Why the hate on JCM 900s?

[jamesmikelly]

The SLX also gets (or at least got) attention because Rivers used one for a minute in between Blue album and Pinkerton.

[Gone Fission]

The Mark III, the high gain model before the SLX version, is a bit of a sleeper. It has a clipping diode or two, but so did the Silver Jubilee/25th Anniversary amps. Hell, the SLX uses a triode as a clipper, if I remember right. The Dual Reverbs have not just diode clipping but a lot of solid state circuitry not just for the reverb but for the main channel architecture--pretty much a hybrid architecture. Nothing wrong with that if it sounds good in use. People were not enthralled with them even before that was common knowledge, though.

[frigid midget]

They're just not as nice as 800s, but they don't deserve their meh reputation imo. In short, a jcm 800 has less gain, but sound a bit more chunky. Less fizz, more balls. The cleans on all post-jmp Marshalls are poop imo, but I imagine they can work great as a pedal platform, which is often the case with somewhat cold/flat sounding 2-ch tube amps that are all about the gain channel

I had an SL-X as my main all-purpose amp for a long time. I didn't -and still don't- use a lot of super clean tones, so the lack of decent cleans didn't bother me all that much. After a while though I needed a change from that compressed high gain '80s tone.