Marshall Lead 100 Mosfet. New Old Amp day

[ZMAN]

A buddy of mine now has a pawn shop and I dropped by to check it out. What caught my eye was a Marshall head sitting in the back. I took a look and asked him what he wanted for it. Under 200 bucks. I had never heard of it and the serial number put it as a 1990. I did some research and found it was a Solid State Lead 100 Mosfet, 3210, 100 watt, 2 channel amp. I brought it home and plugged it in to my Avatar 2/12 and was amazed at the tone. It has a really nice clean channel, spring reverb and a gain channel. It takes pedals really well and you would swear it is a tube amp. Most of the people who responded on Wiki gave it very high marks, and I can see why. True Marshall tone all the way, and the reliability of SS. I used my two button Marshall footswitch and the channels switch smoothly. It has Master volume, reverb, bass, mid, and treble controls, normal channel volume, and on the gain channel tone, volume plus a push pull eq . It also has rear speaker outputs and a volume control on the outputs. Everything works perfectly and it is almost 20 years old. Not a mark in the Tolex either.
I would say if you ever run across one grab it.

[SuperSwede]

Wow... I love that amph, excellent cleans as you say and a pretty potent drive too iirc.

[mrmudcat]

I found my own jewel marshall cab 2x12 pawn shopping and have been looking for a low money head ,that amp has crossed my ebay trails even though my legend hybrid is hooked up to it for now.......:french

[hubberjub]

I had a Marshall Mosfet during my senior year of high school and first few years of college. I think I bought mine for $200. It had a great clean channel. It saw me through a lot of gigs. Nice score Zman.

[Robert]

Maybe that's the model Bonamassa likes? I know he talked about an old solid state Marshall that most people didn't know about. He remember reading it on his forum a while back.

[ZMAN]

I found out yesterday that it was used by the band, Junkhouse. They are a band out of Hamilton, Ontario. They had a couple of hits and the lead Tom Wilson was a prolific song writer. He also performed with Sarah Mcglachlan.
I checked out their videos on Youtube but could not see my amp LOL.
Cool history for my 200 dollar jewel in the rough.
Robert I will have to try to find what amp Joe Bonamassa was talking about.
I have recently become a huge fan of his.

[ZMAN]

Hey SuperSwede. I just got it home yesterday and I was wondering what function that push pull switch on the gain serves. Is there any downloads for the manual that came with it. It came without a foot switch and someone on the Marshall amp forum told me to use the PS802. I tried one that I had and it seem to work. Do you know what switch came with it?
I have Query in to Marshall on this but since you owned one, as I saw a picture in another thread I though you might have some insight.

[Brian Krashpad]

Sounds like a great score, congrats!

[bigG]

Sounds like a great score, congrats!

What he said! :applause

[SuperSwede]

Hey SuperSwede. I just got it home yesterday and I was wondering what function that push pull switch on the gain serves. Is there any downloads for the manual that came with it. It came without a foot switch and someone on the Marshall amp forum told me to use the PS802. I tried one that I had and it seem to work. Do you know what switch came with it?
I have Query in to Marshall on this but since you owned one, as I saw a picture in another thread I though you might have some insight.

I´m sorry but I frankly cant remember much about it other than how it sounded... Perhaps someone on the forum knows more?

[markb]

Maybe that's the model Bonamassa likes? I know he talked about an old solid state Marshall that most people didn't know about. He remember reading it on his forum a while back.

Shh, we don't want the prices going up :nope

All those Marshall Mosfets are great clean sound amps, just add pedals.

[ZMAN]

Yea Super Swede I found out the ordinary 2 button switch will work without LEDs the amps weren't made to light the leds. I was able to find an owners manual in PDF form that I could down load. I think I have it covered now. We will keep it our own little secret Mark. LOL.
As you said very nice clean and just add pedals. I also found out that it is a 100 Watt into 4 ohms 80 into 8 and 50 into 16, but I guess I could have figured that one out by myself.
Cleaned up the dust on the tolex and she looks cool.
I am still looking for that DSL 50 though.

[Blaze]

Yea Super Swede I found out the ordinary 2 button switch will work without LEDs the amps weren't made to light the leds. I was able to find an owners manual in PDF form that I could down load. I think I have it covered now. We will keep it our own little secret Mark. LOL.
As you said very nice clean and just add pedals. I also found out that it is a 100 Watt into 4 ohms 80 into 8 and 50 into 16, but I guess I could have figured that one out by myself.
Cleaned up the dust on the tolex and she looks cool.
I am still looking for that DSL 50 though.


http://dallas.craigslist.org/dal/msg/1428906711.html

[ZMAN]

Yes Blaze I know they are out there. The only problem is I am a no surprises guy. If I can't see it or it isn't new in the box I won't even consider it.
I have seen a couple around here and I almost got one of the orange special editions. There is one locally in Welland for 1100 Can. Mint condition retubed etc. Still a little rich for me.

[Plank_Spanker]

Good score, ZMAN! :AOK

[ZMAN]

Hey Plank: It looks like you are getting as deep in amps as I am. 6 amps and 1 2/12 cab. And I don't gig. What is wrong with me?

[SuperSwede]

Hey Plank: It looks like you are getting as deep in amps as I am. 6 amps and 1 2/12 cab. And I don't gig. What is wrong with me?

Its called G.A.S and there is no cure.

[tunghaichuan]

Hey Zman,

Found this page today:

http://www.stinkfoot.se/andreas/amps/amps.htm

Scroll about halfway down, there is some info on the Mosfet amp you just got.

I forgot that your Mosfet Marshall shares the same chassis/head cab with the 3203 Artist. I had an Artist head and a matching 2x12" slant cab. Marshall also made a cool 4x10" slant cab for that series of heads. The 4X10" is supposed to sound better. I got rid of the head because in never sounded all that good to me.

I've been keeping an eye out for one of those Mosfet heads. If I could pick up a cheap/broken one, I'd gut it and build a tube Marshall circuit into it.

[ZMAN]

Yes I saw that article. I have had some time with it and tweaked it a little. I really like the clean channel with some radial tonebone and a little Fulldrive II. I have ordered a two button Marshall footswitch for it, and I have been tweaking the tone. It is really quite nice. I have it running into an Avatar 2/12 with two Eminence Legend V1216 speakers. A very British tone for sure.
I really can't understand why this amp has been so overlooked. The beauty of it is being an SS amp there is almost no noise and very little heat.
The reverb is very good. I still haven't tweaked that push pull eq yet, so far I like it pushed in. I have been able to decode the serial and it is a 1989.
I haven't even touched the effects loop yet either.

[deeaa]

Some people like the MOSFET series amps, yeah. Personally, I disliked it. To me it seemed too glassy and lacked any serious low end growl. It had a nice bite for some stuff, though. I had one for about 3 months, got it because I got one free with a 4x10" cab I wanted, and the seller threw the amp in, hmm, this was in 2001, and then sold it for 50 euros but kept the 4x10" cab, which in turn I liked a lot and what I originally wanted. Back in the day I used a similar 4x10" with Fender Twin as a head and I liked it.

You see the MOSFET series heads rather often here on sale...but they are very much not in demand....actually I suspect it may be the same head that keeps rotating around in our town music stores.

Anyway, I then modded the 4x10" to have an internal 100W amp and used it with a JMP-1 rack system for gigging for a few years:

http://deeaa.pp.fi/rig.jpg

I have some D/I recording off some gig or warmup with that rig here:
http://deeaa.pp.fi/Pelko.mp3

I play the guitar and sing, there's also a bass and keyboard player and of course the drummer making us a quartet back then.

[Plank_Spanker]

Hey Plank: It looks like you are getting as deep in amps as I am. 6 amps and 1 2/12 cab. And I don't gig. What is wrong with me?

Nothing wrong with you at all!

I have every guitar I need for right now.....:rotflmao:

Now I'm getting into amps, which I think are the better part of the tone equation. The problem is you can't hang amps from wall hangers..............:D