I had one of the Valveking combos a while back and did all the tube/speaker mods I could think of. I could only find one tone I liked out of it, and didn't think it was worth keeping the amp for. The new Marshall DSL40c seems to be more like a combo version of the older DSL 50 head, with a little less power and a half power option on top of that. It used the normal EL34 tubes which are the modern Marshall sound. The older version used EL84's which have more in common with Vox than Marshall. I like the resonance control and tone shift (for scooped metal) buttons on the new combos, and I think they chose a proper speaker for them. I have an older DSL 201 combo I'm going to sell to get one of these new combos. The price is very competitive with other mid sized combos, which is not the usual from Marshall. I think they've made a good move with this one. It has reasonable volumes for those of us who don't play stadiums, has enough tone tweaking options without being overly complex, and is affordable. Unless they develop some mechanical glitch, I say.. homerun!
But now it's the same DSL 50/100 preamp with the new half power capability added, whereas the old DSL401C had 4xel84 with a different preamp I think?
