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okay so i've always not been into marshall amps. mid heavy overdrive that i never cared for. blame hair metal i guess. however, i saw Toe live and dude was playing a JCM2000 clean and it sounded kind of amazing. Jonsí in Sigúr Rös does too.

does anyone here play a marshall but clean?

Dude, old Marshall Plexi's are amazing clean.
I have a 2061X, it's got a surprising amount of headroom for only a 20 watt amp.
A bonus is that a great Marshall just takes dirt pedals really well and always makes it rock.

i've been really like, thinking about this lately kind of obsessively like "omg have i been neglecting marshalls because they are usually seen as a butt rock icon?"

but the thing is im really into 6L6's

lol, came here to say the roller dude from Toe is using a JCM2000. But he plays so damn quiet (I can see why) that if he turns the volume up it would get into "marshall" territory I think.

they do play quiet but not like, too quiet. you think if he turned up it would just be overdriven marshally metal butts?

Not as hairy stuff, but definitely not so clean as he sounds.
And they all do play too quiet to me, but I thank that because otherwise drummer's playing wouldn't be as enjoyable as it is.
It was the first show where I didn't wear my earplugs since like 2008 when I saw Boris the first time.

(New album sucks hard lol)

I know there's plenty of dudes proving it can be done, but I can stand 'modern' Marshall cleans
If you're used to old school Vox/Fender/Ampeg/whatever cleans, the cleans on a JCM sound somewhat cold/sharp imo. Dunno how to describe it really, they just aren't as musical or forgiving sounding imo

Plexi/JTM style cleans otoh:

As far as Sigur Ros goes...The way that guy use the amp, I'd say it almost doens't matter which amp he uses
I bet you'd get DAMN close using a twin reverb with the same type/amount of reverb, and a Les Paul played with a bow

I mean are you really into 6L6s or have you just been playing 6L6 amps because you thought that was what you needed to play for dem cleans?

I had a 100w 1959 SLP for a long time and never once had to push it. Glorious clean sounds at insanely loud volumes.

My friend uses a MIG 100 for clean tones and my Hellhawk does a great clean for me as well. I wouldn't ever really go back to a Fender for my cleans and my Ampeg is just too loud for entirely clean playing.

i love my 2203 for cleans. definitely different than the fender sound, but they're awesome amps. i pay no mind to jcm 2000's and such. you've got to use a 100 watt marshall for that headroom. for years i exclusively ran into the low gain input with the preamp dimed, which makes the amp pretty close to a non-master super lead, but recently i've been playing around more with using the high gain input and dialing back the preamp gain. the inputs, even at similar gain levels react fairly differently to dirt pedals in front of them and have some different clean characteristics as well. a lot of sounds in there for a single channel amp. i love the marshall cleans. i particularly think they excel at a clean with just a bit of hair on it, but in general that's how i roll with cleans. don't let hair metal ruin such a great amp for you. great cleans and they take pedals like a fucking champ.

yup, this is why I used a non master volume 100 watt plexi for the best part of a decade.

I used to use a Fenders for cleans for a loooong time until I played out of my buddy's old Marshall plexi.

My Hellhawk gets some awesome sounding cleans as well. Different strokes though.

echodeluxe wrote:they do play quiet but not like, too quiet. you think if he turned up it would just be overdriven marshally metal butts?

you really have no idea...

Keep the preamp gain low. Crank the master. And play hard. It'll still be clean. Get less frugal with the gain knob and it turns into a mess. Every Marshall after the 2203/2204 has the worst preamp gain IMO.