Where in the UK are you from ?? (if you dont mind me asking)I
It is entirely possible! A 1998 I would have thought should definitely have seen symptoms by now. There's an easy way to check.
If you are up for taking the amplifier chassis out of the head box and flip it upside down (just use a bunch of books to support it either side), look towards the rear of the amplifier on the PCB. You should see a white Marshall logo towards the top of that board with a little rectangular cut-out. Try not to touch anything, JCM2000s do not discharge their capacitors upon power off. If you need to move some wires out of the way, use a plastic or wooden poking device (a chopstick).
You are looking for a rectangular grey box printed on the board just under that rectangular cutout.
The most common board was Issue 5 (abbr. ISS 5). If it's a 5, you will have some fun and games down the line, it's really when not if. If you see 20, you're grand. As an aside, I would swear blind I have seen an ISS 22 board in the wild somewhere. Either I received an issue 22 from Marshall, or I am not remembering correctly and am making it up, likely brain fog over the years.
Hopefully that will help clear things up. I can say, any JCM2000 I have replaced the board on, I didn't get back in for a re-repair. Really, these are the prime sleeper amplifiers in my view. They are cheap to buy, if you really need to replace the mainboard, it is not terribly expensive to do and after that it's just as solid as any other Marshall I have had in over the years. Enjoy the bad rep and thus cheap price.
Marshall TSL100 Metal?! - Most slept on Marshall ??
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Where in the UK are you from ?? (if you dont mind me asking)
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Neon_Knight_
Well-Known Member
Why have you owned so many? Do you keep replacing them after they fail, or did you decide to mock-up a Kiss live set complete with a huge wall of Marshal amps and cabinets?
I understand people owning different types of amps, the "same" amp in a couple of different sizes (for different situations / venue sizes), an identical back-up for touring, or even the same amp model with different tubes or some other mod (used in preference to the other amp for specific situations)...but what need did you have for four amps of the same model and what caused you to go through the other 11?
These may sound like dumb questions, but to me it's really not the same as owning a large collection of guitars (my guitars are kept in various tunings, have significantly different tones, and have different numbers of strings).
HeHasTheJazzHands
Well-Known Member
T
They fixed the bias drift on later TSL/DSLs, so I'm pretty sure the JVM is fine. Never hard of the JVM having bias issues.Great. I'm about to buy a JVM and this thread has scared the shit out of me.
The amp is apparently only three years old, so that gives me peace of midn then. Thanks!
HeHasTheJazzHands
Well-Known Member
Soon-To-Be-Congrats on the cool amp btw. Love the JVM.
I WILL say a noise gate is necessary. Idk why but Marshall made that thing a noisy beast.
Its 100% a good choice, i love mine!Great. I'm about to buy a JVM and this thread has scared the shit out of me.
This one is a very special one. I don't want to spoil the surprise (specially since the deal is not fully closed yet). But I hope everything goes fine and I can make a NGD thread soon!
About the noise, yeah I always have a gate in my rig. Since I run digital multi-fx with my tube amps I use gates even on clean sounds (just the minimum settings to take care of noise floor caused by dirty power, RMI, etc).
There's also a lot of mods for these (including improving noise floor) so there's that option as well if I feel like it in the future.
Well, if it's of any assistance, my JCM410H is a 2019. It has already had a new board. Sorry, I don't believe Marshall "fixing" the JCM2000 line has any correlation with the JVM410H. The fact is, I have had JVM boards go conductive, including my own which was brand new when I bought it. And no, it isn't stored in a garage, swimming pool, river or loft. It's stored normally just as any other head.
Honestly? It was complete circumstance. For a while there, I was all up about rescuing things that people didn't want anymore that I had a bit of a passion for. It was Commodore Amigas for a while until suddenly everyone wanted them. To me it's no different to the fact I have had probably 50 or so A500s pass through my paws, repaired and sold on.Why have you owned so many? Do you keep replacing them after they fail, or did you decide to mock-up a Kiss live set complete with a huge wall of Marshal amps and cabinets?
I understand people owning different types of amps, the "same" amp in a couple of different sizes (for different situations / venue sizes), an identical back-up for touring, or even the same amp model with different tubes or some other mod (used in preference to the other amp for specific situations)...but what need did you have for four amps of the same model and what caused you to go through the other 11?
These may sound like dumb questions, but to me it's really not the same as owning a large collection of guitars (my guitars are kept in various tunings, have significantly different tones, and have different numbers of strings).
The first one I bought I got when my Laney VH100R disappeared into smoke (flat fire, everything gone). Then I went other places after a while. I owned it again at another point up until my dreaded Mesa Mk IV ownership debacle. I then owned another which got me back into playing guitar at all in the first place. When that went down I took it to Marshall for repair and that's when I learned of the defective boards thing.
Well, I didn't think much more about it until a friend offered me his dead DSL100 (same board issue). I was sort of winding up starting amplifier repair on a non-serious side and he felt it was rock n roll to trade it for a crate of Budweiser. I got set up as a Marshall tech and ordered the board for it, swapped it out (I had been repairing amps on and off already for ten years, but never 100% seriously as in with customers etc.).
The rest, I either found through friends, customers who wanted to nope out of the repair costs, auctions from ex-rental places, etc. Most of them came to me in poor shape. There were plenty of DSL and TSLs to choose from. Sadly I couldn't save all of them from the landfill site, I only have so much cash. A lot of them did go to e-waste though from the rental firms I'm sad to say.
So yeah, I wouldn't say it was me actively seeking them out, it was more happenstance. Given the JCM2000 has been out of production for quite some time, it's been a while since I have got one in. I did buy one that was "dead" on ebay sometime last year. That's in very poor condition, I haven't decided if it's going to be a parts amplifier or not, I have a bunch of other things to repair first - my main headache is this poxy TC Electronic G-Major II. But that's another story.
The one thing I will say about the JCM2000 is once they have had the proper board replacement they are great to go. But given the world supply chain shortage and the fact Marshall has been sold together with the fact that they are very reluctant to sell JVM boards anymore, I don't think it will be long before production of replacement JCM2000 boards will cease altogether and you either win or lose.
Personally I have three working TSL100s right now and in all fairness, they have all sounded a little bit different. One of mine - the one you hear on the recording I posted in an earlier thread - is the best sounding one I have heard. I really don't know why it is, it's in excellent condition and there's not a chance that is ever leaving my house. Not even for a gig!
The JVM series certainly does have issues. And it formed part of the basis of a very snotty letter I penned to Marshall when they refused to supply me with a replacement board some time ago. I was practically spitting fire. I don't really want to go into detail, but I will let you rationalise this one in your own head.
Prior to the JVM series' release, the issues with the boards used in a lot of amplifiers - not JUST Marshall it's fair to say - were very much coming to greater attention amongst musicians. While a couple of companies categorically denied it was a thing (coughs in Mesa Boogie) and were about ready to pull authorised service status for even suggesting it, Marshall in all fairness made replacement boards available very easily. At the start there, you didn't even need to be an authorised service tech. Of course, when people thought it was no different from changing a PC motherboard, they changed tac for obvious reasons.
But given I have had my own 2019 JVM board go conductive, I see no reason for that whatsoever! I have had a few other JVMs in; the last time I identified the issue, Marshall either couldn't or wouldn't supply a new board.
It boggles my mind that the same issue can reoccur given this issue plagued their flagship amplifiers back in 2000. While I can spit fire at other manufacturers for other reasons, you would have thought Marshall would have learned their lesson with regards board substrate back then.
Right now, the only thing I can do is modify the pin on the valve base to essentially fly the SGR away from the board, in some cases run some hookup wire along where that board should be. Personally, given I have designed a good few PCBs in my life, I feel that the board layout could do with some improvement and could itself be lending to the board substrate reacting. That is, the hysteresis of the material in that area is being forced to extremes far too quickly. Well, I'm not going to go into loads of detail but when JVMs start failing with this problem en masse, I do hope Marshall will again stand by their product. I have ever confidence that they will, they did with the JCM2000s, but I was just mad the last time when they decided to cull replacement boards entirely.
Well, I'm sure no tube amp is devoid of hassles. But at least it seems the amount of pages after a google search showing issues on a JVM is waaay smaller than a TSL (in fact, most of them are correcting JVM to TSL).
Oh well... Guess I'll have to pray to the gods of distortion.
A really interesting thread. I had a TSL122 for years. I used it in rock bands....but mainly the clean and crunch channel for a reggae band! It had the best clean (played Glato with it).....and then it started humming and after many months of going in and out of a local repair shop it got sent to Marshall for a new PCB....and I got it back....and it still hummed like crazy (Marshall said it was 'working as designed' which was BS)....and so I sold it, as is, for less than the repair had cost me 
Incidentally, at the point I got into prog rock / metal, I tried everything I could to get a decent high gain tone out of it and failed.....I got a more satisfying thump from my POD 2.0. Not saying I'm an audio expert, but I instantly got a better high gain tone I wanted from many different amps; 5150, Carvin L3, EVH III, Engl Invader, Ironball, Marshall JVM....so I'm perplexed as to what I was doing wrong with the TSL122.
Still, I don't think I'd consider going back due to the PCB issue, and very concerned to hear that other Marshalls like the JVM suffer from this same issue.
Btw, my current set up is an Engl Ironball with a pedalboard of goodies....and a CaptorX straight to front of house. My experience was that the inconsistency of sound due to people not mic'ing a cab correctly meant that I gigged extensively with a Kemper, then an AX8, both with better results...and even now, I find an XLR from the CaptorX to be a far easier way of knowing I'm going to get the sound I want out front.
As I like the small format / ease of lunchbox amps now, I'm wishing there were a lunchbox version of the JVM - I mean, I think there's a one watt version, but I'm talking 15 watts plus.
Right now, I think the Bogner 3534 and PT15IR are closest to my requirements. I haven't tried them yet, and impossible to find them in the same shop here in the UK....but they are horrendously expensive. Set up to gig (rather than tweaking to record) I suspect the Bogner will go straight from lovely clean to more gain than I need - although I still want high gain ugly and the PT15 I suspect will do the clean and crunch well...but will lack the ugly high gain.
So then you end up in the situation of wondering whether it's worth investing at all, and just keeping on with the Engl Ironball which is quite good (and a plexitone and other pedals for more old school type gain)......or even just sticking with a modeller.....
Hmm....
Cheers,
Andy
Incidentally, at the point I got into prog rock / metal, I tried everything I could to get a decent high gain tone out of it and failed.....I got a more satisfying thump from my POD 2.0. Not saying I'm an audio expert, but I instantly got a better high gain tone I wanted from many different amps; 5150, Carvin L3, EVH III, Engl Invader, Ironball, Marshall JVM....so I'm perplexed as to what I was doing wrong with the TSL122.
Still, I don't think I'd consider going back due to the PCB issue, and very concerned to hear that other Marshalls like the JVM suffer from this same issue.
Btw, my current set up is an Engl Ironball with a pedalboard of goodies....and a CaptorX straight to front of house. My experience was that the inconsistency of sound due to people not mic'ing a cab correctly meant that I gigged extensively with a Kemper, then an AX8, both with better results...and even now, I find an XLR from the CaptorX to be a far easier way of knowing I'm going to get the sound I want out front.
As I like the small format / ease of lunchbox amps now, I'm wishing there were a lunchbox version of the JVM - I mean, I think there's a one watt version, but I'm talking 15 watts plus.
Right now, I think the Bogner 3534 and PT15IR are closest to my requirements. I haven't tried them yet, and impossible to find them in the same shop here in the UK....but they are horrendously expensive. Set up to gig (rather than tweaking to record) I suspect the Bogner will go straight from lovely clean to more gain than I need - although I still want high gain ugly
and the PT15 I suspect will do the clean and crunch well...but will lack the ugly high gain.So then you end up in the situation of wondering whether it's worth investing at all, and just keeping on with the Engl Ironball which is quite good (and a plexitone and other pedals for more old school type gain)......or even just sticking with a modeller.....
Hmm....
Cheers,
Andy
maliciousteve
Contributor
A really interesting thread. I had a TSL122 for years. I used it in rock bands....but mainly the clean and crunch channel for a reggae band! It had the best clean (played Glato with it).....and then it started humming and after many months of going in and out of a local repair shop it got sent to Marshall for a new PCB....and I got it back....and it still hummed like crazy (Marshall said it was 'working as designed' which was BS)....and so I sold it, as is, for less than the repair had cost me
Incidentally, at the point I got into prog rock / metal, I tried everything I could to get a decent high gain tone out of it and failed.....I got a more satisfying thump from my POD 2.0. Not saying I'm an audio expert, but I instantly got a better high gain tone I wanted from many different amps; 5150, Carvin L3, EVH III, Engl Invader, Ironball, Marshall JVM....so I'm perplexed as to what I was doing wrong with the TSL122.
Still, I don't think I'd consider going back due to the PCB issue, and very concerned to hear that other Marshalls like the JVM suffer from this same issue.
Btw, my current set up is an Engl Ironball with a pedalboard of goodies....and a CaptorX straight to front of house. My experience was that the inconsistency of sound due to people not mic'ing a cab correctly meant that I gigged extensively with a Kemper, then an AX8, both with better results...and even now, I find an XLR from the CaptorX to be a far easier way of knowing I'm going to get the sound I want out front.
As I like the small format / ease of lunchbox amps now, I'm wishing there were a lunchbox version of the JVM - I mean, I think there's a one watt version, but I'm talking 15 watts plus.
Right now, I think the Bogner 3534 and PT15IR are closest to my requirements. I haven't tried them yet, and impossible to find them in the same shop here in the UK....but they are horrendously expensive. Set up to gig (rather than tweaking to record) I suspect the Bogner will go straight from lovely clean to more gain than I need - although I still want high gain ugly
So then you end up in the situation of wondering whether it's worth investing at all, and just keeping on with the Engl Ironball which is quite good (and a plexitone and other pedals for more old school type gain)......or even just sticking with a modeller.....
Hmm....
Cheers,
Andy
Not played with a 122 but in an old band I was in, the other guitarist had a TSL60 and that thing sounded awful. I've heard a lot of people say the same thing. Never heard a bad thing about the TSL100 tone though
HeHasTheJazzHands
Well-Known Member
Huh didn't realize there was a sound difference between the 60 and 100. Probably explains why I hate the TSL; always tried the 60 lol
Since this is becoming a bigger discussion, ive decided to put on the guitars only track so you can hear it better -
This is boosted with a TS9 , no noise gate, its humming a little bit but not anything too overpowering and kind of expected with this amount of gain i suppose..
This is boosted with a TS9 , no noise gate, its humming a little bit but not anything too overpowering and kind of expected with this amount of gain i suppose..
maliciousteve
Contributor
It’s why I stayed away from the JCM2000 series for a long time. I assumed they were all like that.
We compared our amps through the same cab. His TSL60 and my Jcm900 2100, his TSL just lacked bottom end and sounded really hissy/fizzy in comparison
I can help out all you hummers if you like. FWIW, my TSL100s are quiet as a mouse. But symptoms of hum comes down to the following in order:
- The daughter board for the bias control pots right sticking behind the mainboard that you can extract from the topside of the chassis. The pots in here get dirty quite quickly and will lead to hum problems. You can either clean them with contact cleaner (and rebais afterwards) or what I have tended to do, I came across a stock of RS Pro pots that were an exact match some time ago.
- The capacitor C2 on the power supply board where the IEC connecter is. It's a 22nF cap rated at 630v. I have rarely come across a JCM2000 where this has not gone out of spec and will cause hum. I generally replace them with a 22nF of a higher voltage rating depending on what I have on hand, usually 800v. To be honest, I don't bother checking this capacitor at all, I just assume it's bad and change it out.
- The rest comes standard. A lot of these amplifiers were not stored in the best of conditions or maintained all that well. Just like any amplifier that has that history, cleaning of the valve sockets and jack sockets will do wonders.
As far as whether you want a JCM2000 TSL or DSL, it's up to you. I happen to think they are excellent and still stand by saying the TSL100 is the best thing that's left the Marshall stable in a good few decades. But that's my opinion alone. And sadly today I think there are far more examples of neglected JCM2000s than there are tip-top. I think sheer number out in the wild is why they were seen as so disposable.
- The daughter board for the bias control pots right sticking behind the mainboard that you can extract from the topside of the chassis. The pots in here get dirty quite quickly and will lead to hum problems. You can either clean them with contact cleaner (and rebais afterwards) or what I have tended to do, I came across a stock of RS Pro pots that were an exact match some time ago.
- The capacitor C2 on the power supply board where the IEC connecter is. It's a 22nF cap rated at 630v. I have rarely come across a JCM2000 where this has not gone out of spec and will cause hum. I generally replace them with a 22nF of a higher voltage rating depending on what I have on hand, usually 800v. To be honest, I don't bother checking this capacitor at all, I just assume it's bad and change it out.
- The rest comes standard. A lot of these amplifiers were not stored in the best of conditions or maintained all that well. Just like any amplifier that has that history, cleaning of the valve sockets and jack sockets will do wonders.
As far as whether you want a JCM2000 TSL or DSL, it's up to you. I happen to think they are excellent and still stand by saying the TSL100 is the best thing that's left the Marshall stable in a good few decades. But that's my opinion alone. And sadly today I think there are far more examples of neglected JCM2000s than there are tip-top. I think sheer number out in the wild is why they were seen as so disposable.
Dont forget that some amps need different cabs to work better. (e.g. to compensate or low end or harsh high end etc..)
All good still!Come back in a few months and let us know.
