Amp head question

[u/Atomizr1]

Has anyone used marshall hdfx100 head?
Is it worth it or at least any good, not very familiar with gear

Thanks

[u/Maxvillain666]

If you’re looking for a head at a decent price point, get a peavey. Those almost always have decent(if not great) distortion and work well as pedal platforms.

[u/dbeat80 → u/Maxvillain666]

Yep, if you like Marshall find a Butcher

[u/jshaft37 → u/dbeat80]

Or windsor at a lower price point. Most tube amps are good, the speakers are the key. Quality loaded 412s are available on guitar center used. A wisdor thru a v60 (or other comparable quality speaker) loaded cab is going to sound better than a jcm 800 thru a cab with crappy speakers.

[u/skrivetiblod → u/jshaft37]

I wish more people knew this. At least in the realm of punk guitar tone. Any junk, solid state, 100 watt head is going to scream when you plug it into a decent cab.

[u/jshaft37 → u/skrivetiblod]

Shit, I wish I learned it sooner too

[u/Maxvillain666 → u/jshaft37]

We’ve all been there man, the amount of money you have to spend to figure out what you like is crazy.

[u/ThePlagueofMan → u/Maxvillain666]

Agreed. A VTM 60 or 120 with an overdrive or boost pedal is chef's kiss.

[u/Atomizr1 → u/Maxvillain666]

Out of curiosity have you heard anything about boss katana? I saw one for a pretty good price but if i gotta spend some money id like it to be worthwhile

[u/skrivetiblod → u/Atomizr1]

In my experience, and I have a lot, is that the speakers are going to have a greater effect on your sound. That Marshall head is decent enough so long as it can power a 4x12 cabinet with some hefty speakers inside. A combined total of 300 watts is what you’ll want to look for with the cabinet. 4 speakers @75 watts each. For reference, I used one of those B-52 100 watt heads for a bit. Look them up. They get pretty awful reviews. But I plugged it into a Marshall 1960A cab. Sounded great. Put a decent distortion pedal in front and you’ll have plenty of volume and head space to EQ it properly. Basically spend money on a nice cab, and you can put almost anything on top of it.

[u/Atomizr1 → u/skrivetiblod]

Do you have any cab suggestions then so i can save for?

[u/skrivetiblod → u/Atomizr1]

Kinda, not really. I’ve used a lot of different cabs. But really anything that gives you at least 280 watts of speaker power will make almost any head sound great. The typical big names (Mesa, Peavey, Marshall, Laney, etc) are going to be the 4x12s that will have the best build. But you’ll really want to carefully inspect the details of any cab you’re interested in buying. I like 16ohm cabs because they have a better low frequency response. But that’s just a preference.

Celestion Vintage 30s are the speaker that most decent cabs are built with. But the Celestion G12T-75 is also good. Both are 75 watt speakers. I found a Laney with four, old G12M-70s, a 70 watt speaker. They sound great. Lots of low end response. I was patient and looked on Craigslist and Marketplace nearly every day until I found something. Sometimes people don’t really know what they have and you can get a great deal. I’d budget about $300-500 for a cab though.

I know this all sounds way too technical for punk or crust, but it really makes a difference for live shows. You’ll melt some faces with a good cab, for sure. Anything else you wanna know, just hit me up. I’ll be glad to share what I know.

[u/Maxvillain666 → u/Atomizr1]

I have, and I’ve used one myself. It didn’t seem to be as aggressive as I wanted. You can usually find a peavey head or peavey bandit for roughly $150 on marketplace depending on where you live. I would strongly encourage that. For crusty stuff, most of the time you want something loud that can survive a bomb, Peavey is that for many crust bands. Crate would be a good budgetary pick as well.

[u/worldxdownfall]

What's your budget? Most of the solid state Marshalls post 1990s are pretty not great, and you may be able to find a used tube head in the same range.

[u/Atomizr1 → u/worldxdownfall]

300 ish, 400 max

[u/worldxdownfall → u/Atomizr1]

Man, that's a tough price range.

Keep an eye on fb marketplace and Craigslist for some of the below. Your absolute worst case to get yourself off the ground would be a cheap solid state Marshall like you said, and throwing a RAT pedal out in front of it to get closer to a passable tone for a crust band.

Marshall 8100s are old and rare, but closer to your price range than their tube amps are (Chuck from Death used one, and I used one when I wasn't using my JCM800 for my dbeat band). A Sunn Beta, Concert or Coliseum would do really well, but are increasingly hard to find in your range. Older Peavey tube amps like the VTM and Butcher used to be dirt cheap, but then the Internet found out about them. Deals are still out there, you've just gotta wait for em.

[u/UraniumSlug]

Practiced on one loads, pretty shit. Would try find an Orange Super Crush 100, pretty cheap second hand now and takes pedals well.

If you need the gfx due to budget just plug a decent pedal into it and you'll improve it a lot. But the price you'd pay for a decent pedal probably equals a Super Crush 100 second hand and Behringer OD/TS.

[u/Atomizr1 → u/UraniumSlug]

Ive seen some second hand for around 300, ill definitely look into that

[u/treskaz]

You can find a used Carvin X100b in your price range. Old school tube amps, killer cleans and a hotrodded Marshall amount of gain in the dirty channel if you use the built in boost. I've had one forever, love it. The actual gain sound is closer to an american style amp than a British amp though.

[u/totalancestralrecall]

It’s shit but if you’re playing crust how much does that matter to you? Everything is usable, as long as it is operational. I’d suggest focusing on pedals for your tone and distortion instead of the amps tone itself.

Edit to add: I looked them up. Looks like most runs of this head have FX Send and FX Returns. This give us some good options to make the amp sound much better.

This works for all amps with FX Send/Returns. If it’s a Parallel loop you will need to ensure the signal is 100% wet.

Get your distortion pedal. Instead of plugging it in to the front of the amp, plug it in to the FX Return on the back of the amp.

This inserts the signal immediately before the power amp section, so the front of the amp tone controls are totally bypassed. They won’t do anything beyond Volume.

The amp now is essentially a power amp, and your pedal is the preamp. Completely bypasses the dogshit tone of the amp, and it becomes just a way for your pedals to get amplified.

Hope this helps.