Played a gig with the Lead MOSFET yesterday.

[guitarbilly74]

My Super Lead is at the shop getting a full checkup so I decided to change things around a bit and take out my Marshall Lead Mosfet head to the gig last night.

I was really apprehensive about it because it's the first time I played live with a SS amp in decades.
To make matters "worse" the band we were playing with had monster rigs. A Fender Bassman head and a Marshall 1987 going through old Marshall 4x12s (they sounded killer btw) so I was like "oh no, my rig is not going to hold up well going before that"

But at the end of the day, this was just in my head, because my rig did hold up just fine . The Mosfet sounded great, no problem at all with volume, punch or anything. 2 songs in, I completely forgot I was playing a SS amp, it sounded just like my regular Marshalls.


Some sound clips:

AC/DC (of course! What's better to demo Marshall tone?)




My little solo thing:



One of our songs

 

[Leonard Neemoil]

Sounds killer.

Cool groove on that original tune.

 

[guitarbilly74]

Sounds killer.

Cool groove on that original tune.

Thanks man. It's amazing how these older SS amps are better than their current ones. It's like they unlearned how to make them.

 

[Whizzercone]

 

[VicRattlehead]

I love a good solid state, any old Marshall or Peavey is worth a punt, early Roland Cube and JC are great too.

 

[guitarbilly74]

I love a good solid state, any old Marshall or Peavey is worth a punt, early Roland Cube and JC are great too.

Yeah I agree. The original Randall RGs too. Absolute monsters.

 

[VicRattlehead]

Yeah I agree. The original Randall RGs too. Absolute monsters.

Ive heard good things but ive never tried one. I think Sunn and Ampeg maybe had a few worth buying too but when it comes to consistency you would be hard pressed to find a bad Marshall or Peavey SS amp from the 70's and 80's

 

[Wildeman]

Hell yeah man, I need to dust off my 100 watt Mosfet monster, the neighbors will love it. You guys kick ass btw.

 

[Rodical]

Good sounding, Cheers...

 

[eastwood6]

Great playing and singing all around. Terrific band. Good job!

 

[V-man]

I never played one but I hear good things about the tone, though I feel like there has been some problem about keeping up volume-wise (as was suggested as an initial concern in the OP).

The tone sounded good, especially when you put it through its paces in the solo. What concerned me were the first and third clips. By the time the songs got rolling, it felt to me you were getting swallowed up a bit by the overly-loud vocals and to a lesser extent drums/everything else.

I don’t level that simply as a criticism of the production/sound engineering, which may/may not be accurate and/or relevant, but more of a concern from my (the camera-holder’s) perspective about whether the amp is cutting through. It certainly should in a 3-piece.

I can’t say whether that was imbalanced signal levels between the guitar against vocals, etc, the guitar cab/speakers were off further than the FOH vocals relative to the person recording, or the Mosfet was struggling over the mix.

What do you think?

 

[AlvisX]

Sounded proper
All those JCM era solid state amps are killer ,gig-worthy amplifiers
I been workin Lead 12s/20s/30s for a couple decades ......If I didn't say it wasn't a tube amp , they'd never know

 

[Matthews Guitars]

Funny, it sounds like a Marshall. Imagine that! If I'm going to play a solid state amp I'll pick an 80s Marshall. I have before, I probably will again.

 

[What?]

Thanks man. It's amazing how these older SS amps are better than their current ones. It's like they unlearned how to make them.

I think a big part of the sound of those older ss Marshall Lead amps was the particular mosfets, which aren't being made anymore, from what I have read.

 

[guitarbilly74]

I never played one but I hear good things about the tone, though I feel like there has been some problem about keeping up volume-wise (as was suggested as an initial concern in the OP).

The tone sounded good, especially when you put it through its paces in the solo. What concerned me were the first and third clips. By the time the songs got rolling, it felt to me you were getting swallowed up a bit by the overly-loud vocals and to a lesser extent drums/everything else.

I don’t level that simply as a criticism of the production/sound engineering, which may/may not be accurate and/or relevant, but more of a concern from my (the camera-holder’s) perspective about whether the amp is cutting through. It certainly should in a 3-piece.

I can’t say whether that was imbalanced signal levels between the guitar against vocals, etc, the guitar cab/speakers were off further than the FOH vocals relative to the person recording, or the Mosfet was struggling over the mix.

What do you think?

Well with SS amps it depends on the load you use with it. This cab has 4 and 16ohms inputs so I use the 4ohm to get the full 100w. So I had the amp master volume on 2 and it was definitely loud enough on stage with plenty of room to get louder.

But if you plug it into a 16ohms cab you're getting about 25w out of the amp and yeah, it's going to struggle. On 8ohms it's borderline acceptable. So the cab impedance is the key. One of the great things about tube amps is they keep the same wattage on any load. I wouldn't take this amp to a gig where I had to use a backline cab because there's a chance I wouldn't get enough power out of it if they gave me a 16ohms cab.


As for the FOH mix, you know how that goes, it's whatever the sound guy wants and a lot of these guys mix guitars low these days. But unless we're running our own sound, it's a battle I can't win, so I don't even fight it.

But the amp, on a 4ohm load, can cut it for sure. Master on 2 is the same as I run my DSL100H live and its about the same volume.

So the point I'm getting at is, I think a lot of the impression about the amp not being loud enough comes from the matching 4x10 cab they sold with it being 8ohms, so the amp was only pushing 50w, which is not a lot for SS.
And back in the 80s, the 1960 cabs were 16ohms only, which made the output even lower.
This amp really needs the full 4ohm load to cut it.

 

[Mitchell Pearrow]

I also love the 3210’s, I have 2 of them, with the fades grill cloth, 1985’s I believe

 

[guitarbilly74]

I also love the 3210’s, I have 2 of them, with the fades grill cloth, 1985’s I believe

YeahI think I'll be buying a second one now that I tried it live. They're still relatively affordable and sound really good. I've had this one for a while and I've always liked it, but I've always used it as a home amp only. I was pleasantly surprised about how well it did in a live scenario.

 

[Mitchell Pearrow]

YeahI think I'll be buying a second one now that I tried it live. They're still relatively affordable and sound really good. I've had this one for a while and I've always liked it, but I've always used it as a home amp only. I was pleasantly surprised about how well it did in a live scenario.

When I bought my first one , I had never heard of them (was out of playing for a while) and I was using it with a vox tonelab.
Now I like to pair it up with my DSL40c’s, or the second one with the Origin 50 H,
And I hook them up to MG cabs, so I get the 100 watts.

 

[aikiguy]

I had the full stack back in the day (brand new in the 80’s), and I have a half stack with a slanted 4x10 currently. I bought that for nostalgic reasons. I don’t use it other than for recording occasionally, but I’ve always thought they ripped and sounded as good as anything else out there. I still think that, and I like your sound as well.

I’m actually a bit of an SS guy these days…. Just sayin’

Well done!

 

[MonstersOfTheMidway]

Everything sounds great in all the clips.
I had one of those Lead 100 MOSFET Marshalls many years ago-loved it very much.