Re: JCM900 Combo 2x12 100w: sell or upgrade?
Keep it. It is a good amp and also one of the last marshalls to come out of england. A head and 2x12 is just as much of a PITA to carry as a 2x12 combo. Just get a folding trolley.
A fresh set of tubes is always good for re-energizing your amp, but a speaker swap would be cool too. Chuck in a set of jjs in the power section for bottomn end and EH in the preamp slots for low noise/high gain and a gutsy and aggressive midrange. I used a 900 100w head for many years and also owned a 900MKIII master volume 100w combo. This tube combo was great for both, but really...you could put any fresh set of tubes in there, bias them up properly and have a great rocking sound.
I'm guessing you have a pair of g12T75s in there at the moment. They are quite mid scoopy and heavy on the bass and high trebles. They are ok but far from my favourite voice in the celestion range. Very 80s hair metal sounding.
I would recommend a pair of creamback g12m speakers. They will give you that classic midrangey 60s era tone and the other advantage is that they are not very efficient, which means you can run your amp a bit louder on the volume control than you normally would with the speakers you have in there. A pair of creambacks g12ms will be able to handle the 100watts of your amp no problems. They will give a warmer, woodier more vintage vibe to your amp. Nice. The tonality that springs to mind is Eric Claptons "cream" era tone. Nice singing midrange. Your amp, with its two channels and maybe a nice fuzzface and you will be rocking with the best of them.
The other speaker worth looking at is the creamback g12H. These are also fine as a pair with your 100w amp. They have a much stronger low end and a much more present top end than the g12m, much more defined over all. However, they are also a lot louder, so in a club you will not be able to push your amp as hard without upsetting the punters, the soundguy/your bandmates. The tone of these guys is wide open...think along the lines more of Jimi Hendrix "band of gypsies". Big, bold, open and loud.
The last one to look at is a bit unusual for marshall amps but a really good sounding option is to go for a pair of speakers from eminence. Either get a pair of texas heats to soak up your 100watts without breaking a sweat and giving you a really thick tone with no flab. These guys are great for taming the output of big amps and smoothing off the tops. Ive been running a texas heat with a marshall for a while and its just great. Muscular sounding across all the frequency spectrum and never harsh or buzzy. If not a pair of those, then go for one texas heat and one private jack. The private jack is voiced something like the g12m celestion so youll get a groovy, complex tone by running the texas on one side and the private jack on the other...bear in mind tho that the private jack is only rated for 50 watts. This is fine as you are running it in a pair with another speaker, so even a pair of 50 watt speakers will be ok with your 100 watt amp, but it will be working closer to its limits so you will get some of that famous "cone cry" of the 60s. However, one speaker running like that, sitting next to the 150watt texas heat and youll get the best of both worlds. One will be loose and spongy (and just plain cool) and the other will be powering out the low end like it doesnt care. It is a sound ive used in the studio and run mics on both speakers to get a really great stereo spread. Sound engineers love it. For live...just mic the texas.
Ok...so that's 4 speaker options that are all nicer than what you have there:
1. 2 x creamback g12ms
2. 2 x creamback g12hs
3. 2 x texas heats
4. 1 x texas heat 1x private jack
Hope this info is useful
Keep your amp, its cool
....maybe a bit of armor all on the tolex and possibly some shoe nugget and your amp will be looking great too and you will remember why you liked the amp in the first place.
