Music Man amps reissued!

[Chickenwings]

Re: Music Man amps reissued!

no not bright. fat. but you can flip the bright switch and crank the treble for some razor sharp tones.
im kinda grumpy cos the one here sounds much nicer than my main gigging princeton.
nice thick mids.
it reminds me quite a lot of a tweed bassman - but with reverb and trem.
The construction inside is impeccable and bombproof. all the wires are trimmed and shaped. The only downside is that a 40 year old amp will probably need new caps, but that's true of any old amp.
The only thing ive ever really done to modify the amp is replacing the clipping diodes with LED's on one channel, and removing them altogether on the other channel. But then again, i did the same thing to my tube screamer and even built an overdrive that runs on leds. I like the smooth sound they produce.

 

[Left Hand Life]

Re: Music Man amps reissued!

Most Music Man amps sounded good to me. I currently own a RD50 1x12" that is a favorite of mine. Mine has a JBL speaker.

 

[ginormous]

Re: Music Man amps reissued!

Joe Giglio, my guitar teacher back in high school, had some slammin' gear:

original MM Sabre II 6-string for covering wedding band, pop and rock gigs
MM HD 130 (2x12"), and a 1st gen Polytone single 12 for jazz gigs
He told me once that with the 2x12, he didn't need anything else. It played really loud, and gave him projection and depth.
(I dunno what "depth" means... maybe the amp pushed his chosen EQ out into the room)
Ibanez "lawsuit" SG
Gibson L5 single pickup (for his jazz gigs -- dude is a hardcore bebop player. He kills!)

Anyway, I played my starter guitar (Univox Hagstrom copy, 2 hummer w/Hag whammy bar) through that puppy, and if they get the RI's sounding that good, they'll sell a bunch of 'em.
Made my cheapa** guitar sound like buttah melted on Halle Berry.

 

[BillG3]

Re: Music Man amps reissued!

I've got a 210 sixty-five stock (except for the tubes, of course) from 1976 bought new. It mostly sits collecting dust as I haven't played much lately and most of my playing was direct to FOH from Pod XT-Live. (And for those who know me from before, no, I haven't been on the boards for quite some time.)

 

[Chickenwings]

Re: Music Man amps reissued!

bill...small snippet of info that might interest you.
Last week, i retubed and rebiased a 210 sixty five...but more importantly, removed the clipping diodes from the preamp.
What a beautiful sounding amp! It took a sweet amp up to a whole other level.

 

[Bludave]

Re: Music Man amps reissued!

this guy had a pretty good idea about that kind of stuff tho:

and this guy:

and this guy. Check out which amps are mic.ed and which ones are being used as expensive amp stands:

Mark Knopfler too is partial to musicman amps.

Its a shame the didn't have uncle Gerry to help them choose their gear.

Clapton stopped using them because they kept blowing up, SRV...... that shot shows him standing in front of one, but honestly SRV played mostly through Super Reverbs (early on) Vibroverbs and Marshalls. He certainly didn't record with them.

Mark may have used them, but he has used everything from komets to Fender Bassmans. Just like all guitar players these guys experimented. The big negative for me on Music Man amps is they were unreliable if you crank them, they had a tendncy to burn up. I had a 120 that I fried at a small gig. Fortunately I had my Deluxe Reverb with me as well.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Music Man amps reissued!

I followed this a bit on the ernieball modhell^H^H^Hforum.

Color me not impressed so far. They drop some of the features that the old amps had, aka all features that aren't in everybody's amp anyway. They are made in Italy by markbass. I really don't see why they would be so much different from generi Every player has its own observations and different experience because tone is very subjective. Some say you should use 250 k pots with humbs, the others claim that a set neck has better sustain. I disagree with both. I don't know whether wood affects the tone, but I personally hardly hear any difference and therefore it doesn't affect my decisions on buying guitars. I believe that changing pots or switching to different amp has much more impact. That is my experience. You can have different and I have no problem with that.c amps from generic countries. That leaves room for me to be positively surprised.

Plus the actual vintage ones are so dirt cheap why bother with a new one? At least they are not china-made.

Is there specific information available about the speakers that they put in there?

 

[ItsaBass]

Re: Music Man amps reissued!

Cool. I always liked those amps.