What's your favorite modded / hot rodded Marshall?

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glpg80 said:
Much thanks :cheers:

Before I moved, I invested thousands in recording gear to setup and characterize things properly so I don’t have anymore videos like the above. I’m still no professional at recording but I hope to offer repair/refreshing/customization sometime mid next year.
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Yep, however much a money sucking black hole guitars and amps are, the recording world is 10X it, and whatever you get while be obsolete in way less time. Ive got amps Ive had for 40+ years and they still crush and pummel, guitars too. Ive got recording stuff I got last year and I knew I should have gotten something else the day I got it home... :doh:
But its still a ton of fun
 
JTyson said:
Yep, however much a money sucking black hole guitars and amps are, the recording world is 10X it, and whatever you get while be obsolete in way less time. Ive got amps Ive had for 40+ years and they still crush and pummel, guitars too. Ive got recording stuff I got last year and I knew I should have gotten something else the day I got it home... :doh:
But its still a ton of fun
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Dude I traded a brand new evh 5150 IIIS el34 and still dumped thousands more just to get started and I still need another mic 😂

You’re right though - the cost of entrance is a huge part of it.
 
JTyson said:
Sounds great, I still hear a lot of the Langner circuit in there, how different is it from the original mod?
Its FAT!
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Monomyth would have to answer that. He's been inside it as well as Cameron and Friedman some time ago.

The 100w is killer but the 50w modded Langner mods are just brutal. I had modded 50w Park that was just unreal. Miss that one in a bad way man.
 
So who is going to talk about Langner mods? …just saw that Gary Holts Marshalls are profiled now at SLT
 
I should add that I really dig my (non-SE) Custom Audio 3+ preamp too, I don't know anything about the circuit itself but the third channel sounds pretty Marshall-ish to me for high gain tone.
 
I watched the Headfirst live stream the other day and Jason and Shea were talking about having an amp designed together and they kinda joked about having Kyle Rhodes build it(he was also on the chat). Man if that wouldn't be an instant fucking buy right there.
 
denialist said:
So who is going to talk about Langner mods? …just saw that Gary Holts Marshalls are profiled now at SLT
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Todd modded stuff based on what the customer wanted, GH's Marshalls are not the 5 stage mods Todd became known for, they might be 4 stage, but they are def less gain than the 5's. I really think they are really juiced 3 stage mods. Todd was the first guy to do really beefed up regulated DC power supplies to the preamp gain stages when everyone else was just adding gain stages or boosting them without changing the amount of juice available to them, at least that was my understanding of it when I spoke with him. I was 20 years old and didn't know much about amps aside from general maintinence and biasing. He was relatively unknown until the first Viscous Rumors album came out, and those 5 stage mods smoked anything I had ever heard up to that point. They are compressed, but in a good way. The harmonic content and fatness were off the charts. Huge and tight, but with the perfect amount of sag so it didn't feel "stiff" at your fingers. The tones on the first VR album still hold their own against anything out there to this day. They are a perfect example of his 5 stage mods. Anyone with a 5 stage Langner will agree..
He never really got the recognition he deserved, it would be quite a long time before anything even came close IMO. I followed VR on the first tour to several dates just to hear those things cranked in a live setting, they were glorious..
I got a JCM 900 DR before I even heard it, and I was very disappointed in it the moment I heard it, so I called my guy at Thoughorbred Music in Tampa and talked to him about trading it in on something else, but he said before you give up on it talk to this guy, and gave me Todds phone number. I sent him the brand new 900 and he did his magic on it for 275.00 if I remember right. I was literally stunned when I got it back, it was by far the best amp I'd ever played. He had to do a lot of extra work to get rid of the solid state boost stages within the tube circuit and stick to an all tube setup for the gain stages. He also said doing those mods to a 900 turned out to be a huge time consuming pain in the ass and he may not do any more of them. The JMP's, Superleads and 800 circuits were much easier to get there in half the time. It might be the only 900 he ever did, Ive never seen another one in all these years.
Super nice, humble guy, he was easy to talk to. I was a nobody (still am) in a band he had never heard of, and he never treated me like it mattered. I always appreciated that.
When I first heard that amp, it was like being given the keys to the kingdom!! :LOL::LOL:
Theres a ton of great amps out there now, but at the time there was nothing else like it that I had played.. Boogie MK III's had almost as much gain, but were much thinner sounding and didn't cut through half as well in a live mix..
 
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glpg80 said:
That amp just seems wild and out of control. Killer sounding Marshall you’ve got :rock:
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Thanks man! I do love it for sure, I haven’t pulled it out in awhile, I’ll make some clips for sure.
 
JTyson said:
Todd modded stuff based on what the customer wanted, GH's Marshalls are not the 5 stage mods Todd became known for, they might be 4 stage, but they are def less gain than the 5's. I really think they are really juiced 3 stage mods. Todd was the first guy to do really beefed up regulated DC power supplies to the preamp gain stages when everyone else was just adding gain stages or boosting them without changing the amount of juice available to them, at least that was my understanding of it when I spoke with him. I was 20 years old and didn't know much about amps aside from general maintinence and biasing. He was relatively unknown until the first Viscous Rumors album came out, and those 5 stage mods smoked anything I had ever heard up to that point. They are compressed, but in a good way. The harmonic content and fatness were off the charts. Huge and tight, but with the perfect amount of sag so it didn't feel "stiff" at your fingers. The tones on the first VR album still hold their own against anything out there to this day. They are a perfect example of his 5 stage mods. Anyone with a 5 stage Langner will agree..
He never really got the recognition he deserved, it would be quite a long time before anything even came close IMO. I followed VR on the first tour to several dates just to hear those things cranked in a live setting, they were glorious..
I got a JCM 900 DR before I even heard it, and I was very disappointed in it the moment I heard it, so I called my guy at Thoughorbred Music in Tampa and talked to him about trading it in on something else, but he said before you give up on it talk to this guy, and gave me Todds phone number. I sent him the brand new 900 and he did his magic on it for 275.00 if I remember right. I was literally stunned when I got it back, it was by far the best amp I'd ever played. He had to do a lot of extra work to get rid of the solid state boost stages within the tube circuit and stick to an all tube setup for the gain stages. He also said doing those mods to a 900 turned out to be a huge time consuming pain in the ass and he may not do any more of them. The JMP's, Superleads and 800 circuits were much easier to get there in half the time. It might be the only 900 he ever did, Ive never seen another one in all these years.
Super nice, humble guy, he was easy to talk to. I was a nobody (still am) in a band he had never heard of, and he never treated me like it mattered. I always appreciated that.
When I first heard that amp, it was like being given the keys to the kingdom!! :LOL::LOL:
Theres a ton of great amps out there now, but at the time there was nothing else like it that I had played.. Boogie MK III's had almost as much gain, but were much thinner sounding and didn't cut through half as well in a live mix..
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Wow, awesome story and great info! It seems like his work has a certain mystique due to the rarity, uniqueness and quality. It’s too bad it’s not better documented and of course that he is no longer with us. Thanks for sharing and please feel free to post clips and pics if so inclined!!!
 
My favorite is my Metalhead (Elan) modded JCM800 but when I say this I am talking my amp specifically, it has something special going on. A while back I had the opportunity to try another 800 he modded as well as some of his preamps and they just weren’t the same.
 
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