We’re in the past. I’m about 15 years old. I’m sitting on my bed trying to nail that incredible solo from Joe Satriani’s Crushing Day. I’m getting pissed off. This is hard. Try it again. Argh! Hit a clanger about a quarter of the way in. Start again. Frig. Only got two bars in that time and hit a bad harmonic. Argh. Aaaarrgh! Argh.
My dad walks in.
“What the hell is going on?”
“I’m trying to learn this Joe Satriani solo but it’s impossible!”
“Impossible?”
“Yeah.” Read More …
Joe Satriani needs his amps to cover a lot of ground during the course of a single gig, from vintage bluesy sweetness to chunky rock to screaming harmonically overstimulated lead. For years he’s (generally) used clean amps and distortion pedals for his tone, but when it came time to lay down some riffage with his supergroup Chickenfoot, Joe realised only Marshall would do. So they worked together on an amp based on the JVM410. Let’s let Joe explain: “It’s got four channels and three modes per channel, and we just set the thing up in the control room when we were doing overdubs (for Chickenfoot III) and we went from channel to channel, and I think the only time we used a different amp was when we plugged in a ’59 Fender Twin amp to add a little something to a ballad. Everything else was done through that amp. I never felt like I wasn’t punching enough or I never had enough gain or I wasn’t clean enough. It’s really an outstanding amp.” Read More …
It’s here! The long-awaited Marshall Joe Satriani amp, the JVM410HJS, was officially unveiled at Musikmesse in Germany and my buddies at Andertons have the scoop and they’re taking orders now! It’s based on Marshall’s flagship JVM series of amplifiers but it replaces the four reverb controls with four noise gates (one for each channel) – after all, Joe has plenty of cool effects such as his Vox Time Machine Delay when he wants some ambience – and they’ve changed the voicing of the channels to Joe’s personal preferences. There’s also a new Mid-Shift control to switch between a more typical JVM sound and Joe’s voicings. The amp is available in standard black, but a limited special edition (only 500 worldwide) blue half stack will be available for a short time.
Here’s some info from Marshall!
Marshall’s R&D engineers set out to work incredibly closely with Satriani, the latter having a very clear idea of how his own Marshall should sound. After various trials and experiments which even involved Satch using prototypes during recording and touring, the final version of the JVM410HJS was signed off and the wheels for UK production put in place.
At a first glance, the JVM410JS may look familiar. Taking a more detailed look (and listen) though, will make you realise just how different this amp is from its stock counterpart. So. how is the JVM41OJS different from the JVM410H-
Firstly, and probably most notable is the fact that the four reverb pots from the original JVM410 have now been replaced with noise gates; four noise gates no less, one for each channel and each with their own threshold. Another visible change to the front panel is the addition of a ‘Mid Shift’ button that can be used for both ODI and OD2 channels, shifting the mid character of the sound to that of Joe’s specification. Tone wise, the amplifier is very different: The Clean channel is based on the aforementioned 6100 when on the green mode, with the orange and red modes being hotter variations of that tone too. The crunch channel takes the original JVM410 crunch and adds some of the popular Marshall AFD’ circuit to it. and the OD channels are now both voiced identically, based on the JVM410 ODI but with the gain scaled back slightly and a smoother transition between modes. The mid shift button determines the difference m mid character between the original JVM410 ODI and OD2 tone, moving the mids from around 650khz (Mid Shift off) to around 500kliz (Mid Shift on).
The rest of the JVM41 OJS plays out in familiar territory: the amp is still powered by EL34 valves, there are two master volumes the supplied footswitch enables you to switch between channels, modes, 2 master. FX loop and now also the Noise Gates and Mid Shift too. There’s also full MIDI implementation on the unit.