Jason I just wanna say thank you for being such an amazing knowledgeable human being and helping me learn how to work on tube amps safely and effectively ever since I did your origin to hot rodded 2204 conversion on my origin 50H (with a couple cap and resistor value changes to my tonal preference) I have totally overcame my depression and I’m always gonna be thankful for the things I learned from you. Rock on Mr Tong and looking forward for your next video!!!
Thanks for sharing this brother. It’s so awesome to hear that you get something out of this clips…I sometimes wonder whether anyone finds the tech ones remotely interesting 🙄. Plenty more to come!
4:10 am in Toronto, and can stop my learning curve into what goes on inside these magic boxes. Unabashed saturation and tube overdrive junky. Should never have sold my Carvin XV112E from 1988/89, best damn sounding 112 combo, with beautiful oak cabinet. Always wanted someone to look at that schematic and tell me what it was a copy of, and why so many people complimented the sound I got going straight in from my guitar. Love the channel, going through the tutorials.
A couple of years ago I bought a JCM800 2203 from 1983. I had to have it repaired so I took it to a guy who was recommended to me as the guy to go to. When I picked it up with a new set of valves the tech said to me he'd replaced a few parts that had blown and done a full service on it. He said to me "Don't ever mod that amp. It's one of the few I've seen that still has the original bright caps in it and everything else on it is now back to factory spec. She's a beast"
GREAT video Jason!!! Super fascinating. And boy, do you play those riffs SO DAMN GOOOOOD!!! Felt like I was listening to isolated tracks! No words 🤟🤟🤟🤟🤟🤟
@@HeadfirstAmps bro that “Lets Get It Up” riff is righteous! And Malcolmmis one of my all time guitar heroes. How could he not be ANYONE’s?! Lol. Those riffs are the foundation of ALL rock, whether American or British. They’re “mic drop” riffs lol
👍👍 Someone should do a video on the tonal swap from 6550 to EL34, etc. Same amp, cab and quick comparison's without it being too long, etc. Then a video on V30's or Greenbacks.
I'm with you, Jason. You gotta have that bite on a Marshall. Or as you say, it isn't a Marshall! Like everything tone-wise, it is very subjective. Hence all the mods to old Marshalls. I'm a purist and would keep an amp of this vintage or earlier, bone stock.
Ah... beautiful amp. Takes me back to... well, last week, working on a '76 2203 myself (but you already knew that). Great video, as always Jason. Wish I had the time and skills to do the same video wise. You sure do have that 2203 sounding sweet. Can't wait to see what you do to make it sing even sweeter. Cheers mate.
I have a 2203 that's all dead stock, the bright cap is there, everything works, but it sounds wrong. Like the tone center frequencies of the tone stack are off. I'll be looking into the tone stack component values. And other values as well. It has a mix of the white chiclets and the yellow box .0022 caps. As I understand it, the white chiclets are the last generation Philips mustard caps.
Man,it’s hard to beat a 2203/4….That is THE sound right there…..I had my bright cap removed on a JCM800 I used to own….I immediately put it back…it wasn’t a Marshall without that upper mid KLANK!!!….I really need to build one of these…It’s my “Desert Island”amp…
Bright cap has a huge affect on these amps and plexi’s. Even Plexi’s, we don’t often run them wide open so that cap really makes a difference. Plexi’s, I like 100-500 but on later metal panels they went as high as 5000, hence what consider a harder and less volume roll off friendly sound. Just changing this to a lower value could make a nice difference to your mid 70’s 1959 or 1987. Beautiful thing is it’s the easiest change to make for a novice with a soldering iron with the chassis mounted pots. Christ, that PT is enormous…lol
A slight mis-match in the power tubes is actually okay because when the power amp section of a Marshall clips, or is overdriven, when there's a slight mis-match, it generates even-harmonics which are more pleasant sounding to the human ear.
In some Marshall amps the bright cap is usually a 470pF, some Marshall amps have a 470pF cap in parallel with a 470k resistor in the bright channel after the bright channel volume control.
Unfortunately i only have one, now for 15 years, with the matching box 1982 blackbacks and nothing has ever been touched, but nothing, even much:), it's a masters virgin and on the chassis label it says 1980 with the date of Angus's birthday. Just imagine how more interesting became when my son is born on that same date only in 2020. Fuuu:)
My ‘77 2204 has the green caps. I looked up everything I could on these and people said that they sound as good as the mustards. I read they were made by Erie? I think they were used a couple of years before they changed over to the Lego style caps. I asked Lee Jackson if he knew anything about them and was surprisingly enough unfamiliar with them. Although he has a video where he is bashing some white ones that look the same as these saying they were brittle and cracked and sounded harsh. He replaced the white ones but I noticed he didn’t replace the one or two green ones by the phase inverter so they must be OK. Someone else told me they are great caps and I should leave them in there. I bought a entire set of vintage mustards to replace the green ones but I probably won’t bother my amp sounds killer! Mine is 2204 cascading gain lower voltage model. After watching your awesome videos I lowered my 10k dropping resistor to 5k and increased my voltages up to 325 at PI node where you said the sweet spot is. I wonder if mine sounds like a 2204 with the higher voltage tranny now? Maybe with slightly more sag perhaps.
Great comment, thanks for sharing, yeah, I believe the green caps are original and sound great. Nice work on tuning the voltages, I bet it sounds awesome. Those lower voltage models put out around 35 to 40 watts, other than that it will sound the same.
I'm guilty of DEKERRANGING a few amps! LOL It's all relative to the context / player. I always try and sort out my customers expectations and true usage of an amp with their gear, ie. style, guitar, pedals, environment, speakers, etc. If the amp is used only at home and it's too bright/harsh, it's better to neuter it than have an amp you can't enjoy. Of course if your running higher volumes in a band or through a reactive load, or recording, your brightness needs will most likely be different. My personal circuit adjustment for tone is simply that it must be enjoyable in the room and not fatiguing at a decent volume. Always dancing that line between (clarity/edge) and (harshness with the accompanying noise). With that said, I'm liking the bright cap back in for your example. What's great is that we can tweak these amps to our liking! Looking forward to your next video.
Well this is PERFECT! :) I also have a 1976 JMP 2203... that I recently had de-modded. It went really well, except the tech removed the bright cap(s), thinking that I wanted it done! He said he assumed I wanted that, because everyone who brings a Marshall to him asks him to remove the bright cap. But I didn't want it removed, so now I have to order the parts to put them back. Heh. What is it that they say about assumptions? ;) BTW, I had a mix of those red and green caps in my 2203, so definitely original. Sadly all of my original red caps were toast, but I do still have one green one! Mine also has one of the old Dagnall lay down power transformers that is super hot! We were reading 520v to the plates! No wonder this thing was a tube killer! My tech reworked my bias network and my tubes are running at a reasonable plate voltage gain.
IMO These amps sound way better with the bright caps in place. BTW, subscription earned! You have a fantastic channel that imparts a wealth of information.
Seems like the issue (IMO) is typically the “amp in the room” (or on the stage)…..seems like the darker tones might sound good in front of it, but in a studio recording/playback, the brightness gives it that magic sparkle….I guess it depends on the player and their ears. Sounds killer regardless…🤘🏼
Basically microphones exhibit more bass response when they’re close to things (like a mic shoved next to a guitar speaker), so the bright cap helps balance that out.. On stage you generally have the cab behind you, so the back of you head/ears blocks the top end… While the audience gets blasted by it. It’s a tricky balance.
I definitely like the sound better with the Bright Cap here, For Sure... However, I've noticed different kinds / (what the cap is made of) caps can make it sound too harsh... On my Marshall JMP 50 /1987 Clone, I use a 470pf Mustard / polyester film M 150 style cap, which I think sounds a lot smother compared to a ceramic cap. Plus ( and I wouldn't want to ever dill a hole in the chassis of a vintage amp) but I've also added a blend pot on the back for the bright cap, and depending on the room I'm in and the band situation, I dial in how much of the bright cap i want in.. but always prefer it at least 60% in... at home with hard tyle floors even.. lol (I like the blend knob on the bright cap so much, that I don't know why Marshall didn't do it to begin with) I mean Fender has a switch on most to turn it on or off.. Marshall doing a blend know and maybe calling it a Room brightness control would have been a genius thing to do over the switch on Fenders, Just my opinion of course. However I wouldn't put anything else but a ceramic cap in the treble circuit of the tone stack, that keeps that traditional Marshall Crunch sound there, I've found anyways...
A variable bright cap knob sounds like a good idea but you have to remember Marshall used a common chassis, PCB and pot arrangement on the 2203 as they did with the 1959 and 1992. It's perfectly possible to add an extra pot on the back panel or to put a bright switch on the front but it's unlikely Marshall would have wanted to do either at that point when they already had a 'winning formula' in the existing layout. The 2203/2204 master volume was pretty controversial at the time because it didn't sound like a NMV Superlead so an extra pot likely would have been one more thing people would complain about even if it sounded better....
Dear sir, I am considering to buy one of the reissues of this amp in a JCM80. I’ve owned the original 2204 in 1981, and could hear it was NOT THE SAME AS THE JMP SERIES. What is your honest opinion of the new reissues. Do they have the JKARRANG FACTOR, I’ve got to have this sound, and your description of this otherwise subtlety escapes so many others that swear by Marshall’s!!! I hope you can help me please. This sound has eluded me since I let an old JMP 2203 with angled Fawn cabinet slip away years ago, and I’ve owned more than one Marshall, but never had this same tone I hear in your video. You get it!!!
Jason! Always a pleasure watching/hearing your videos. Can you tell me your signal chain here at the beginning? Is the amp going through an attenuator? Real cab or IR? Thanks!
This clip was IR. Suhr reactive load (original one), into the AXE III which I use only for the IR which is a ML Soundlab Friedman 4x12 greenback. 57 & 121 blend.
Shame about the more vintage tubes not being matched. Which is kinda why I like my Chupacabra. Each tube has it’s own bias adjustment so you can match them in the amp. I guess it works that way. Sounds about right but I know nothing about the more technical side of tube amps. That’s something they (Nik at Ceriatone) says it can do.
The first year 2204's had a different preamp than the 2203 as the first two gain stages were non-cascaded and there was no cold clipper stage. The high input goes into the V1B "bright" channel like a normal Superlead and the low input goes into the grid of V1A but this is not a cold clipper, this would be the "Normal" channel on a Superlead. The first year 2204's were basically a Superlead with a master volume. After '76 they made the 2204 identical to the 2203 aside from the power section being 50W versus 100W. Cheers!
Not a HUGE difference between bright cap or no bright cap. IMHO it still sounds like a Marshall without it. Didn't Malcolm Young prefer Super Bass heads which don't have bright caps? I've never understood why people don't just have it on a switch.
The Bright Cap in my 2203 is clipped as well, as far as I know. I wonder because my amp doesn't sound as dull as this one here without the bright cap. I prefer the soundsamples with the bright cap added. Interesting. Which Loadbox did you use? And whats the name of the IR?
I thought the bright cap to one degree were another only made a difference at low-volumes and once it was turned up it made no difference at all it gets bypassed
It does, but for those running is at less than all-out need to have a scalable bite and growl at all gain settings, which is exactly what a bright cap accomplishes. The value is debatable but it certainly is one of the key contributors to the tone
Hey Jason I can't make up my mind whether to go pre tone stack master or post tone stack master on the 100 watt stealth Jose video.....if I go post tone stack master with a switchable pot for the diodes, do I need the 220k resistor for the off position?.....which style do you recommend?
Post tone stack needs the 'hybrid' setup that I detail in a previous video. 220k to ground, you can experiment with lifting the restore from ground as well, but I think you'll find you can't tell any difference. They sound different pre or post TS masters, only you can decide which you prefer.
@@HeadfirstAmps have you had any experience with self lead output transformers.....they have the end and start leads of the winds in each tube on the secondary side....I think they are crazy.....lol
@@HeadfirstAmps so with a push pull pot for my post master volume with 3 terminals on each side....I would run my cathode follower through the center terminal and on to the tone stack (through the 10k r and the .22u of course) and then to the tone stack......then on the outer terminals the 220k to ground and the other the zeners to ground?
I own a reissue and love it however there is one mod I would do, headfirst makes a fx loop replacement that’s a lot better than the stock fx loop circuit.
@@jaykay0401 I’ve read several people say that the loop in it is “fine”…..just concerned about a resale value decrease of an ‘80’s 2203 w/an added loop (even if the loop is a “good” one and has been added)……you know “tone snobs/purists”….
