Chords for Marshall JCM800 vs Ampeg V-4B

_ _ _ _ _ Hello, I'm Guru Scott.
Today I'm going to do a comparison for base amp, the Reissue
Ampeg V4B versus a Marshall JCM800 lead series amp.
Now this amp actually is a
little different than most of the lead series amps.
I believe it has a larger
output transformer because I believe it was originally made to be a base amp and
it also came with 5881s.
So when I wrote to the Marshall factory about this
a few years ago, they said that only a few of them had 5881s and my
understanding was it was to give it more of a bass voice.
So I've actually
switched it over to EL34s.
I re-biased it and changed some of the bias
circuitry.
I followed some instructions I got from Marshall on it, but it makes a
really great bass amp and I thought I would compare this against the V4B and
the reason being is in my opinion the Marshall amp has a really good musical
sound to it.
I can't really explain it, it's hard to describe, but it's musically
very nice and I'll be playing through a couple of Altec Lansing 417 speakers
that I've had since the early 70s and so I'll give you a flavor for both and let
you have a listen and see what you think and what I'm really saying is, you know,
vintage, reissue, this is not really a true reissue, it doesn't have 7027 tubes.
This is a true vintage amp.
This is about 30 years old and it's pretty dang
awesome.
It weighs about 80 or 90 pounds.
It's the heaviest amp I've ever had
except for the SVT and it's heavier I believe than my PVVB2 and it's only 50
watts RMS, but man it is a really awesome amp for bass in my opinion.
So I see them
on eBay from time to time.
They're pretty expensive, but you never know if
you're gonna run into one at a pawn shop or whatever, so it might be something to
consider.
$1,300 for this, you could probably get one of these maybe in the
same price range and you might have a better system.
So I'm gonna let you hear
both of them.
I'll put the microphone down here, I'll play one and
then the other and let you kind of have an idea what they sound like and then
I'll come back and make a conclusion.
_ _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Em] _ _ [E] _ _ [Em] _ _ _ _
[D] _ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [F#m] _ _ [Em] _ _ _ [C] _
_ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [Em] _
_ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ _
_ _ [A] _ [D] _ _ _ _ [Bm] _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [D#] _
_ _ _ [E] _ _ _ [F] _ _
_ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Am] _ _ _ _ [D] _ _
_ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [C#] _ _ _ [Em] _ _ _
[D] _ _ [G] _ [A] _ _ _ [B] _ _
[E] _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ [C] _ _
[G] Okay, [A] _ _ [Am] _ _ _ [D] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [Em] _ _
_ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ [D] _ _
[C] _ _ [C] _ _ _ _ [Em] _
so in conclusion, by the way that was a Gibson Ripper bass I used and I
was [F#] just changing the four tone settings.
I didn't want to make any adjustments
here.
So what's the point of this video?
The point of this video is this is
supposed to be a reissue 1970s sound and in my opinion Ampeg missed the mark.
It
has a dry sound, it just doesn't sound [N] musical to me.
My original V4B did sound
really, really good.
It was a wonderful amp.
It was rated 100 watts RMS, but it
actually put out around 135 when we tested it.
This one here, I'm sure it's
just 100 watts RMS.
It doesn't matter for me.
The main thing is the sound.
This old
vintage Marshall here has a, in my opinion, a great sound.
Now I know it was a
little trebly.
I can actually adjust the bass and everything to make it sound
much more like a Fender Bassman or a VB2 Peavey or something like that.
I just
kind of want to give you a flavor of the vintage, real true vintage versus fakie
vintage.
I think Ampeg missed the mark is all I'm saying.
So if I was going to
buy a brand new amp today, I'd actually buy a Peavey VB2.
You can check out my
other video on that.
I would not buy this for $1,300.
That's what I
paid for this, $1,300.
Way, way too expensive for what you get.