This is what I've been playing out of nowadays. Holy moly. The reviews I've seen speak favorably of the head; the ones I've seen that slag it with "noisy" or "muddy", must be playing out of a bad cabinet or with bad tubes or something, I just can't find anything not to like about this amp head, and coupling it with a Vintage Modern cab is working out really well for me. I'm not going to compare it to older standard Marshall's, because for the most part, I always found the production ones somewhat limited in areas, preferring the sounds from custom spec'd or reworked ones. I always ended up using distortion and other EQ stuff to get the tones I wanted.
How I usually run the rig is, cabinet in stereo with 2x 8ohm inputs from the head, with a Line 6 M13 Analog Modeler run into the FX loop on the head with a 50% wet setting (the FX loop on the JVM410h has a dedicated FX level knob in the back). I run my wah, whammy pedal and POG2 octave harmonizer in front of the amp. No distortion pedals, just the amp, and believe me, I'm not a "bluebreaker-distortion-is-best" player at all.
The head has 4 channels, each with three gain modes (green, orange, red), and dedicated reverbs, as well as reverbration and presence (one is basically bass response, the other treble). Each of the modes adds another gain phase to the signal chain. You switch them with the fairly heavy duty footswitch that comes with it. You can program recalls from the footswitch for amp settings, and they'll transfer to another JVM410h head since they get stored in the footswitch's memory, but to be honest, that makes me sorta nervous. Footswitches get beat on, drinks spilled on them, etc. We'll have to see how this pans out.
Lot of people say they have no need for 12 total gain and tone modes; I'm finding use for almost everything except OD2 in red mode. What I do is, enable the FX loop for one clean and one dirty channel, leaving the other two with just front-of-amp pedals and reverb. My overdrive and distortion pedals, even my compressor, are all on the shelf, all the gain comes from the amp. I might incorporate a fuzz face or some such in the future, but right now I've got plenty to keep me happy, and I really want to get to know the gain tones of this thing.
- Ch1: Tone-then-gain (unusual for Marshall, which is always gain-then-tone). This gives a very fender, old-school clean signal. I have the FX loop enabled on this channel, the green mode with the post delay and mods is amazing; the green mode has no gain stage and takes the volume out of the circuit. The orange and red modes add one gain stage each, but still with tone first. Really pure and basic clean tube tone, refreshing for Marshall.
- Ch2: Gain-then-tone, which spans Marshall JTM1959 and JCM800, depending on the gain setting. Green is very "real" (JTM1959), orange is classic JCM800, red is like a hotrodded JCM, but NOT exactly, it's a little more modern, having something to do with the amp perhaps, but also the fact that I'm not playing through a default 1960. I use this channel mostly for raw clean and punchy blues rhythm and leads, with the Fx loop disabled. Great blues channel, just a little reverb and front-of-amp effects, and the volume/tone settings of the guitar.
- Ch3: Gain-then-tone, each mode adding gain stages. Orange sings amazingly. Red is a little, but not too, over the top. Again no FX loop on this channel, just front-of-amp effects and reverb. This is my primary solo and crunch rhythm channel.
- Ch4: GAIN-then-tone built for modern metal, with a scoop in the mids, but I turn down the gain levels and turn up the mid to be comparable to Ch3, and enable the FX loop, so I get a virtual copy of my lead channel (3), with all the time based effects, and a little more push to compensate for any signal sap. Really technical sound on this channel. The metal monsters would probably curse the way I use it (nu metal basically saps out all the mids), but meh that's not my bag. Having a stereo echo in the FX loop let's me get some really fantastic overdriven effect sounds here, and since I'm not using the gain full out, I don't get any noise (the M13 also has a noise gate in it that I keep active). High end Satriani-Vai like ballad leads for the taking.
As I mentioned, for the cabinet, I didn't go with the 1960a/b, which is what everybody is putting with the JVM410h by default; I wanted Celestion Greenbacks, which seem to sound better at lower volumes and have subtle tone characteristics that respond more to what I'm trying to get at, and these are available in the Vintage Modern cabinets. I demo'd a Vintage Modern half stack, and remember loving the tone characteristics of the speakers, but finding the head somewhat limited in options, and I'd read about people trying different cabinet and loving it with the JVM410h, so I decided to pair one of the Vintage Modern 450a cabs; for, me it paid off huge.
It's a lot of fun, and extremely satisfying to hear a tone in your head and be able to nail it. I tweak my sound endlessly, but right now am really satisfied. The JCM410 head is an amazing piece of tech that should fascinate anybody looking for a high-end tone and gain palette.
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