NAMM 2012: The lowdown on the Marshall Joe Satriani amp
A lot of people want to know what the deal is with the new Marshall Joe Satriani signature amp. It wasn’t unveiled at NAMM like many had hoped, and there’s no release date yet, at least not that I’ve seen anywhere. Well let the Tone King give you the answer!
NAMM 2012: Marshall 50th Anniversary 1-watters
This year marks Marshall’s 50th anniversary, and to celebrate the occasion they’re releasing a different one-watt amp (available in head and combo versions) to represent a popular amp from each decade. A new one will be released every 11 weeks. First up is the JTM1 to represent the 60s. Next is the JMP1, then the JCM1 (think JCM800), the DSL1 (think my personal amp, the DSL2000) and then the monstrous JVM1.
Marshall buys Eden Bass Amps from US Music Corp
Wow! Very interesting indeed!
PRESS RELEASE
US Music Corp Announces Sale of Eden Bass Amps to Marshall Amplification plc
US Music Corp announced today that they have sold their Eden Bass Amplification business to Marshall Amplification plc. The transaction was concluded on December 22, 2011.
In commenting on the purchase of Eden, Jonathan Ellery, Managing Director of Marshall stated “We are very pleased to be able to add this revered brand to our business. We feel that Eden is a great strategic fit within our Marshall Amplifier line and therefore we have the opportunity to increase the Eden brand’s presence worldwide. We are prepared to invest in the development of new products and to expand the awareness of the brand.”
Barry Ryan, President of US Music Corp added, “The sale of Eden Bass Amps to Marshall will result in more resources being dedicated to the brand and that will translate into a continually improving and evolving line of Eden Bass Amp products. We are pleased to be able to continue to represent Eden in the United States as the exclusive distributor and our North American customer base will not be impacted as a result of the sale.”
INTERVIEW: Korn’s James ‘Munky’ Shaffer
Korn are one of the few bands of the Nu Metal era to have endured. Not only does their original breakthrough material still hold up despite the decade and a half of imitators, they also manage to maintain a sense of vitality in their newer material. Just look at last year’s Korn III: Remember Who You Are. It was a dirty, raw, powerful, vital album at a time when bands often become complacent. But complacency isn’t in Korn’s vocabulary. Their latest, The Path Of Totality, finds them pairing up with various dubstep and electronica producers to put a heavily neo-industrial spin on their established bottom-heavy rhythmic drive. But The Path Of Totality isn’t the only new release that Korn guitarist James ‘Munky’ Shaffer is involved in. He recently – finally – released the debut self-titled album by his long-planned solo project, Fear and the Nervous System, a band which features Faith No More bass player Billy Gould, drummer Brooks Wackerman, and Repeater vocalist Steve Krolikowski.
How did the collaborations on The Path Of Totality happen? Did you work together in the studio? Did you send off recorded parts?
It was kind of mixed up. We started out with Skrillex and we worked in the studio with him on the first track, which was ‘Get Up.’” So we were actually working with him in person. And also with Downlink and Excision. Noisia, those guys are from the Netherlands so we just send tracks through the air. They sent them back and Jonathan (Davis, vocals) was in communication with them. So it was kinda different with each artist and producer.
It must have been a cool challenge to figure out exactly where the guitar would fit amongst all the other stuff going on.
I mean, on a lot of the tracks it seemed really like ‘Where am I gonna put the guitar? Where is it gonna fit?’ And it was challenging for me. Rhythmically it was really kinda busy and I was trying to find the right space and the right notes. It’s like a boxing match – you bob and weave to sort of get your punch in there.
Premier Guitar tours Yngwie Malmsteen’s guitar rig
Check out this cool video of Yngwie Malmsteen giving Rebecca Dirks from Premier Guitar the grand tour of his guitar rig. Yngwie talks about his signature Seymour Duncan pickups, his signature Fender Stratocaster, his signature Marshall amps… and he mentions that Ovation may be releasing a signature Yngwie acoustic some time soon. Cool! Check out Premier Guitar for more info.
REVIEW: Marshall JMD:1
Marshall’s JMP-1 preamp was a classic little unit. Packing real valve tone into a single rack space unit with MIDI programmability, it was often paired with a Marshall EL34-based rack mounted power amp (and sometimes even Marshall’s JFX-1 rack mounted effects processor) into a formidable rig of doom. Racks eventually fell out of favour in deference to combos and heads, but Marshall’s new JMD:1 is intended as the logical successor of the JMP-1, this time available in head and combo versions.
The key to the JMD:1′s tone is its digital preamp, designed in partnership with Sweden’s Softube (if you’re anti-digital you should know it’s paired to a Marshall EL34 power amp). There are 16 different models here, painstakingly modelled on actual Marshall amp rigs. Left to right, the head’s controls are master volume and presence; reverb; delay level and delay adjust; modulation depth and modulation adjust; volume, treble, middle, bass and gain; then the 16-position pre-amp selector pot.
Below this array of knobs are several buttons: manual; channels 1, 2, 3 and 4; modulation; delay/tap tempo; external FX; compare; and footswitch/MIDI program. You can store unique sounds if you use just the amp itself, bump that up to 28 by using 6-button the footswitch, or 128 if you’re using a MIDI setup. If you’re playing in a band that uses a sequencer live, you could conceivably program the sequencer to do all your preset-changing. Cool! Delay has four modes: hi fi, analog, tape and multi, and cycling the knob through the range of each setting changes the rhythm of the repeats in multiples of the tempo (as set by the tap tempo control). Similarly, aside from the noise gate setting which relies solely on the mod depth control, the mod adjust control ups the speed of either chorus, phaser, flanger or tremolo.
REVIEW: Marshall JVM410C
Dead-simple amps like the venerable 1959 Superlead ‘Plexi’ notwithstanding, Marshall has been known to explore a ‘more than meets the eye’ philosophy with its amps from time to time. The popular DSL50/DSL100 offers four channels under the guise of two, thanks Lead 1/Lead 2 and Clean/Crunch buttons. The JVM series takes this idea light years further with a multi-channel, multi-mode design with a few additional tricks up its sleeve.
On the surface, the 100 watt JVM410C combo looks like tricked-out four channel amp. Each channel (Clean, Crunch, OD1 and OD2) features a full layout of Gain, Treble, Middle, Bass and Volume controls, and each channel also has a dedicated digital Reverb control. The reverb is routed in parallel and mixed in with the direct signal via a tube and has been designed to avoid abrupt cut-offs when switching channels. There’s a Master section with Presence and Resonance controls as well as two switchable Master Volumes, plus an FX Loop button and a foot switch/MIDI Program button. The Standby switch doubles as a silent recording switch. The valve layout includes five 12AX7s and a quartet of EL34s for classic Marshall tone. The power stage is based on the JCM800 2203 and 1959 Superlead amps.
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I write for Gibson.com, Australian Guitar, Australian Musician, Mixdown Magazine (including my instructional column, 'Unleash Your Inner Rock God,' which has been running since 2007), guitarworld.com, Tone Deaf, Beat and The Brag. I started I Heart Guitar in 2008. I've been playing guitar since I was 8 years old, and I've been writing for magazines since I was 18 (I'm 33 now). I've also worked as a guitar teacher (up to 50 students a week) and a setup tech. I live in Melbourne, Australia. You can check out my guitar playing at Reverbnation or on YouTube.
You can email me at iheartguitarblog@gmail.com