1996 - Marshall Lead 12

The other day I was back home in capital city, well it's where I grew up though not quite home.
I met up with an old buddy, you know the one I sold all my gear to when I left town.
It turns out I sold him more than I can recall even owning.

After a bit of discussion he was telling me that he still owned my old small Marshall amp.
"you know, the one you modified to add an extension cab"

I scratched my head and couldn't figure out what he was talking about.

A few days later I realised it must have been the "lead 12".
25 watts, solid state, brown face.

Not a bad little amp from memory. Had a certain punk vibe.
I doubt it'd have got me much cash, but I guess I must've needed it. Just like the JCM800 I had, this had the brown grille cloth.

That's my favourite look for the Marshall amps.

None of this black or fancy silver thread for me.

1994 - Marshall JCM800 (100w Brown Face)

This amp was awesome.
A bit large, but totally awesome!
I had it for a few years and used it a lot with a couple of different bands.

The first week I had the amp I was using an underpowered speaker cabinet and drove them too hard causing the voice coils to melt and short out. This killed all of the valves in the power section. You could imagine the expense back then! I was soo sad. But it got sorted and then I paid off my quadbox and it was volume city.
Between gigs and rehearsals this amp took a fair beating.

For reasons not clear to me now, I used to place the head on its side.

The band jammed in a warehouse owned by one of the guy's parents.
Couldn't ask for a better location to make noise either.

The crunch channel was neglected as I turned the amp into a meaty sludge machine by adding the Sovtek Bigmuff. The two just worked well together.

The JCM800 stack and I parted ways because I couldn't lug it around easily and always had to rely on other people to transport my gear. I used to leave the stack up at the rehearsal space and somehow managed to borrow a 50w combo of the same amp.
These things just OOZE big fat warm tubey goodness.
I'd love to get my hands on the combo again one day, but it has to be a brown face.
God Given by TheAwesomePowerOfRockets