absenteedebate

I've posted this on a few forums with moderate amounts of success.

So hopefully someone here that can offer some insight into this:

Typically I have a personal rule to not buy gear i can't try out first. But JCM 800s are hard to come across up here for a reasonable price, so i caved and went the eBay route for this one. Tried it out when i got it and it wasnt nearly loud enough. I knew it hadn't been played much in quite a while so i took it in and got a faulty resistor replaced and got it re-tubed with new EL34s. Now it's definitely louder, but it still doesn't seem as loud as it should be. My experience with using 800s before this has primarily been with 2203s. But the clean channel comes in handy currently for what I'm doing, which is why i went the 2210 route. It's loud enough to play a show with. But that's with the lead channel maxed and the master volume in the 7-10 range. I'm used to a 100 watt head (2203 for example) hitting that kind of volume in the 4-6 range.

So basically I'm just wondering if this is standard issue for 2210s? It's scoping at 100 watts. I've tried it through a few cabs now, so it's not the cab. I typically trust my amp guy. Little hole in the wall shop that tons of people go to. From little bar-bands to Strapping Young Lad and Nickelback (well the latter may not these days). But dude tends to know his shit.

I know a lot of Marshall purists hate the two-channel 800s, and even put them on the same level as 900s. But I've never really heard why, other than hating the sound out of the clean channel. Would this volume thing have something to do with it? Is this volume thing normal for 2210s or are the guys I've gotten to look at it just missing something?

Another thing that is of some interest is that the volume continues to increase as you turn the master volume all the way up to 10. From what I understand, guitar amps will typically max out on headroom when the master hits about 12 o'clock and turning it past that will just cause the power tubes to further saturate without a particularly noticeable change in sheer volume. This amp is definitely increasing in volume the entire spectrum of the master volume pot.

Like I said, it's usable for shows and sounds great in general, but if this is some kind of major problem causing this seemingly low volume, i don't want to make the situation worse by continuing to play through it. Inversely, if this is just how 2210s are, i don't want to go through the hassle of selling this one and tracking down another.

Any experienced Marshall users out there who can help me out with this?

By the way, I'm typically a bass player and I've just kinda played guitar on the side. Only recently have I been playing guitar in a band that plays out, hence my somewhat cluelessness when it comes to guitar amps.

For comparison, the other guitar player in my band is playing a hot-rodded 50-watt JMP. I'm playing at about 7.5 on the master volume and he's at about 3.5 and the volume levels are comparable.

I've had one guy tell me that his 2205 was always a lot quieter than his 2204.
Some suggestions I've had are that maybe a previous owner put in a different resistor to make it apartment-playable, or perhaps theres a problem with the footswitching mechanism thats causing volume issues, though i think my amp guy would have picked up on the latter.

I realize this was really long, sorry.

Thanks.

Pete240885

Hey not really an experienced user but from the way i understand it the gain channel is the one that causes the tubes to saturate (for distortion) and the Master Volume does exactly what it says... I could be wrong but i'm fairly certain of this, how ever if one of a few resistors has been changed it would affect the over gain (speaking electronicly), your best bet as far as i can see is to try and find a schematic on the net and then compare the values on that to the resistors on your amp.

Pearse

hey was just wondering if the bias could be off when the new tubes were put in. this way the tubes would be runnin cold, or very cold. i had a guy tell me once that eddies brown sound came from actualy turnin the bias down and runinin the tubes cold then turnin the masters volume way up maybe this is what the guy intended to do but set them wee bit too cold and the amps is now really quiet.

absenteedebate

Hmmmm. I think the biasing is right. I actually took it to two different amp techs i use. One before i retubed it and he made sure the biasing was all good. then when that didnt repair the volume issue completely i took it to my other guy to retube it. He would have biased it correctly, as i didn't ask him to do otherwise.

Pete240885

If you put new tubes in you may have to rebias - each tube is unique