I DESTROYED MY NEW MODDED PLEXI
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.พ. 2025
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Hi Henning! So to be fair, sounds like the HT fuse did its job, and it was really not death of an amplifier but more just the HT fuse tripping due to the tubes being super stressed... one thing you can do with that amp is variac it down to 90-100 volts or whatever the European equivalent would be since you're on 240 (200v or something I guess) and have your Tech bias it to operate like that. I run an SL68 hard like that with no issues, the reduced voltage means it's easier on the tubes, reduced wattage and a bit lower volume (when using a cab) as well. Give it a try!
Pete Thorn in the house.
@@PeteThorn thanks Pete… I wouldn’t even know where to begin with doing that.
My tech is 3 hours away…
I’ll just use the amp at a different sweet spot and with the master volume I won’t have any issues. That’s where the mod comes in handy.
Pete, man you've got an ear for gain as well as power staging. Congrats on getting in a band with Satch and Vai. Like holy shit!
Hey Henning, unfortunately the companies don't explain this well. A 100W non master amp can eat through these toy load boxes.
Power Handling rating changes depending on heat dissipation, therefore it depends on the ventilation of the room, temperature and so on.
The Power Station can handle a plexi with no issues, it is heatsinked well, it is just very important to keep it on so the fan keeps work. And keep in a ventilated area.
Normally a plexi should be played cranked and perform well, it is designed to take a beating, and a lot of them have survived for 50 years without a master volume, truthfully, some of them failed along the way... quite unfortunate that the new one failed the test.
But then again, tubes are crap today, could be just bad luck with a tube.
Also, a thing to be careful with non master marshalls and load boxes is that, not only do they output around 170W cranked, the wattage is derived for a near-square wave, so you're hitting the amp with a signal that is near constant, and the load has little opportunity to dissipate the heat, so constant airflow is paramount.
We need to see the impedance curve of this ampcentral evo. It is probably trash and contributed to blowing the amp up
"the wattage is derived for a near-square wave" The audio equivalent of a jackhammer!
I had it drilled into my head as a teenager that valves amps can easily put out 50% more ‘power’ than they say.
Always picked my speakers and attenuators accordingly.
Dam! thats good to add for My info, TY seriously !
I ran my 1959HW into my captor load box and it got suuuuuuuuper hot suuuuuuuper fast, so I turned that off after less than 5 minutes. This video makes me glad I did!
"Watt can go wrong" - you said it, man!
@Henning: We still have to do that Rammstein-Style Song "LASSSSTWIDERSCHTAND"! 🤣
Thank you for the wonderful video. I learned a lot. You have already saved me money by not blowing my amps. From the middle of the desert of New Mexico, where info is scarce, you're the best. Glenn Flicker introduced me to your channel. A few months ago.
Haha, yeah... that was a funny situation & discussion. Let's put it that way:
1. If your amp tells "100W", that means "100W Clean"... it can do much more when being cranked.
2. If a Load Box tells "100W", that means... "I can take 100W, but not forever. Especially not, when I'm already cooking."
So: Overrate your Load Box, or go for a Coffee once in a while, if you wanna be safe...
I remember that in the Two Notes Captor manual it said to be careful when cranking the master on a 100watt tube amp, because even if the load box is rated at a 100 watts it can still damage the amp with prolonged use.
This is great advice, thanks Henning ' ...sorry you went through it ' ...but I guess now we don't have to, as you have Sir '
I’ve gigged a 1973 vintage super lead with a THD hot plate for decades, no problems.
However unreliable tubes have been discovered quickly with this method.
I also have a variac hooked up to make sure my wall voltage is 110 not 120+ as modern voltage has crept up over the years in the US.
Glad you got it’s fixed and nothing major was wrong.
Yeah I actually have a voltage regulator and then a brown box for my vintage amps to avoid spikes, line noise and then down to 110 volts. Not only does it protect the amps, my tubes last a lot longer and they sound better as well!
I have a Marshall PB100 Attenuator from the 1990's. It has done fine with mw cranking my 100 Watt JCM 900. In the Marshall forum I read where people have been cranking the Plexis for years. This is good info though as I have a 2 Tones Captor Torpedo X and I bet it wouldn't work. Thanks for the video.
They probably considered that people would assume a 100 W amp outputs only a 100 W so a load box by Marshall sold as 100 W and implicitly compatible with 100 W Marshall amps will be rated for 250 W at least probably 300 W since people buy load boxes to crank the amp.
A cheapo load box will just say it's rated maximum as it's power handling capacity, expecting the end user to understand they will be able to use a 100 W cheap load box with maximum 50 W amp... same as speakers
Oh yeah, amp power ratings are nominal - they can and will output more power than what is quoted.
Under normal playing conditions, they aren't continuously outputting above the nominal, the amp/valves/transformers can handle more power as long as it's brief and infrequent - but if you are turning everything to 10 and running it for hours, that's adding huge strain to the device and it will significantly reduce the lifespan in a cascading way.
As soon as it starts to fail, it'll fail really quickly.
Load boxes need to dissipate that power as heat, and the hotter they get, the less good they are at their job.
Always make sure your devices are rated to handle more power than you are going to draw from them, or sink into them. You want that power headroom so you are not running devices at their absolute limits.
@@ScienceofLoud well…. YOU know that because you are smort…. I ain’t
That explains why some 20w amps are way louder than the rating wpuld suggest
edit: that also explains why most 412 cabinets are 200+w, even though nobody makes 200w amps (for guitar at least)
@@EytschPi42 The elephant in the room is the load box. We do not know what the impedance curve looks like if it's claiming reactive load.
@@Burbund May I introduce you to the Marshall Major?
@@Burbund Volume and wattage is not subjectively linear. A 20 W amp is about 75% as loud as a 100 W amp. So an SC20h on 10 should be comparable to a 1959 SL at 7.
Yeah I have a 20 W amp it is loud enough. I keep it on 10 w when playing with a drummer.
The other thing is same with many hi-fi amps the power rating is below distortion. Most hi-fi amps can only go as loud as just below edge of breakup. Guitar amps are different, the master volume is around 3, when it would be 10 on a hifi amp. That is why a hifi amp will die with the tubes it was delivered and your Marshall will likely demand fresh ones quite regularily.
Guitar amps are basically amps that are allowed to go much closer to self destruction than a regular amp.
However the power rating is still for the louded possible clean volume. On a Plexi that's around 3 or 4 on volume, depends, my Plexi style amp gets about to 4 on the MV before the power stage distorts heavily.
So the rating of 100 W is for less than half power. Rule of thumb when buying speakers or load boxes, amp can output double the rated power if turned up fully with maximum gain. Ad a safety margin if you don't like speaker distortion. So a 20W amp will generally be shipped with a 50-75 W speaker. And will happily output 40 W of square wave, full power continuous goodness.
Check the fuse. My old 40 W DSL had a 150 W fuse. There's a reason for that. And amps aren't 100% efficient so it's pulling even more from the wall than it's blasting through the speaker.
Wattage is basically good for playing loud and clean. It gives you headroom. So if you are a jazz guitarist that play clubs you may need a 50 W or 100 W amp.
If you're a metal guitarist that has all dials (except probably presence and bass) on 10 if using a Plexi or JCM800, you'll be fine with 20W. It's more than loud enough to drown out the drums or at least make a good effort of it. Rule of thumb twice the volume needs 10 times the power, so a 200 W Marshall Major would be twice as loud as a 20 W Studio Vintage. Blackmore liked the Majors. Or you can go the Yngwie route and being 25% of the strategic Plexi reserve on tour every time in case you ever need to commit a war crime. He just uses two. Which for the record Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock was 2 Plexis... no one does this anymore. Of course Yngwie can't hear the sound guy or any criticism, 2 Plexis is bedroom volume to that guy.
I learnt something!!!! Thank you. I love my 50w plexi (71) and have used a Motherload with it for years....have also worried for years also and seldom go past noon on vols. Your words will echo in my head now!!!!!!!!!!!!
100 watt amps with master volume usually sound worse when cranked to high, theres a sweet spot where they are opened up and a tipping point where they sound flooded.
Marshall’s are some of the few that sound best wide open
It's a thing some people love, and some describe as you did.
Mesa did the Dual Rectifier, as in the 2 actual rectifier types, trying to get that sag going in a cold 5881 power section.
Imho most people have just used the SS rectifier setting.
This has nothing to do with the amp wattage or the presence of a master volume and ENTIRELY to do with how the amp was designed, especially the power section. There are some amps with MV that sound like shit when cranked, a recto for example. But not all of them are like this. Like a boogie mk1.
6 is where it’s at
@@miterbox7031not on a plexi
If the amp puts out 170W clean sinewave, that means Marshall really got it close to the original 100W Plexy.
In the '90s I measured 175W clean coming out of my '68 plexy, while a fancy new Marshall started clipping at 'only' 80W. Smaller transformers, lower voltage. Size matters.
That 175W happened only with UK made Philips EL34, other brands put out way less, around 120W. So the tubes you've got in there now are pretty decent. And that's what you need in an amp like this.
Another thing to consider is that the heat produced by fully overdriven square waves is double compared to sine wave of the same magnitude. In real life there are some losses, but you'll need at least a 300W load box for this.
And a HUGE heat sink!
@@weschilton Or a fan and the Earth's entire atmosphere becomes your heatsink.
Load box manufacturers have a responsibility here too.
I agree. Judging by the comments this is not an issue unique to Marshall or Plexi style circuits only, and some other amps seem to have suffered the same fate. For my part, if you bring out a product that alters the way in which tube amps were designed to operate you should make sure that your product is not going to cause damage to the amps, and if this possibility exists issue very clear and aparent warnings. I cannot see that this is being done, at least not in mainstream product and marketing material. Maybe it's in the fineprint on page 101 of the owners manuals?😕
You have no idea how true that is. The impedance curve of all your favorite known reactive loads are trash (they do not accurately represent a speaker's curve). They CAN damage an amplifier.
@@nikonmikon8915the Fryette is very close, and the Suhr nails a true speaker curve. Fractal load box also. But ya many of the others have a "bathtub" curve.
@@PeteThorn Good to know the Fryette is designed right, I didn't want to assume but I know Steve Fryette makes great stuff
I would be interested in a video where you get Steven Fryette to explain how wattage ratings on amps and loads work. I think he has explained it on his podcast at some point, but I think you would serve as a good substitute for those of us who are dumb and might want to ask dumb questions or have it dumbed down so we can understand it. I would also love to understand how speaker power handling in series and parallel works, which I think is related?
This is why I use the THD Hotplate for loading my plexi's for already 20 years, it can take max 185 rms. I've runned my plexi's through it for many, many hours and never had a problem.
(tried all kind of loadboxes through the years, some very expensive, the hotplate still gives me the best sound too, but I only use it as a loadbox and sent the line out to a seperate tube poweramp)
That was my favorite attenuator also, used with my JCM900 SLX, sold it along with the amp. Wish I hadn't now that they're a dead product, though they can be found used at least
@@machine-madedog5059 Andy Marshall (THD electronics) still makes them but not in large quantities. He built another one for me 2 years ago. (in Black and gold color and with some improvements) Like many I always thougth the hotplate was a resistive load, but it's fully reactive. To avoid the misunderstanding all the new ones he built have written 'dynamic reactive attenuator' on the backpanel. The line-out signal sounds beter now than the old ones. (with the old hotplate I always used the Suhr iso line-out, but now I like the line-out of the new hotplate better)
And then from poweramp to cab? Or to speaker monitors?
@@piotrm4507 My signal chain:
pedalboard => Marshall plexi => Hotplate => Line out hotplate => heavenly gate reverb => tube power amp => Marshall 1960AV cab
I only use the hotplate for playing live with Marshall cabs.
Thanks for sharing your experience! Finally, we learned how much of a killer a 100w plexi is and the importance of having a master volume mod on it! Cheers !
Glad it came out good!
I had that fact lectured into me like a 3rd grader by every music shop employee there was growing up! 😂😂😂
Also doubled as the simultaneous guitarist/sound man in a few bands so the RMS/Program/Peak thing happened early on.
We all have things to learn.
You have a great channel!
excellent video, useful knowledge, that thing is an unrestrained monster in the wrong hands.
Don’t crank my plexi song coming soon?
Can’t wait for the lyrics on that one.😂🤘🎸
THX, Henning; feel better soon, young man, it’s a amazing lesson that could only be learnt with the corresponding ‘unknowledgeable’ & cranked physics risks!
And BTW, COOL sweater today.
Or, was that, yesteryear?
😸👍
You are easily the clumsiest Henning I know! ;)
You live, you learn. Thanks for sharing.
Love the sweater!
Thanks for this Henning! Very useful video as I have been looking into loadboxes for my 100w Marshall. I likewise assumed that a 100w rating on a loadbox meant that you could safely use it with any 100w tube amp. Furthermore, as far as I can tell at least, none of the popular loadbox manufacturers provide any info on this topic nor do they issue any warnings in their product and marketing material. I note that the Boss Tube Amp Expanders have a signal/peak indicator that lights up red when the incoming signal from the tube amp is too hot, which I assume might be aimed at addressing this issue, however I would still not feel too comfortable plugging my amp into a 100w loadbox and cranking it after hearing your story.
You want to use an attenuator rated for double the watts the amp puts out. I run my 100 watt Plexis on a variac. The way I run mine (90 volts)it’s probably putting out 40 watts. Without a variac I won’t run the amp full up but use a good overdrive pedal on the front. I have been using Rivera Rockcrusher attenuators for years. No problems. They are well built, shed the heat well and sound great with Marshall’s.
AC/DC have a full time amp tech, they crank their plexi's and at least 2 of them blow every gig. Loved that rig run down.
Isn't AC/DC gain more like 5 or 6? But they'd be running pretty hot either way. Angus is also said to break a ton of strings every night.
Yeah. They almost always use five gains. Completely unlike SRV who only used two gains or slayer that always use all ten gains there are.
Is that the rig run down where the tech reveiled that the amps now have master volumes installed?
When you are clipping the power cubes you get a lot of heat and heat destroys electrical components. Usually what happens is a tube shorts out and blows a fuse. In some cases you can lose an output transformer. If you aren’t running the power tubes hard they can last a long time. Moving amps around can cause the tubes to fail due to vibrations. You want to let your amp cool down before you move it.😊😊
They don’t crank them exactly, they’re down to about 6 on the volume. From my understanding they’re biased way too hot. Similar but different. :)
Thanks again for your honesty! It helps...
I had no idea, thanks for telling us all
Good stuff. I run my non-MV JMP into my Suhr Reactive Load and have never had issues, it never even got hot, though my tech measured the amp to be at least 80W. However, I absolutely take breaks. ANYWAY, I think it's important to keep in mind that you can also use two load boxes in parallel to get more wattage, even though the impedance curve may become a little funnier as a result.
Great video, Henning. I learned a lot. Surprised though. I think load box manufacturers need to be a lot clearer, as do amp manufcturers. I don't play valve amps because I'm a bedroom guitarist, but I would have followed the exact thought process you explained at the start and fried stuff. Glad it was a relatively simple fix and you didn't burn down your house/studio. Glad the pets are OK.
Owned many years ago...used them flat out into a 4x12 with no load box. Sounded great!!
As God intended.
@@Johnny-oy9fh Back before people became wimps.
This is why I got a 100W Weber Attenuator for my "20W" Marshall SCH20. Always have to double the attenuation wattage handling of the amp you are using.... AT LEAST. Never hurts to have more room.
I still remember when my tech brought over one of Marshalls original circuit prints for my JCM 800 2203.
It said output: 170 Watts.
Yup. That's when the amp is distorting. So the next time you wonder why your Marshall is so friggin loud, that's why.
R.I.P. Jim Marshall. The father of loud. ❤
wow They really did a beautiful job on that amp and thats awesome to see ,so now I have to check prices because I was expecting thin PCB boards and thin traces like they were doing ,so now im wondering if they did the same as this with the JCM 900,Henning this actually may sell more amp heads all because you showed us the Great Craftsmanship they did ,and building amps like this will save the Company
Thank god I have an amp repair friend who warned me of this before I caused damage to any of my vintage Marshalls. It’s pretty bad that most of these load boxes are advertised for exactly that, cranking your non-master volume amps to get drive tones without the volume. Have never seen any warnings in promotional videos from the companies making these. Thinking money invested in a sound isolation room or box would be a better investment. Thanks for the video.
Glad nothing bad happened. My old Sovtek Mig 100 6L6 from the 90s was built like that. Fortunately, the manual informed us about the maximum quadratic mean wattage (It was 168W RMS if I remember well). It's always lower than the presumed peak wattage (factor 1.4 ~ sqrt(2)).
You might have WELL saved me a lot of trouble, thanks! I've got a 100w JCM800 from -85 and have been thinking about a loadbox so I could KRANK that amp!!! ...maybe better still keep the master volume at 4-5 even with a loadbox.
Thank you very much for getting the word out on this important fact!
Henning, thank you very much for your honesty!! Instead of hide your problem and solve it in a private way, like many of us!! would do, you put yourself in front of a camera, shows it to the internet monster, and says: hey guys, it was my fault, I was a dumbass, so take care!
Isn't evolution of human knowledge based on test-mistake, test-success kind of thing? So you and a lot of people now we know a little more about this noisy mighty things. We love to make noise with this f****** things!!!
Danke, Gracias, Bravo.
While I think you’re getting/giving good advice, I’d still trust the Fryette PS-100 to handle these sorts of loads. With breaks yes. But what sets it apart to me is having watched a lot of Steve’s videos and live streams and just observing how much he innately understands amps and designing amp tech. He’s serviced about a billion 1959 JMPs and clearly knows their idiosyncrasies etc. The PS-100 has at least four 50w resistors I can see just looking through the grilles, with a fan right on top of two of them. I’m confident Steve designed it absolutely knowing people would crank old JMPs putting out 170w into the reactive load, because that’s what he would/does do with his Powerstations. Part of the selling point that he’s talked about is how you can explore different tones you’ve never been able to get before by mixing power section distortion with preamp distortion. Frankly the PS-100 has gotten me to completely rediscover my amps in general.
Would I do it nonstop for 3 hours? Not so sure about that. I’d be worried about the screen grids/screen grid resistors being annihilated in the amp more than issues with the PS-100 however.
Gotta love this giant toddler and his honesty.
😆
Like that dude from Rugrats
Did the Tom Schultz of Boston. This is why his Marshall's and Fenders would do the exact same thing as you experienced under full load or load. This is how he would get his foundation tone and the built his on things to plug into his Marshall to get the Boston sound. Happy your Marshall wasn't Damaged.
That was really great information, thanks 🤘😎
Thanks Henning. I appreciate the knowledge share.
i agree, i did not know the load box wouldnt take it, i was on the verge of buying one. pleased i didnt now or i would be 1 amp down. invaluable video. Henning does it so we dont have to, lol
Ps100 gets hot even with the internal fan.
Also different wattage if i recall correctly 4 and 16 ohm vs 8 ohm.
Does the trick though. Idk if id push it 2 hours at 11. But its quite a machine.
What can go wrong ? scared laugh…..let me tell ya. 🤣. Henning…..you lovable madman.
This is also why I wish amp manufacturers would put the total power output rating on their tube amps instead of just the clean RMS rating. My Hiwatt DR504 has a "rated" output of 50 watts, but I found a catalog from the 70s for the exact same model of amp and it rates the "total musical power" (read: output section as saturated as it will get) as 125 watts. Which absolutely explains the reputation those amps have for being "make even Marshall Plexis run away crying" loud.
Just saw a TH-camr this morning who was suggesting this may happen when he reviewed the Andersons Namm video. Didn’t catch his name- but he was an engineer evaluating the Namm displays. Good stuff.
I am happy for you that this great and expensive amp was not "destroyed" but it was just a fuse and a tube. I use an SPL reducer loadbox which, depending on the ohms has a more than 200w RMS max.
IMO master volume amps should be played neither low or cranked. Just find the sweetspot (which for me is usually 6/10). More than that the powertubes distort too much and the tone is kinda flabby. And it is safer for your loadbox too
Thanks for making this a learning opportunity for all of us!
Thanks for sharing! I didn't know this.
I only have a 25w Plexi, but I plan to run it through an attenuator anyway because like you said, it sounds great cranked. Especially through my 2x12 greenbacks.
Interesting point. I was never thiking of loadboxes the same way i think about the cab, and my first thought would be: isn't that why marshall builds 260-300W cabs for their 100W amps?
but loadboxes? i never gave a second thought. 100W is enough
thanx for the video, you probably saved me some amps
Henning, it's not good for a 7:23 high wattage output tube amp to be dimed through any load boxes unless you have a lab 🧪 like Frankenstein 😅. The Load will always reflect the impedance that it sees 🔙 back towards the output valve impedance that it has been calculated to function at.
Indeed both amps and speakers are conservatively rated, a 100 watt head can easely put out 150 watts and more. You need a 200 watts load box to drive safely a 100 watts head cranked
Don't be so hard on yourself, you probably prevented many other people from making the same mistake. Not me, but someone. Interesting video!
I bet it sounded bad ass tho!!!! Metal
Hello Henning, Fender explains that the equivalent of their 22 tube watt amp is around 100 transistor watts. This gives the speaker roughly the same pressure and a very similar volume. You can hear this very clearly on the Fender Deluxe Reverb and the brother digital Tone Master. So it goes in the same direction.
Same happened to me with my 71 “100w” (140-ish watts) Marshall JMP and Fryette PS2-A. Burned output tubes and one tube socket. Installed a good old master volume…happy days
Fryette Power Station is rated for up to 200W though so more likely is that cranking the amp was not a good idea and it would have failed into a real cab in the same way.
@ probably…but my amp tech cranked the amp on his standard “workbench” resistive load and all was fine….as soon as he connected the amp to the Power Station he burned 2 brand new output tubes. So to avoid destroying the output transformer we decided to install a master volume
I remember reading somewhere that your attenuator always needs to be atleast double the value of the amp
Today I got from Thomann my new Marshall 1959HW. I am using it with the Fryette Powerstation acting as attenuator and an Orange 4x12 cab loaded with 4 Celestion Alnico Golds. I found it really doesn't need to be fully cranked in order to achieve the classic Marshall rock crunch. Presence, Bass, Mid, Treble, Volume II all on 6. If you pass 6 on volume high E and B strings start to sound dead as they become too compressed. Bass frequencies become too wooly. So its sweet spot in with all on 6. I think there is no risk to blow the amp with these settings.
170 watts! Holy cowsticks that amp is a serious overachiever!
I have a 1976 JMP 2203 that is similar (overachieving power transformer), but biased correctly it outputs about 121 watts.
I do run it through a UA OX, but never completely dimed. Its been happy for 5+ years now.
Reactive load box or not, running that 170 watt amp a full blast for 2 hours is gonna kill it. Components in the amp are spec'd for 100 watts and certain amperage and heat. 170 watts is definitely going to exceed the specs of the components in the amp, and the tubes are going to die quickly.
As far as I know, Weber Speakers is the only company that's really transparent about this. When you look at their "Mass" units, each have directions on the product pages about amp ratings vs true output. I bought their Mass 200 because it was what they recommended to handle a 100 watt amp like a Dual Rectifier. Give yourself a bit of a break on this and be thankful the fuses did their job. Also this is a great for anyone that didn't already know this 👍
The PS100 absolutely can handle it. It's the only one I would trust though.Great video!
Should also keep the power rating of Greenbacks in mind, especially the EVH and Heritage ones at only 20 Watts in a 4 x 12. Will take a beating but not for long. You need a full stack to be safe.
I've been cranking 100 watt Marshalls into an Ox box since the Ox came out.. No issues yet other than the feet on the Ox will stain your custom color Marshall tolex if you're silly enough to leave it on top of one. 👍
A combination of Marshalls recent cost cutting and the realities of impedance curves in load boxes have seen many dead amps across my bench. A lot of load boxes are prone to causing these amp failures unfortunately.
I've been saying this for years, no one is listening and UA literally tells people "it sounds good so ignore it". This industry is so fucked up
From 100 W to 200 W it’s only 3 dB difference in power 😉😅 maybe add an additional Ventilator. At one time I blew up a Elko capacitor in my Marshall Astoria. I forgot to switch it off for some hour with another head on top. I cleaned up the mess from the explosion in the device and replaced it without further checks, which you shouldn’t do. Luckily it’s still running 👍😅
I'm surprised Marshall didn't get Best In Show for that line of amps and pedals... their finally getting giggy with it...ie, making what we've wanted for decades... and boy, is it AWESOME or WHAT?!?! Load boxes... not the same as speakers I guess... thanks for being the bunny in this exercise... now what do I run the 200 watt Harry Joyce 203 into when it arrives this week?!?! Hobo Roadie had me get it for him and I have no idea what to do! Help!!! 😮🤯😎🎸🤘🎵🎶
You’re surprised they didn’t get best in show for taking someone else’s work from 40 years ago into their “new” product? Ok…
@nobirdsnomasters True... but to be honest those other guys made their name off the Marshall product... which was a copy of a Fender product... so... it is what it is ... what you can't deny is how awesome they sound. 😎🎸🤘🎵🎶
I have an original plexi and dime it using the fryette power station. Never had an issue
Same here, best investment I've ever made to fully enjoy my vintage Marshalls.
@johnmarshall3903 amazing piece of kit, I love that it allows me to setup an FX loop and set one channel slightly louder for a switchable lead boost. People complain about the price but in the bigger picture it's worth every penny
@@No_idea_whatsoever Yup, definitely a far better way to spend €1K than the €1400 extra Marshall are asking for in this Modded HW, which basically are all mods to get the master volume sounding good at a low volume.
Ty for the info. I didn’t know also.
Best solution I've found is to drop down the volage with a Variac, it acts as master volume and make it sounds as good if not better than full voltage VS an actual master volume that sucks the tone. Make sure to setup the bias accordingly to compensate for the voltage drop though, or it will sounds thinner.
Then you can be really safe with loadboxes like the fryette, or the Marshall Power Break that works and sounds great despite being old.
I use the Variac with my 1959HW (no master volume), and never use it without.
@@cesarcros These things are frigging loud, that's for sure. Dropping the voltage is a good idea and your tubes can last longer. Unless you also drop the heater voltage, which is what you do with a variac.
In my plexy I wired a switch to the half high-voltage tap on the power transformer (and switching the bias accordingly).
True, but also let's give credit to those engineers that make great lunchbox amps. They are safer for your 25w greenbacks and safer for your attenuator.
@@myuncle2 That's a different beast for a different use imho, they do sound great but it is just not the same experience when playing both.
If you are fortunate enough to play outside or in large venues, or to be able to record loud in the studio, a 100w plexi beating the hell out of old pulsonic T1221 in a 4x12 is an experience like no other.
@@cesarcros I know, most 20 watters are a bit compressed, but have you tried the SV20 (or the Pink Tako v2) with the same 4x12?
Marshall should use your video as a selling point.
Marshall: killing Load Boxes since 1959
I first learned about the output wattage variance from a Bogner manual. Otherwise I have fried my Shiva. Sorry you had to experience that. Rock On!
I made the same mistake, cooked a 15w attenuator with a 15w tube amp. Tis 15 clean watts, much more cranked.
Yeah... I guess is an educated mistake 😅. I remember that for HI - Amplifiers there was this convemtion to use twice the power of the amp for the speaker. But this was with old tech. On a second note ... You could use 2 loadboxes in parallel to have enough load dump, but I have a feeling that only test will see if that works 🥶
This is also a great thing to test, if amp is about to fail, will the safety mechanism do its part. You never want it to happen, but when it does, this is the best outcome. It looks like it is well made!
How !!! Thanks for sharing, I have to check how much power my torpedo X can handle, I’m being used with my Amps for awhile, just to be on the safe side.
Thank you Henning, I will stick with my Bassman Clone, Boogie V Twin, and Two notes Torpedo reload for destructive distortion !
Good advice. Also full tilt even if it did work OK ,power tubes won't last long at all. And at £150 a pop for a matched set, gonna get expensive quick.
Seems many people misunderstand what the numbers on amps mean. Same with the Boss TAE you can find a couple discusssions where people fried their amps and blame the device. You can see it on many videos as well 'sounds louder than 20W' or whatever. That's because it is. Especially British amps but also many others report the nominal output when the tubes are operated within their normal operation window. I.e the wattage tells you how much clean headroom the amp's got and not how much the output is. It's like overclocking a computer. Clipping power tubes may be what we do, but is not normal operational conditions as far as an amplifier and the tube is concerned and that's why they degrade much faster. The manufacturer has foreseen this and adds fuses which 90% of the time protect your amp so it doesn't melt down. A Vox AC30 is not 30W when cranked, but much more. There is no marketing at play here as some suggest. Manufacturers would jump on the opportunity to tell you their amp is 170 watts rather than 100. It's just the way of reporting things remenant from when these things were built to play clean. It's a costly sport to play amps maxed out. People who crank them all the time know this, bedroom or inexperienced players don't. Brian May had spares for every amp because the average reliability window for a cranked ac30 is like a few hours so anything can go wrong at any time. These people are paying a person to manage this situation. If you got 1 amp and manage everything on your own, you don't crank it all the time. Play through a PA or set it to breakup and use pedals.
100 watts on the 59 Plexi is cosmetic, you can definitely add another 30 or 40 watts, maybe Marshall should put a sticker on the back now that everybody is using load boxes
All amps that distort are like that. That's why the speakers are double the power and the fuse triple. 100 W is for a clean signal. If the Plexi was a hifi amp the volume would go to 3 or 4 but it's a guitar amp so it goes twice or triple that because guitarist are weird and like distortion.
How did it sound dimed, for the 2 hrs you had it cranked? :)
That's the difference from back then. Amp rating was XX Watt and meant "That's the power the amp can continuously produce at minimal distortion (clean)" And those amps could deliver considerably more power when cranked and/or with boosted input. ... Tube amps in general, back then, had a design to deliver clean, nominated output power at 70% to 75% volume / gain. Everything above 7 was (by design) for weak input signal. Thats also why early guitar amps are not so much different in design from ordinary audio / pa amps. ... well, and then much later, came the "Max Power" or "Peak over music power" rated amps ... remember the "1000 W home stereo" ... I have seen an original sticker on an original hamoned leslie "Maximum volume at 7 or you risk distortion"
Marshall ; burning out your tubes since the days of Van Halen and his variac.
Great amps but some things never change in the pursuit of cranking dem toobs.
This happened to me once. Max volume into a Fryette Power Load. Sounds was dying. When I turned around, sparks were shooting out of the amp. Replaced the Power tubes, amp is good. What a relief! Now, I'm very conscious to never fully cranky any amps.
Crazy, I just purchased a Fryette PS 100 and now I’m a little nervous to use it. It’s back ordered at the moment. Do you still use the Fryette?
@@lyric.kayden The Fryette stuff is the absolute best! The issue I had would have happened even if plugged into a speaker cab. It's not healthy for any amp to run at 100% volume. Just repeating what an amp builder told me.
10:37 Man, what a great looking build. A million miles from the computer board in my JVM.
What's old is new again, eh? Eye-watering goodness.
Consider checking out the Mesa Boogie Powerhouse. Handles 150 watts. The only negative is that it doesn’t have a balanced output.
Yea amplifier power ratings are like that. They are measured until the output signal gets distorted by ~3%. After this, the power stage starts clipping the sine wave into a rectangle and rectangle waves are much more energetic so actual output power increases way above the normal rating.
This not tube amp specific, solid state does this too but it sounds less pleasant generally.
I did the same thing with my jcm 900 and a M 8:35 arshall power soak. It didn't kill the amp but it smoked the soak
I have a Rivera Rockcrusher that I've played my '74 Super Lead 100w CRANKED through for years at this point, with no ill effects. Maybe I'm lucky? The Rockcrusher definitely gets hot, but not alarmingly so.
I have a non-master volume plexi 1959SLP, I'm always using it with captor X for hours in my apartment, never had a problem to be honest.
Also, The total power handling capacity of the reactive load depends on the impedance, for example the PS-100 is 200W @ 2, 4 & 16 Ohms. 150W @ 8 Ohms
I didnt know and I am glad i watched this :0
The man blew up a Plexi by over cranking it. What a legend. I don't care that this might have been a dumb move. Even dumb can still be epic.
Einfache Frage: Auf einer vollkommen leeren Autobahn, gerade Strecke, würdest du mit deinem Auto 3 Stunden mit dem Gaspedal voll durchgetreten, .... fahren, ohne Pause? Auch ohne Lastwiderstand würde ich nen 100er niemals dauerhaft voll, also auf 10 betreiben. Denn es klingt meistens sehr bescheiden, wird matschig, undefiniert, und belastet den ganzen Amp mehr als nötig. Gute Amps klingen auch bei moderaten Lautstärken schon sehr geil. Das alte Märchen, dass Röhrenamps nur voll aufgerissen geil klingen, stammt leider aus Zeiten, die lange überholt sind. Und mit einem guten Master Volume kann auch ein Plexi bei nicht 100% Output, schon sehr geil und amtlich klingen. :-) Aktuelle Röhren, und deren Qualitäten, und vor allem auch deren Dauerbelastbarkeit, das ist noch einmal ein ganz anderes Thema!
My 1987 JCM4103 100W has a label inside warning it peaks over 175watts.
Thanks for making this video, Henning! Just recently, I bought a Fryette Power Load IR which is rated for 200W to put on my Diezel VH4 (100W).
I knew that tube amps can output more power than what they are rated in the specs, but THAT much, I had no idea.
I always felt safe having the 200W load, but now I'm cautious again :|
Wow. 170W clean is up to 240W distorted and load box still survived, impressive.
No, it is 100 Watt clean and 170 Watt all cranked up. This is not clean anymore! With a full stack you can make an eartquake... I remember in the 80s standing in front of such a biest full cranked up, playing a powercord and my Jeans were waving like a flag in the storm... DO NOT DO THAT!!!! IT WILL DESTROY YOUR EARS!!! I learnd my lession...
@@antennahead Henning said they measured 170W sine wave.
@@antennahead what?
@@artemsmushkov766 sine wave in, bright volume cranked is what he said = square wave-like signal at the speaker output.
Cranked 100W Marshalls typically put out 175W.