Marshall TSL100

The TSL100 has been around for a few years now, and I am sure that in the not too distant future that these amps will be either substantially updated or superseded by new kit. It's not that the TSL 100 is particularly old, but more the point that Marshall are sure to find new technologies to include in their tube amps, and of course they will find new ways of getting production costs even lower.

The JCM2000 100 watt amp, known as the TSL100 is in fact one cool cookie. It has a substantially different sound than previous amps from Marshall in my view, of that there is no doubt, and it does really sing.

It's more of a Marshall for today's music and sounds, rather than our friend the 2203 amp top, which generally is far more brash and is not (at least by default) driven anywhere near the gain that the TSL100 is.

This amp can achieve serious volume if you need it and it is one of the first Marshall amps (in my view) that can actually offer you a clean channel at volume - something which Marshall amps have been criticised for greatly over the years.

Basically it's a 3 channel amp - the usual stuff, clean, crunch and hi gain in that order. The crunch channel can be driven purely from the preamp and achieve a really good lead sound. The crunch channel in my opinion is one of the best features of this amp and there are tones of all types of crunch on hand. Press the deep button, apply volume, and you have one cool sound which will move your bowels if you get carried away.....

The high gain channel - the one we all want, sure enough has a huge amount of gain, but I have found that if you don't turn the amp up over 4 on the master for the channel then the sound is actually not that good. There is a deep button for this channel and the crunch channel, but somehow it sounds wrong to my ears with the deep button in use on the lead channel.

A simple way that I have achieved results on the lead channel is to use a stomp box - I use a boss overdrive II. This stomp box has volume and distortion. If you turn up the volume pot and leave the gain off, in effect you are increasing the guitar input to the amp. One thing about Marshall's is that you need to drive them hard on the input - this DOES NOT mean that you have to use distortion, but rather get the input gain increased so that the sound will be very cool.

If you use the distortion on the pedal then you will lose the sound of the amp - these amps often sound bad if you distort the signal BEFORE the preamp with a transistor pedal - so don't!

There is more than enough bass mid and treble to keep you happy forever on this amp, and if you pair it with a Marshall 4x12 say a 1960 cab, then you should sound great. If you don't play rock, unfortunately, you will sound like a rock guitarist that can't play rock :-)

Another useful feature of this amp is the effects loop. You might say that you don't care for an effects loop, well neither do I, but it could be nice to get 6 channels from your three channel amp... read on. Take a simple jack plug (open) and put it in to the send of the loop. Now adjust the return of the loop to sound good. Now if you have the loop off and play crunch, you will have one volume (read sound) and if you press the effects loop button you will have another - adjustable by the return loop volume knob - a neat little trick if ever there was one....

Another 'feature' of this amp is the ability to reduce the output to 25 watts or thereabouts. This is achieved with another button on the front of the amp and it does work. Drive the amp on the input and use the button - although the sound is different, it's a very workable sound although some of the purists out there may well disagree.

The amp also is easy to bias. On the back is a 3 pronged connector - centre is common and left is for the left two tubes, looking from the back of the amp and the right connector is for the right tubes pair looking also from the back. Typically these should both be adjusted to 90 exactly. My amp,  was off bias by a factor of 5 and this has a direct effect on the sound quality of the amp. Check your bias if you buy one of these.

The tubes supplied were non descript except for an orange dot on the tube denoting that they were a matched set - it's a pity mine were not matched!. I bough new EL34 from the tube amp doctor www.tubeampdoctor.com and these tubes were superb. The Marshall originals were tested carefully and found to be actually a poor match on one pair. The tube amp doctor sells a great piece of kit called the bias master which can tell you EXACTLY how the tubes are in your amp - individually. Mine were not particularly good - and that was in a brand new amp! Tubes today are very variable in specs and quality and it pays to get really high spec tubes from people who KNOW how to supply the good stuff. The tube amp doctor is one and another is groove tubes which are equally as highly rated, and more so in some quarters.

You might think that most of my comments are rubbish - if you have not experienced these changes yourself then it's hard to believe that these changes would make much difference, what's that got to do with music, actually everything - its YOUR sound.

Last but not least is the scourge of this amp - the foot pedal and it's connector. The connector is soldered right on to a PCB with little of no real added security, this in turn and over time cracks the tracks on the PCB and causes the amp to work erratic - switching channels when it wants to (in the middle of a gig) or just not switching at all (when you want to) and has been and is (I am sure) a problem for Marshall and warranty. To be fair, Marshall do fix this problem under warranty, but realistically it should not be there in the first place, especially at these prices.

I have been unable to find any information on mods for this amp - if you have any and want to tell the world then email us. This amp is manufactured using the latest technology (of 5 years ago) and is quite technical inside, unlike the 2203 series and it's predecessors, so hey, be careful out there...