Marshall DSL5c for bedroom

Buddy and I were looking at the DSL5C. He wants to get a small wattage tube amp to play around with learning to use the natural distortion etc. He asked if the 1 watt setting would allow him to do this in a bedroom setting and I have no experience.

Thoughts on the amp? Will 1 watt setting allow him to get natural overdrive but still at a low enough volume for practice at home?

Loudness would depend on the efficiency of the speaker and tone settings, and to some degree the room in which the amp is played (carpeted versus tile floors, etc).

Old simple practice amps from the 1960s (univox, silvertone, etc) are some other options for this same purpose. Some of those have great overdriven tone.

bmars said:

Buddy and I were looking at the DSL5C. He wants to get a small wattage tube amp to play around with learning to use the natural distortion etc. He asked if the 1 watt setting would allow him to do this in a bedroom setting and I have no experience. Thoughts on the amp? Will 1 watt setting allow him to get natural overdrive but still at a low enough volume for practice at home?

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Sounds like it will do the business in this demo.

Because I had mentioned wanting a low-watt amp for the studio, my wife just gave me one of these for my birthday. Sounds pretty darn good to me on the one-watt setting on first tests with both my Nashville Tele and Historic LP. :hank

Check out the Boss Katana amp line up.

Cheap and sound great!

Jimmy

Go with the double stack...

Ed Driscoll said:

Because I had mentioned wanting a low-watt amp for the studio, my wife just gave me one of these for my birthday. Sounds pretty darn good to me on the one-watt setting on first tests with both my Nashville Tele and Historic LP. :hank

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You don't find that the 1 watt tone is thin or tinny?

been searching everywhere for a store to test one, shocking with all the stores in NYC I haven't found one yet

bmars said:

You don't find that the 1 watt tone is thin or tinny?

been searching everywhere for a store to test one, shocking with all the stores in NYC I haven't found one yet

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For a practice amp, I think it sounds great -- it reminds me of my old Lead 12, my first amp. I suppose the fact that you can still hear your strings at one watt might make it sound tinny, but you can always strap on headphones. But for a nice bluesy Marshall tone at a volume you can still talk over, it's not bad at all. If you want to do heavy shred type stuff, I'm not sure if the amp alone will break-up enough for that sound, but as Austin Powers would say, that's not my bag, baby.



Have you tried to find an online source who might let you test the amp out and return it if you don't like it? If you do regular business with one, particularly if you have a regular contact person there, you might try asking about that. (The same might be true of a store if you do regular business there; ask the salesman to order one and ask if you don't like it, can you return it? Or see if they can order one as a potential floor model if you don't like it.) Or call around and drive out/have a friend drive you to NJ or NYS to try one.

These days, there are a lot of low-watt practice methods. If you've got a decent audio interface for your computer, you can put on a pair of headphones and plug into an amp sim and get pretty much any tone -- and any level of distortion -- you want. I recently purchased Overloud TH3 (the demo version came with Sonar Platinum) and have been having lots of fun experimenting with its presets. There's even a built-in noise gate, which is great for the heavy distortion stuff.

I have one and love it. Like most people I know online who have one. First thing people do is get a 12" 16ohm speaker like a Vintage 30 or similar to cram in it.

It's a lovely amp, but the stock ten 30 makes it sound a bit shrill and brittle, you can forget palm muting.

With the 12" like my veteran 30 I think it gives the SL5 a run for it's money and fixes all the problems that a cheap light weight speaker entails. Benefit over the SL5 and DSL 15 is that it has a FX loop and according to Marshall, the 1w mode is closer to 0.5w. It can be played pretty low and is very versatile. The ultra gain channel is not as aggressive as the 15 or 40 and has a lot more useable range.

I really like it, both clean and gain channels sound great.