Marshall Lead 12 (5005) Club

[StormJH1]

I wanted to start a club for a unique Marshall combo amp that was prevalent in the 80's and early 90's. I actually learned about it accidentally from some posts in the Pathfinder Club, along with some extensive reading over on the MLP forum. Known as either the "Marshall Lead 12" or "Marshall 5005" combo, this little guy is an unlikely source of some genuine Marshall tones. Observe the following highlights:

• Solid-State (not tube, not "Valvestate") 12-watt combo amplifier
  
• Manufactured in the UK, mostly in the 1980's
  
• 10" Celestion G10-20 Ceramic Magnet 8-ohm speaker (also made in UK)
  
• Single channel, but options for hi or low sensitivity inputs, which can also be "jumped"
  
• Controls include Volume, Gain, Bass, Mid, and Treble
  
• Versions 2 and 3 feature a Headphone/Line Out jack
  

Interestingly, there are three different versions of this amp. The kind that I have is pictured below and has only the two input jacks on the left, with no headphone or line out jacks on the right side:

As a prior owner of a Valvestate 30W that I thought was basically terrible, I was prepared to be disappointed...until I plugged it in. The version I have apparently has something like a fuzz circuit built into the preamp, which makes it unique from the other two. However they do it, the amp is pretty amazing. The Celestion easily handles the output of this amp, so the best way to use it is to crank it louder, and back off the treble.



These amps were UK-made and share a kinship with the JCM series - in fact, this little solid state practice amp does a better job than many tube amps of capturing JCM tones at home/studio volume levels. It also cleans up amazingly well - I read a lot of people complain that the clean tones were quiet and thin. This is true if you just try to turn the gain down and run it clean. But if you find a nice crunch or overdriven tone, you can nice warm, mostly clean tone by rolling off your guitar's volume knob.



The Lead 12's are hardly "rare" on the used market - I got mine for $100 at Guitar Center, which is a decent price. They run for about $125 pretty routinely on eBay/Reverb. Mine seems to be in remarkably good shape given these amps are probably about 25-35 years old. Oh, and Billy Gibbons apparently used one to record several songs and is quite proud to have done so. It's really an amazing, fun little amp that was built to be durable and affordable, instead of just cheap. I thought it was deserving of its own owners club, and would love to hear if anyone else has memories of the Lead 12 either as a "first amp" or something you still play years later.

 

[bparnell57]

Ironically Muchxs loves converting these to little tube amps because of how nice the chassis and cabs are.

 

[Lowbassnotes]

Got one myself, great practice amp. It came to me with a Ragin' Cajun' in it and the original speaker in a box. It does sound like a micro JCM 800, just doesn't thump like one.

 

[eichaan]

I would like one of those someday. I have it's big brother, the Fifty Split reverb. If no footswitch is plugged in, the clean and dirty channels are blended together. 2x12 speakers. Very loud, but it can also sound good at 65db (quiet conversation volume).

 

[StormJH1]

Got one myself, great practice amp. It came to me with a Ragin' Cajun' in it and the original speaker in a box. It does sound like a micro JCM 800, just doesn't thump like one.

Cool! Ragin Cajun is worth $70 on its own, so that's a nice package deal! I bought it thinking that I would maybe swap the speaker out (perhaps the Eminence Ramrod), but I think the original Celestion is pretty good for what this amp does. And the other two versions of this amp (including yours) have the line out so you could run it into the FX return of an amp with a larger speaker.

Marshall made a ton of crap solid state combos over the years, so I was pleasantly surprised how good the Lead 12 was.

 

[marshman]

I think one of my old friends and bandmates had one of those as a head/10" cab micro-stack. We set it on top of an additional old no-horn PA cab we'd used to house an oddball 15" speaker we had laying around and he loved that rig...almost as much as he'd loved the Bandit he'd lost a few years prior.

Oh, and I also converted a similar vintage SS Marshall to a tube amp...once I'd pulled it apart I realized why it never seemed up to the task--it was rated for 50 watts/4 ohms, but had an 8-ohm speaker installed as stock (I was original owner). If I'd straightened that out, I might've left it alone!

 

[Bill Moore]

These are great little amps! My sister in law found one in her new house, (in pieces), and gave it to me. Replaced all pots, and jacks, and added a speaker out jack. The rear straps were missing, so I enclosed the back, leaving an oval cutout, really increased the low end response! With a reverb pedal, it's great clean, and dial up the pre gain, and it really sounds like Marshall!

 

[Tele-beeb]

I had one in the early nineties... my memory holds that little amp had the coolest eq. section... I think I could completely cut the volume off by cutting all the eq. Really a cool little amp...

 

[StormJH1]

I had one in the early nineties... my memory holds that little amp had the coolest eq. section... I think I could completely cut the volume off by cutting all the eq. Really a cool little amp...

Haven't tried that yet! I'm still too new to the amp to form lasting opinions, but it's a strange EQ section. What makes this amp different from what you'd expect from a typical "solid state" amp is that it seems to be able to handle extreme settings of different kinds without crapping out. It's 12 watts into a 10" Celestion speaker, so you can nearly dime the volume and gain and while it gets decently loud, I don't get the sense that the cabinet or speaker are being pushed beyond their intended capabilities at all. Which is cool because it definitely adds to the "Marshall-ness" of it.

My settings right now (with a Les Paul) are: BASS at 8.5, MIDS at 4.5, TREBLE at 2 or 3. I actually read that other people had used similar settings to that, so I knew not to just leave everything at "5" and be disappointed. The treble actually doesn't do that much, except that there is a bit of a fuzz/fizz artifact that is most pronounced if you run low gain settings on the High Sensitivity input, or leave the Treble up too high.

 

[Bill Moore]

Unlike modern small SS amps, the Lead 12 uses a couple of TO3 outputs, with decent heat sinks.
I paralleled a JBL 15" cab with mine, playing for over 2 hours, and had nothing but great sound!

 

[MilwMark]

I tried the Lead 12, 20 and Master Lead 30. All surprisingly good. My favorite is the Lead 20, so I kept that one. Chimey, low gain Marhsall goodness. Perfect for rehearsal.

 

[StormJH1]

I tried the Lead 12, 20 and Master Lead 30. All surprisingly good. My favorite is the Lead 20, so I kept that one. Chimey, low gain Marhsall goodness. Perfect for rehearsal.

Yeah, I think we're seeing here pretty quickly that this line of amps had something special going on. UK manufactured, solid construction, and so much better sounding than I recall of those Valvestate and MG solid states that came afterwards.

 

[gridlock]

I recently bought a mint Reverb 12 (Lead 12 with reverb). A great sounding little amp. Since given it to my brother but it's still in the family. I'm still watching for a Lead 20 with a 12" speaker.

 

[MilwMark]

^^the 1x10 in the Lead 20 is surprisingly good.

 

[StormJH1]

I recently bought a mint Reverb 12 (Lead 12 with reverb). A great sounding little amp. Since given it to my brother but it's still in the family. I'm still watching for a Lead 20 with a 12" speaker.

That Reverb 12 is gorgeous! I just checked the serial number on my Lead 12, and turns out it's a 1982! Pretty cool to have an amp nearly as old as I am that works so well. Testament to how solidly these things were made for such an affordable amplifier.

 

[acstorfer]

I sadly no longer own my old Marshall Lead 12. I for the heck of it put it up on Craigslist for much more than I got it for. One day someone contacted me and made me an offer. I really didn't want to sell so I refused to budge on the price. He made me another offer, and I told him I won't budge. Dagnabbit, he gave me what I asked, which was considerably more than what it was worth.



I also sold the LP pretty recently and bought my Tele the same day.

I had a Marshall Valvestate micro amp that I bought while I was stationed in England in the 90's.


The Lead 12 was much better. I miss the Tele shown in the above pic, but my new one is sensational.

 

[Ian T]

I'll dissent on this one. My best friend growing up had one of these along with a sweet iridescent pearl Kramer Pacer, both brand new circa 1988. Aesthetically the amp is awesome...and I think that's what drives the continued interest in these amps.

But the tones are thin. It had a nice little sparkle, decent crunch, but overall was boxy and fizzy, and responded nothing like a tube amp.

It is what it is - a 12 watt solid state amp - no getting around that. In a beefy little package. Using the chassis for a tube amp makes a lot of sense.

 

[acstorfer]

Using the chassis for a tube amp makes a lot of sense.

That was my plan with mine. It was the main reason I really didn't want to sell it. It would have made for a very good rig once converted.

What I did use it for was to run my iPhone's Amplitube thru. It worked really well for that.

 

[SheldonP]

I love my Lead 12. The factory speaker in mine is a G10D-25.

 

[StormJH1]

I'll dissent on this one. My best friend growing up had one of these along with a sweet iridescent pearl Kramer Pacer, both brand new circa 1988. Aesthetically the amp is awesome...and I think that's what drives the continued interest in these amps.

But the tones are thin. It had a nice little sparkle, decent crunch, but overall was boxy and fizzy, and responded nothing like a tube amp.

It is what it is - a 12 watt solid state amp - no getting around that. In a beefy little package. Using the chassis for a tube amp makes a lot of sense.

I think it's possible to really like the amp (as I do), and still admit that many of those "flaws" cited in your post are absolutely valid. Part of it is contextual - my expectations for a used solid state amp from the 1980's (that I paid $100 for) were practically zero. When a piece of dramatically exceeds expectations, you come away very pleased, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is objectively "good" - even compared to some of the equipment I already have.

I would want not the Lead 12 as my only or "primary" amp. The cleans are good but not great and my 1st version model is going to be fussy with many pedals because it is basically a one-channel fuzz circuit.

I guess I can also get on board with some people finding the amp to be "thin", though it absolutely is not a "bright" or "shrill" amp by any means. The low end character of the Lead 12 is also very representative of a Marshall tone for that era. It's funny - when I was growing up and learning guitar, I just knew that AC/DC played Marshalls and a Marshall stack was supposed to be the baddest/meanest thing on the planet. Now, in 2015, I understand that there are different types of Marshall sounds, and the 80's JCM sound actually is a British-voiced sharper low end. It's meant to have low end clarity for higher gain playing, not necessarily overpowering "thumping" bass like some modern amps. This is in contrast to what Marshall originally was - basically a modified Fender Bassman that did have a thick low end, but was then pushed to the extreme to generate a gainy overdriven tone on top of that. Hendrix, AC/DC, Van Halen, etc....they used Marshalls, but not JCM 900's!

I think the Lead 12 achieves that goal quite well. As noted above - it also can require some pretty dramatic EQ settings to get a sound you like. Right now, mine has the bass around "8" with the mids and treble around "2" to "4". It's also one the only solid state amps I would even consider running "cranked", which I credit to the decision to put a quality 10" Celestion into a rock SOLID cabinet - fueled by only 12W of solid state power.

Not sure I agree with the "boxy" decision, but there are some people that will say that about virtually any speaker box with less than a 12" cone. So I can accept that if people just prefer Marshall tones out of a bigger speaker.

Finally, there's the complaint that it sounds "fizzy" and doesn't "respond like a tube amp". Both have a kernel of truth to them. The fizziness is a documented problem, but one that is curtailed by lowering the treble knob. It's also a big reason why these things sound best "cranked", as much of the fizziness seems to lie in those "in between" gain settings. But there aren't many solid state amps you can talk about that sound awesome cranked, but not as much clean - usually it's the other way around. And it's a very warm, usable gain that backs off in realistic fashion with the guitar knob.

So, there, I basically agreed with 85% of everything you said, and yet I still really like the amp. I think it's important to have balanced discussions about gear we like (even in an Owner's Club thread) because the truth is that ALL equipment has strong and weak points, and we can't own EVERYTHING, so people need as much information as they can before tracking down used gear from several decades ago! It is a great looking amp, too - pretty satisfying to click that big red toggle on, hear that little "pop", and know that this little solid state beast is fired up and ready to go.