite, even with single coils and the t.v. on.
What are your guys thoughts on changing a resistor out for a choke, hell if I'm ever opening this fucker up, but for future reference? I really have no desire to change this amp tonally or feel wise, both are great, it could be a little tighter but coming from my DAR, everything seems super loose now anyways haha...
Wow that's a wall of text. Try and upload some pics soon.
Dallas
So I got an amp for back up to my DAR, I've got an olddd school marshall clone but it can't do high gain to save it's life. I picked up a decent deal on a nearly mint Marshall 6100LM 30th Anniversary from 97, which is one of it's last years of production.
First off I've got to say that this amp is really great for the marshall sounds, and being a previous owner of a DSL, I really am incredibly surprised Marshall went over to the DSL/TSL line instead of keeping this amp, to me the sounds out of this thing absolutely DESTROY both of those amps, especially the TSL(never liked that amp) the DSL had some good sounds but I never felt I could get a great sound on both channels with the share eq. Not to mention you couldn't switch between clean/crunch.
I honestly can't believe how much gain this thing has on tap, and the options are really impressive, it's like Marshall took a few steps backwards after this amp, it's got a damping switch, two effects loops series or parallel, 3 separate EQ's, pentode triode and low and high power modes. It's also got a variety of options on the front, but those are some really neat features to have, not to mention it's midi (which I hate... but it's still there).
Here's my big PSA - while I got a great deal on a nearly mint 14 year old amp, damn if fedex didn't rough up the thing a bit, every time it got bumped or moved around at all, or was loud enough to vibrate it, it would make a pop like a static discharge. Of course first I looked for tubes, and any loose connections, turned out the lights and checked for arcing, but thankfully none of those were the issue, after about 15 minutes I traced the problem down to the power resistor (no this amp doesn't use a choke more on that later)... Long story short, the thing was basically just sitting in the board, the solder connections has simply snapped, I have no idea how or why, but nothing else was remotely loose.
This is where the fun starts, this amp is an absolute motherfucker to repair, check out these shots... http://www.timeelect.com/mar30.htm - it has SO many boards, and unfortunately the issue I had was on the main power board. I tried my best to get solder to flow down from the top of the board, but there was absolutely no way, not enough room to even get the soldering iron in. I realized I had no choice but to pull the board, let me say right here, I know from previous experience I HATE tube socket retainers with a passion, the whole screw system when it's under a board is a nightmare beyond comprehension to thread those things when you don't have access to them... so I considered desoldering all the connections on the power tube sockets, but at 2a.m. last night, whoever had serviced it previously hot glued all the connectors into place so I had the pleasure of slowly taking all of that out too.. (I spent a couple hours on it late at night dealing with it) I decided it was best to sleep on it. Come this morning, I decide to suck it up and deal with the socket retainer nightmare, and dismantled all of the connections, labeled everything and pulled the main board. Fixing the resistor in place took literally 15 seconds, the repair is a piece of cake and the part wasn't even bad tested right at 100.5ohms for a 100ohm value, close enough for me. It took me forever to get the the damn board back into place, and the majority of the time was spent dealing with those SUCK ASS screws and nuts that you have no access to, and getting the board to drop back in properly. Fortunately the only thing I kind of dicked up a little bit was just a fuse failure led, it's fine but just a little loose because it kind of didn't line up perfectly when the board was put back in.
For the good news, after I reconnected everything, twisted the heater wires, tried to line them up a bit better at a 90 degree crossing to other lines, the amp works perfectly, no noise, no popping, and impressively quite for a marshall with this much gain. That being said, I really do not want to ship it anywhere... ever haha.
As for the resistor vs. choke, I really considered ordering a choke for this thing, and I know some people have done it, but after opening it up and looking inside the amp, 1 I have no idea where the hell I would mount it at this point, I don't really know if putting it by the transformers, or running the lines has any negative impacts on the amp, there is SO little free space in this amp! 2, with all the odd options and features on this amp, I don't know if some how the damping, or any of those type switches would still function properly had I changed the filtering to a choke rather than the 100ohm 5w ceramic resistor. From what I understand the purpose of a choke is to help filter the amp from noise, but now that it's soldered into place, decent pre amp tubes, and a wire movement, honestly it's impressively quite, even with single coils and the t.v. on.
What are your guys thoughts on changing a resistor out for a choke, hell if I'm ever opening this fucker up, but for future reference? I really have no desire to change this amp tonally or feel wise, both are great, it could be a little tighter but coming from my DAR, everything seems super loose now anyways haha...
Wow that's a wall of text. Try and upload some pics soon.
Dallas
