Marshal Mini Stack

I played at a Birthday party last night for a other musician that has some health problems and I did not take one of my amps as I was told there would be amps there. (I will never fall for that again I will bring my own) Well I and an other guy was the only guitar players to show up and a friend of mine had his bass rig there and a loud drummer. I let the other guy use my guitar for a set and I played a set as we only played for two hours as a other guy former musician had his Karoke system there which was a stacked Triamped system. He was playing CD's earlier in the evening. Well the only amp to play through was this Marshal Mini Stack which of course is 15 watts and I told the guy to mic it. Well he did not have much on the Mic and the Marshal was a PITA to use. I had the treble on 6 and the bass on three and of course I had to crank the amp to get loud enough to be halfway heard and had a lot of feed back what gives with that Even playing Clean. I can see using a High gain distortion pedal would case some feed back gain as I was using my Digitech PR 80 with it for effects had the amp reverb off too but like I said I was getting feed back set on clean too. Needless to say I was not too impressed as I have had other small amps dimed and never had the feed back issue this amp created. Not impressed at all. To top it off the guy who had the PA sytem had mic problems on one vocal mic and I think he shut the one off to the amp as it was feeding back every so often. I finally got it so it would not feed back but then the vol was not where it should have been either. If this is the way small Marshal SS amps behave I would never buy one!! I did have compliments on my playing so that was nice but still I hate it when there is equipment problems between the screwed up mics and the amp feeding back when it should not have it put a damper on my set the other guitar player had the same issues.

I have a tiny MG10 on my guitar bench. It's OK. I've played a couple of the smaller MG's and they're OK.

The Micro Stacks are just goofy. I think the tiny 1-10" cabinets with no-name speakers are awful. People buy them as silly fetish purchases. I have an Epi Valve Jr 5 watt tube head and the guitar Center near my home had a used Marshall Micro stack for $100. I considered buying it just for the speaker cabinets. I thought that I could use the cabinets with the Valve Junior. I tried them. They were really weak.

If I new someone who was a big Marshall player/collector, I couldn't blame them for buying a micro stack on a whim but it's not a serious piece of gear.

Marshall Micro-Stacks are simply practice amps dressed up to look like...you got it, Marshall Stacks! I have played through a couple and have not really been swayed one way or the other. It's just a practice amp. However, when I was first learning to play in high school 20 years ago I would have loved one! Marshall now sells one with Zakk Wylde graphics for an extra $100 or so. :mad:

I always figgered it for the coolest little crappy practice amp I'd ever seen. But if memory serves, I don't recall it sounding half as good as my Epi VJr.

I have an older mini stack (made in mid-80s maybe?) that I bought used for around 100 bones in the late 90s. On the older models, the distortion is quite good, and the cabs carry 10" Celestions. I don't even know where my head is now, but I use the little cabs around the house constantly.

adam