Is Joe Going Back To Marshall Again?

[kotornut]

Originally Posted by vanbuxton

I use Marshall amps and there not the best, not the cheapest, not the most reliable BUT they do do a very good job and I love my TLS, even if I have had to revalve it 4 times in 8 years!

That's funny, I used to retube my mesa every year. Not because it was bad, but just because I learned that is good maintenance. I still believe it.

*edit* Powertubes that is, not preamp. I changed the driver preamp tube twice in 10 years.

[Toadfish]

Originally Posted by GilkyBear

http://www.woodytone.com/2009/07/17/...fferently-now/

I guess he'll just swap out the guts and call it a day after all.

Yep - but from Joe's own website, posted on July 9th:

"... checking in after not checking in for a while.... Chad's condition is looking brighter and we are looking forward to the last two festival shows of this tour... Thanks to all of you, Chickenfoot continues to rock the charts and radio waves. The shows have been fantastic, and crazy, and always fun, as you can see from the clips. We were filmed in Montreux and hope to release it at some point. ...Yes, I did switch back to playing Marshall Amps, nothing to do with business, just an artistic decision. A full explanation will follow when the time right... Right now, in Stockholm, it's raining and I've got two days off in this beautiful city... Joe"

!

[yellowshirtguy]

Originally Posted by Toadfish

Yep - but from Joe's own website, posted on July 9th:

"... checking in after not checking in for a while.... Chad's condition is looking brighter and we are looking forward to the last two festival shows of this tour... Thanks to all of you, Chickenfoot continues to rock the charts and radio waves. The shows have been fantastic, and crazy, and always fun, as you can see from the clips. We were filmed in Montreux and hope to release it at some point. ...Yes, I did switch back to playing Marshall Amps, nothing to do with business, just an artistic decision. A full explanation will follow when the time right... Right now, in Stockholm, it's raining and I've got two days off in this beautiful city... Joe"

!

I guess I don't understand why he would do that. Maybe the tone he was looking for he could get easier with a Marshall, but isn't Peavey willing to build him whatever amp he wants to get him whatever sound he wants?

[rastachild]

Originally Posted by yellowshirtguy

I guess I don't understand why he would do that. Maybe the tone he was looking for he could get easier with a Marshall, but isn't Peavey willing to build him whatever amp he wants to get him whatever sound he wants?

sure peavey will build him whatever amp he wants, but if joe wants a marshall sound, why go through countless prototypes when another amp manufacturer already produces an amp with the sound you're looking for? since he had been working with peavey on teh jsx50w, he had probably already put their r&d teams through their paces anyway.

[davet247]

This whole thing is weird. I personally love the JSX but for different reasons (it seams) to Joe...

He only uses the clean sound of valve amps (as he said in various interviews) because the amps would inevitably get damaged or dropped so he stuck with pedals and any old valve amp with a clean sound would do (with certain quality speakers in cabs). I liked the distorted channel of the JSX more so then any 5150 or mesa or Marshall but they can all sound the same through the clean channel so why Marshall unless he prefers the cabs?

I think Joe probably wanted the freedom to use whatever he feels like again but in the process shaft Peavey royally! I certainly feel he should have never made a signature amp if he knew full well his pedals are his tone!

[GLG421]

I can't really blame the guy. I think at some level, all of us are still after that elusive tone. The one we hear in our head, but can never quite get perfect.

He's notorious for being in search of the holy grail of tone. The fact that his amp is the latest component to be switched is hardly surprising.

I can tell you this. A JS1200 > satchurator > JCM800 combination is pretty freaking awesome, but I still find myself missing just a little something and I don't have nearly his money or resources.

[Toadfish]

There's a lot of chat about 'any old clean channel will do' - I have to say that from my own experience, this simply isn't true.

The way a clean channel is voiced, how it reacts to distortion, how the power amp changes the tone when it's cranked etc etc etc all have an effect on how a distortion pedal will sound on a clean channel of an amp. From personal experience again, a Satchurator through a JSX clean sounds quite different to a Satchurator through a JVM clean.

Although I no longer own one, I have to say that the clean channel of the JSX sounded better than any other clean channel I've ever played through for the way it took a distortion pedal. The Satchurator sounded HUGE through that amp - great combination - and was a different kind of sound to the amps' natural distortion ( I actually preferred the pedal and clean channel, after 2 years of using the amps' gain and a Keeley Katana to round it out ).

The great thing about this hobby / obsession is that there are so many options open to us, and none of them are wrong - just what's right for you!

btw - I'm selling my modified Satchurator - soon to be on the classified pages if anyone is interested (modded with 2 switches, one for extra mid boost and one to change the nature of the distortion to a more open and aggressive 'crunch' with more volume - very cool!)

Toady.

[Toadfish]

I'd also add that even with the JSX, the Satchurator sounded completely different depending on how you set the channel volumes.

With the master volume set low, it sounded fizzy and thin. With Master volume on about 4 and channel volume on around 3-3.5, it was an absolute beast of a sound.

I can understand why people try distortions on clean channels and say they sound awful - it's because they probably do the way they have been setting them up! Sometimes the amp needs to be blasting for the true tone to get cooking.

I'm also interested to hear the real reason why he switched though. The JSX IS an awesome amp (I'm probably going to end up getting one again - I'm in the process of a move abroad and wanted to try something else before going and getting another amp over there), but then so are a lot of other amps (Marshalls included).

[rastachild]

+1

i've got several tube amps and the way my od/distortion pedal sounds on the clean channels is completely different. i've found the amp i prefer the sound the best on is the laney gh50L, which ironically has the worst sounding sounding clean channel (eh, it's just average, not bad) of the bunch. which kind of makes sense if you think of the jcm800 not being known for its sparkling clean tones.

still, i hope peavey comes out with the jsx50. i was looking forward to trying it out.

[davet247]

Joe in an interview for Mixdown Monthly ~ Issue #72, April 1, 2000

"I’m looking at this thing that costs about forty dollars, it’s a Boss distortion, a DS-1. And you know, for years I searched for the perfect Marshall amp, I used to perform with them endlessly, and they’d get stolen, they’d get dropped, or break, and someone would fix them and change them forever. I started to get frustrated about that whole thing. I used to use those little pedals at home, and then one day I thought to myself, ‘I should just bring these out with me whenever I have to play, ‘cause I’m getting sick and tired of this vintage amp stuff.’ And I thought, ‘You’re not gonna sound like Angus Young using this, you’re not gonna sound like these other guitar players.’ But one that I knew I loved more than any other guitar player in the world was Jimi Hendrix. And one day it dawned on me, that my hero was using a loud clean amp, and that he was stepping on the funkiest pedals he could find to make his guitar not sound like the era that he had just grown up in."

“So I went out looking for a loud clean amp, and ended up with a series of Marshalls that had channels on them with no distortion. I then I started looking for that all-round combination of guitar and distortion pedal."

"But of course now the sound of distorted guitar is totally different to the way it was back then. It was a bit more vintage-orientated; there was a lot of guilt about that with guitarists. But I just said, ‘This orange box is my friend, and any other box that sounds weirder is also my friend.’ I didn’t get back into vintage amps till 1995, because I was thinking, ‘No, it’s the guitar and the pedal, and I’m gonna create an unique dialogue between the two."

Says it all to me.

[rastachild]

yeah, but that's not anything new and doesn't mean his approach has changed one bit. he's probably still using the clean channel of the marshall and running his pedals through it...just like he did before he had the jsx. the difference imo is that there was no jvm at the time and that's the amp he's using now. so basically, he found a newer marshall that he liked better than the jsx.

[Scali]

Originally Posted by smc1975

My guess is, is that Marshall offered joe a ton more money to use their amps for the Chickenfoot tour. Tone didn't take him back to Marshall, a fat paycheck did. Which is fine with me, I would do it in a heartbeat. Of course, a lot of guitarist use a brand that is paying them money as a prop on stage, but he may still be using his Peavey's backstage. This may only be a endoresment deal for the Chickenfoot tour only.

Funny enough, Marshall actually 'drove' Satriani to Peavey.
Namely, Satriani has always been a Marshall player... at some point his main Marshall amps got stolen (a JCM800 and a JCM900 head I believe). Marshall 'loaned' him two of the new 6100 30th Anniversary amps.

Satriani used these amps for years, but eventually they were becoming unreliable from all the stress of touring, and needed repairs. So he sent them off to the Marshall factory.
When they came back, they didn't sound at all like he wanted to... and Marshall was reluctant to do much about it, as they had already abandoned production of the model at the time (the amps were rather complex and expensive to manufacture, and Marshall had moved on to cheaper, simpler designs with the JCM2000 series). Marshall didn't even want to re-launch the 6100 as a Satriani-signature model.

Satriani didn't want to rely only on second-hand 6100s if he needed a backup... he wanted an amp he could just get from a store anywhere. And that's when Peavey stepped in and gave him that opportunity.

Perhaps Satriani has now changed his mind... It could be that the 6100 was still his amp of choice, and that the JVM is now 'close enough' to that 6100 (or even more to his liking) that he wants to go Marshall again (and is able to, because his deal with Peavey has run out).

[Scali]

Originally Posted by jb4674

Does anyone really give 2 schitz if Joe uses a Marshall? he did for years and his playing was good then and it's still good now with the JSX's. Bottom line, if he plays a Marshall onstage, so what? He has for years even after the Peavey endorsement either live or in the studio and no one gave 2 rats about it then, so why now? Because he's in chickenfoot?

Jimmy

Heh, my favourite Satriani song is actually Flying In A Blue Dream, and he used a Mesa Boogie Mark IIC+ on that
The guy sounds great on any amp, really... but that liquid Mesa tone he had going there... that was the best.
Funny why he hasn't used Mesa more often.

[jono]

Originally Posted by Scali

Heh, my favourite Satriani song is actually Flying In A Blue Dream, and he used a Mesa Boogie Mark IIC+ on that
The guy sounds great on any amp, really... but that liquid Mesa tone he had going there... that was the best.
Funny why he hasn't used Mesa more often.

I've never been one for "what gear on what track of which CD", but I'd always understood that that tone was the DS-1 into a Roland Jazz Chorus!!!

Any more info on what gear from the "classic" Satch era was used ?

[kotornut]

Originally Posted by jono

I've never been one for "what gear on what track of which CD", but I'd always understood that that tone was the DS-1 into a Roland Jazz Chorus!!!

Any more info on what gear from the "classic" Satch era was used ?

I use a Satchurator into a Jazz chorus live and I get an amazing tone. I've always noticed that Satch plays through the clean channel then uses pedals. I am basically forced to play with a good distortion pedal through a clean channel because of my situation and I could see why Joe wanted to do that with his live set up. It's pretty relaiable even though it's a lot of work to get the tone in the first place.

But, I've always wondered why he's used Marshalls for it, not that I know the best, but Marshalls aren't the best clean amps in my opinion. I hear the JSX has an amazing clean channel, so I understand that and I know there are a lot of great clean amps around but I've never thought of Marshall as one of the best cleans. SOme of the best classic overdriven sounds, of course. Oh well, I could be wrong.

All I know is that Joe is the only one who knows what the whole switch is about and I think it has a lot to do with change. We all want to change gear for no reason sometimes, you know you've thought about changing stuff before and really have no real reason to. I think that's what's happened here.