lonewolfsx
Well-Known Member
Just got this 1987x earlier this week. I usually have a bad track record with buying other people's old modded amps, but this was another guitar center find so I figured if I had to I'd just take it back.
Luckily, I won't have to, because it sounds great. Very dynamic, really sweet sounding, count me a big fan of this tone. I did a little comparing to the crunch channel of my 6100 (supposedly has a JTM45 and 1959 modes) and the JTM45 was a little closer, but neither has quite the fullness and roundness of the actual 1987. I actually think the JCM900 SL-X was probably the closest sounding as long as the gain was turned lower, but that's just a first impression.
The amp is almost completely hum free and I also have to give Marshall credit as well, chassis mounted tubes and pots, very neat PCB with quality soldering etc, it's a very nice amp. This one dates from 2003 and looks to have all of the original stuff inside other than the mod, dagnall transformers etc. I'm also pretty thrilled by the small box format. It's a bit smaller than the average Marshall head shell like most of my amps and the small chassis is nice and light too.
The master volume added is mounted where the low input for Ch2 was, so the jack is gone now. I'm still having trouble deciphering exact which master volume mod this is, but the work inside the amp is super clean, nicely done job. It's a 1meg single gang pot, with two wires from lug 1 & 2 running over and soldered directly to R23 and R24. I assume underneath the board it's been wired over to the power tube pins as well but I haven't taken the board out - at the moment I'm not going to mess with it because it's fine.
Even with the master volume though, it's extremely loud, and of course bright. It doesn't have a great taper but I threw a volume pot in the FX loop and just use that instead and it's a bit more manageable. I'm actually quite surprised just how good it sounds, considering I'm essentially using two master volumes in sequence to tame it down to around 100db. I'm sure it'd be a little better with an attenuator but I'm still impressed.
The only other mod I can find is the bright cap has been cut out entirely. It's plenty bright and I find the presence control to be reasonably usable on this amp compared to some other stock ones I've played in the past. The bass that comes through isn't flubby and I'm very happy with how thick and full it sounds without it, though I may clip one across just for the sake of trying out what it would've been like stock, after hearing Johan Segeborn's clip I'm really torn on whether I like the cap on or off, so I'll have to hear it in person.
Before I put it back together I may try the one-wire cascading gain mod. If I really like it I'll look into making it switchable. The other alternative is I may remove the MV, or at the very least rework it a bit. Only the high treble channel inputs work, and they work like a normal plexi, but the normal channel input is just grounded out, so you get nothing from that jack. Of course, raising up the normal channel volume does have a slight effect on the tone, adds a tiny bit more fullness, so I'm just running both volumes maxed. Great tone to my ear. I think ideally though it'd be cool to still have access to the normal channel though. I don't want to mess with it too much because it sounds really great as is. I definitely won't be drilling any new holes but reversible mods are fair game here.
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Luckily, I won't have to, because it sounds great. Very dynamic, really sweet sounding, count me a big fan of this tone. I did a little comparing to the crunch channel of my 6100 (supposedly has a JTM45 and 1959 modes) and the JTM45 was a little closer, but neither has quite the fullness and roundness of the actual 1987. I actually think the JCM900 SL-X was probably the closest sounding as long as the gain was turned lower, but that's just a first impression.
The amp is almost completely hum free and I also have to give Marshall credit as well, chassis mounted tubes and pots, very neat PCB with quality soldering etc, it's a very nice amp. This one dates from 2003 and looks to have all of the original stuff inside other than the mod, dagnall transformers etc. I'm also pretty thrilled by the small box format. It's a bit smaller than the average Marshall head shell like most of my amps and the small chassis is nice and light too.
The master volume added is mounted where the low input for Ch2 was, so the jack is gone now. I'm still having trouble deciphering exact which master volume mod this is, but the work inside the amp is super clean, nicely done job. It's a 1meg single gang pot, with two wires from lug 1 & 2 running over and soldered directly to R23 and R24. I assume underneath the board it's been wired over to the power tube pins as well but I haven't taken the board out - at the moment I'm not going to mess with it because it's fine.
Even with the master volume though, it's extremely loud, and of course bright. It doesn't have a great taper but I threw a volume pot in the FX loop and just use that instead and it's a bit more manageable. I'm actually quite surprised just how good it sounds, considering I'm essentially using two master volumes in sequence to tame it down to around 100db. I'm sure it'd be a little better with an attenuator but I'm still impressed.
The only other mod I can find is the bright cap has been cut out entirely. It's plenty bright and I find the presence control to be reasonably usable on this amp compared to some other stock ones I've played in the past. The bass that comes through isn't flubby and I'm very happy with how thick and full it sounds without it, though I may clip one across just for the sake of trying out what it would've been like stock, after hearing Johan Segeborn's clip I'm really torn on whether I like the cap on or off, so I'll have to hear it in person.
Before I put it back together I may try the one-wire cascading gain mod. If I really like it I'll look into making it switchable. The other alternative is I may remove the MV, or at the very least rework it a bit. Only the high treble channel inputs work, and they work like a normal plexi, but the normal channel input is just grounded out, so you get nothing from that jack. Of course, raising up the normal channel volume does have a slight effect on the tone, adds a tiny bit more fullness, so I'm just running both volumes maxed. Great tone to my ear. I think ideally though it'd be cool to still have access to the normal channel though. I don't want to mess with it too much because it sounds really great as is. I definitely won't be drilling any new holes but reversible mods are fair game here.
Pics:
Guts:
