Ok so before we get into this, a little bit about myself so you can put this review into context.
Firstly, I’m no Slash/GnR fanboi. Although I will tout Slash/GnR as probably my biggest musical influence and the guitarist/band that made me pick up a guitar and learn to play in the first place, I’m more of a fan of that particular era of music in general. I guess you like what you grow up with, and well I spent most of my formative years in the 80’s/90’s. So, I guess you could say that I’m a hard rock/metal fan, but at the same time I also really like the Blues. As a result, those are the types of music I really like to play.
Ok, so about this Marshall Slash Signature AFD100 amplifier…
I was fascinated by the AFD100 project that launched early in 2010, whereby Marshall together with Slash embarked on a project to recreate the tone of the modified 1959 Super Lead amplifier used in the recording of the Appetite for Destruction record. The AFD project is well documented on the internet. There are also many demos on Youtube that show the amp doing what it was intended to do – deliver that Appetite for Destruction tone.
I’m not going to rehash any of that stuff. What I’d rather do is give you a little bit of insight into my experience with actually living with the AFD100 amplifier for the last month, and share with you what I like about it and what I don’t like about it as honestly as possible.
So, briefly the amp is based on JCM800 2203 circuitry, although it features 5 ECC83 preamp valves instead of 3 like in a regular JCM800. The extra valves are required to cater for the fact that the amp has 2 distinct voicings. The voicings are #34, which replicates Slash’s JCM800 amp that was modified by Tim Caswell and that he has used since the late 1980’s, and AFD100 which replicates the modified 1959 Super lead amp used to record the Appetite for Destruction album.
Ok, so at this point you’re probably all Slashed and GnR’d out, so no more from me. If you’re interested in whether or not this amp lives up to its promise to deliver the Slash/AFD album tone, the short answer is that I believe it does so admirably.
But, I’m sure the question on most people’s minds is, “Is this amplifier a One Trick Pony?”. Well, when I got bored of busting out Nighttrain, Welcome to the Jungle and Sweet Child of Mine riffs :-[ and started experimenting with different Master Volume, Gain and EQ settings, not to mention flipping between the 2 voicings, I discovered it’s not.
The AFD100 is a simple, single channel amplifier, primarily designed as a “Dirty” amplifier. The “Slash Dirty settings” for this amp are the Bass, Middle, Treble, Presence, Master Volume and Gain settings all on about 6. Having said that that, I’ve been able to get some really nice clean tones out of it, by dialling back the Gain, and dropping the guitar volume down to about half. It’s not crystal clean, rather like a clean amp with the power tubes being driven hard. Once you begin to fiddle with the Master Volume, Gain and EQ settings I realised that small changes to any of these in any multitude of combinations can quite radically alter the tone. I was able to find some really nice bluesy tones, some crunch that would make any Angus Young fan want to jump around wearing their school uniform, and cranking up the Gain and Master volume to around three quarters will have the Megadeth and Metallica fans nodding their heads with their fists in the air. Being a single channel amp though, switching between clean and dirty sounds is going to be a problem for most guys wanting to use a single amp for gigging. I suppose you could set up the amp for a clean sound and then using some sort of overdrive pedal in front of the amp for a dirty sound, to switch between clean and dirty but I suppose that defeats the purpose somewhat.
I’m not a gigging guitarist so I’m not too fussed by this limitation, but at the same time I did keep my JCM2000 TSL which has 3 distinct channels, when I bought the AFD100, but the truth is that since I bought the AFD100, I haven’t even powered up the JCM2000, and I can’t say I’ve missed it. The AFD100 is currently doing everything I want it to.
I’ve kind of saved the best for last – the Power Scaling feature. Holy crap, this is the most awesome feature. I have 2 very young kids, 1 and 2 years old respectively. My study/music room is directly opposite my one son’s bedroom, and so when I only had the JCM 2000, I either had to play with the volume way down, which sucked all the tone out of it and as a result I usually rather played unplugged when I wanted to play after the kids went to sleep. With the AFD100, you can scale the power (not attenuate) using 22 different incremental positions using the Power knob, anywhere from 0.1watts and full power being 100watts. This means I can drive the power tubes with the master volume almost all the way up, through a 4x12 cabinet while my son sleeps peacefully in the next room, all because I can scale the power right down, and still get great tone, although it does still sound better when you crank it up.
Dislikes? Not much really. I love the look of the amp, although I’m not wild about the graphics and stuff they’ve put on it. To me, it’s a bit overdone, they should have chosen either the “Slash Signature…blah blah blah” writing, OR the skull and bones type logo, not both.
So now that the honeymoon is over, am I sorry I bought it? Hell No! I love it. Was it worth the money? Worth every cent, in my view, especially considering it’s around the same price as their other 100w heads, and a lot more special in my book. I really think that given the tone of this amp, it’s already on the road to becoming a classic.
