Re: 1 watt Marshall
I used to have one. It was good for what it was.
What will you be using it for? It kinda needs a boost for metal, as the "ultra gain" channel is flabby without it. The clean channel is really bright, which can be a good thing if you like chimey sparkly clean tones, not so much if you want something warm.The reverb is OK. It's nothing to write home about, but it's better than nothing, IMO. It really loves being put through big cabinets too.
The tube compliment is pretty standard for these little 1W amps. My guess is it has an input gain stage, a tone stack driver, and a a power tube (the 12AU7). I don't know what the deal is exactly, but my guess is that 12AU7 doubles as the phase inverter/power stage, each triode handles the negative and positive part of the waveform, respectively, to make it class AB, hence why it has a "big tube amp" kinda feel.
It's not a perfect amp, but it's really fun for what it is. It's surprisingly loud for 1W (not full-band-loud by any means, though), but it sounds great turned down as well.
I used to have a Randall RD1H as well. Both were great, but the Marshall is a lot more feature-packed. The Randall does metal better, but the Marshall can also get there with a boost, plus it has tons of other features.
Ola Englund did a demo of it recently and he pulled some great tones out of it:
