Park 1210 vs Marshall 2150 vs Wizard Rock Standard

In one of those little asides of history, when Jim Marshall decided he needed master volumes to get higher levels of distortion without ear bleeding volume, he tried a couple of different things...

Marshall 2150-only seen one, only rates 1 line in Doyle's book and no description. Basically a 4 input, metal panel Lead amp with a master volume. Cheap to make, but I think they decided there was no advantage to the two channel thing with the MV and was soon dropped in favor of the 2203s with 2 inputs.

Park 1210-gets 2 lines and a picture in Doyle's book. Apparently this is what Jim's engineers would have liked, but it was decided that it was too expensive. No idea how many are out there, anyone seen one? Anyway, it has two channels with two volumes and a master volume, but it's set up so that the two volumes cascade into each other. Plug into the left (low) input and you get one gain stage, plug into the right (high) and you get two. I understand that you could plug into the high and footswitch between one and two stages. This'd make it to Marshall what Mesa originally was to Fender. I've seen some Sound City amps with a similar setup, which brings us to the:

Wizard Rock Standard-apparently these guys found a 1210. The RS is not an exact copy, you can't footswitch the second gain stage in/out as I recall, but it does cascade them and does have the low input with only one gain stage. Great tone, nice sustain. It'll go from a JCM800 level up to a 2550 Jubilee without the nasty diodes

pretty sure there's a Park 1210 on ebay right now - looks like that 'wonder mv' they talk about in the history of Marshall book is nothing more than a post-pi-mv using a dual pot.

:hippy

I'm sure you're right about the post-pi MV, but who else was doing it in 1979? And where else can you get one stock on any amp, even boutique ones, even now? BTW, could you give me the URL for the amp sale, I'd like to take a look at it?

Funny to resurrect this thread from the dead!

I did buy that Rock Head on Ebay, and it's all that I'd hoped it would be. Gets crunchy really easily with the MV, and does clean very well, as well. To my ears it's the second best "do it all" Marshall ever made-surpassed only by the 6100.

Mitch Colby has "reissued" a version of it, since he got the Park name. His is two actual channels with a clean and a crunch channel, still with the PPMV. It sounds great! Strangely, it's more expensive than finding an original (if you can, haven't seen one for sale in a few years).

I never did find a Rock Standard to try out, but my other Wizard was a VERY loud take on a vintage 100w, much harder hitting than my 71, so it wandered on down the road in favor of Hiwatt/Sound City for that NMV brit flavor.

Got to love these old Parks.

A Rock Head sold on UK eBay last week for around £900. It looked very straight and original too. I was very tempted, but I would never get an opportunity to use it properly and the wife didn’t fancy it in the house as just an ornament.

I have quite a rare Park Lead 50 1x12 combo which has footswitchable boost and reverb. It’s a great sounding amp. The closest Marshall to it is the model 2144, which is a 2x12.

Rob