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How reliable are these amps?

How good is the clean channel (DSL50)?

Anything I should know about these amps?

I can get one for $500. Is this a good deal?

In my opinon...

All new marshalls are built like absolute garbage. Cheap pots, cheap switches, cheap jacks.

The JCM2000 has a decent overdrive sound, but can get muddy.

The clean is awful, flat, and dull, and makes good pedals sound bad.

Yes, I'm a botique amp snob, but once you play a Bogner Shiva, its hard to go back to marshalls.

If you want a kickass clean sound, that makes overdrive pedals sound amazing, get a new Reissue Fender Blues Deluxe, and a Barber DirectDrive pedal, and you'll have tone that'll blow any marshall away for about $700 total.

Well, it is a 50 watt Marshall but the DSL's have the best cleans of any Marshall in years, I have heard very little to no problems with the breaking down and $500 is a great price...Maybe Wattage will chime in, he just got one a week or 2 ago!

Oh, forgot to say I don't use any pedals. I use the clean channels for, well, clean.

I love my TSL, and get a great clean tone with my Legacy. Plus 2 drive channels (with shared EQ), switchable FX loop and reverb.

I have found the 2000's to be slightly dull sounding. They are lacking an edge I like to hear in am amp.

Maybe an EQ could bring them to life? I dont know..its like something is missing.

You just have to spend a bit more tweaking time with them. Each venue can make quite a difference on the sound.

new tubes, and you'll be much happier - it worked wonders for me

my dsl401 is a great little amp - havnt gigged with it in ages, but i liked the tones i got back then.. but comparing a DSL50 to a bogner shiva is hardly a fair contest, it's like comparing a bugatti to a ford transit

tom

i thought these were ablsolutely terrible- the clean sound was more than dull, it was clinical. the overdrive was simple and non-dynamic. i've played a few good Marshalls but these weren't it.


Originally Posted by Benjy_26Oh, forgot to say I don't use any pedals. I use the clean channels for, well, clean.

The 2000 is not a bad Amp, but IMO the DSL is a lot better. It gives you a much wider range of tones that are usable. Its basically a 800, 900, and a 2000. With a few added features. Real good sounding amps. I am going to get a 100 watt head sooner or later!

I've got a TSL602 and have had absolutely no problems in the 3 years I've had it. The tone is awesome for LZ, AC/DC, amp; punk style music. I play a lot of old Metallica stuff, and while the amp has good tone, its no Mesa. I really dig having 2 levels of crunch tho and this is where the amp shines.

I did use the clean channel with my old Korg AX1000G to play some RATM stuff, and this amp really kicked *ss! I recently went with individual boxes and stopped using the Korg and just used the quot;Leadquot; channel on my amp which sounds way more quot;naturalquot; than the korg.

For a while when I would go to stores to try out new axes, I would always try them on a DSL40 and was never able to achieve the same tone as my TSL602 (maybe for obivous reasons), nor was I able to dial in a tone I liked...

I have a DSL 100 and it's a great amp

I am liking mine so far. Practiced with it Friday and gigged with it on Saturday. I put in Ruby Pre's and Svet EL34's and it improved the amp in every noticable way over the stock marshall ECC83s and the Sovtek EL34's.

I had to change the power tubes Saturday because it appears it on of the Sovteks was failing so I dropped in a set of the Svets and did the bias on it (which was ridiculously easy btw) and holy crap does it rock now. I really couldn't care about it's clean sound but it was quite nice.

Only issue I have and I will have to figure it out is when coming off of standby. If you play for a while then go to standby when you come back up it seemd to be down on power a bit. Not sure the deal there and maybe I am just imaging it but it has happened twice so I am a bit confused about it. Tonewise though no issues at all and eveyone that has heard it loved it.

Mine is a 1998 DSL100 head just so you know. I didn't get a chance to play throught the 50 wt but I was told by several people familiar with both that the 100wt was the better choice. $500 sounds like a good price for the 50wt. I paid $799 for the 100wt, there were 2 other that were $899 and $999 respectively and there was a 2 year old 50 for $999 as well.

I have played Diezel, VHT, Bogner and others and think there is NOTHING wrong with the DSL series. I just sold my DSL50 after owning it since '98. It was perfect in reliability and sounded very good. A DSL50 for $500 is a good deal. I traded mine in at GC and got $650 (went towards a Warwick bass). I happen to think its clean channel is excellent and the nasty stuff is also good. When I talked to Vinny Moore a few months ago he had a DSL50 under his arm the whole time (before he went on stage). I give the DSL50 and DSL100 thumbs up. I prefer the 50 myself but you can't go wrong with either.

I think the DSL 50 is a great amp. The cleans are the best i've heard on a marshall in a long, long time. The dirty is very versatile, which is why people probably dont like it, they may not have spent enough time tweaking it. I'm seriously considering up-sizing to the DSL50 from my 401. They do sound alot different though, I personally prefer the 50. For the money, I would snap that one up.

One thing you should know about the TSL series is the 5-pin footswitch can be problematic. I used to have a TSL 60 head and when switching from clean to distortion (or vise-versa) is had a small (about a half second) mute thing going on. It would have sucked live, but I mainly just recorded with it. I liked the distortion, and the clean was good for a marshall. My Mesa's clean is much better and I like the Mesa distortion better too. But for $500, you could buy it and sell if you don't like it.

The DSL 50 is really a good amp. The clean is absolutely great, and you get some nice tones out of the overdrive. Shared EQ, but it can be lived with. Cool amp!

Well, I don't want to spoil the party........but I bought a new DSL 50 head in September and had to take it into the shop on November 2nd for repair. I was playing it one night and the volume suddenley went up by itself, then down. Up again and down again. It did this in about 20 seconds time. I shut the amp off for about an hour, turned it back, checked the tubes (yep, all glowing normal) played for another hour with no problems.
The next night I was playing and took a break to get a drink of water. I did'nt turn the amp on standby, I just turned the guitars volume all the way down, set the guitar down and went upstairs. As I was getting a drink I heard this loud hum that got louder and louder. Could'nt tell where it was coming from then I realized it was the amp. Ran downstairs and the amp top was humming like mad. Shut it off and took it to a tech the following day. When he saw the amp he said quot;oh no, not another one of these.quot; He told me that he's had to replace the transformers in quite a lot of the DSL amps. He said quot;in my opinion these amps are not very reliable.quot; Needless to say this bummed me out quite a lot because this is my first Marshall. It's under warranty but still...you shell out your very hard earned money for a name that should stand for quality and it craps out on you in a very short period of time.
I was told on various forums to stay away from the DSL series due to the problems they had. But in all fairness just as many people told me that they never had a problem with their DSL amps. I'm not slandering Marshall here at all. I mean, I took a chance and maybe I just got a bad one. It's still in the shop and I have yet to hear from the tech. Was'nt trying to totally discourage you here but it sounds like the DSL's are a 50/50 proposition.

Benji,

didnt you have a new Prosonic??
i think your the one.
well, i think you should do yourself a favor and buy an OLD marshall if you want to get one.
why spend a bunch of money here and there and not just get something good?
my problem is that here in Greece we have hardly any amps to look at. so its like either choose a or b. but i am going to England in a few days and hope to remedy my amp problem.

Last week I was at a guitar store tyring out some guitars all into a DSL50 through a Marshall 4x12 and I thought it sounded very nice. The cleans were nice and full, the crunch was very classic marshall and the distortion was able to do the heavy metal thing very well albiet it got a bit mushy if you put the gain too high. I didn't even have to crank it much to get a decent sound. Call me crazy but I'd definitely take a DSL50 over a JCM 800. It did the JCM800 thing very well plus it had some actual versatility.