I have mentioned my Marshall Haze 40 in the “For Sale” section in the past.
I bought this amplifier (Serial code I-2010-05-….-E) because I thought my Marshall G15RCD solid state (my first new amp ever) was rather lacking in oomph. (This was before I had any knowledge of amplifiers, and had limited knowledge about guitars, despite being a player (that’s a lie) for about 14 or so years.) Apparently the G15 is a bottom-feeding pond scum type practice amp, but, hey, with spring reverb? I thought I needed more power. I wanted valves, so - Mistake. The Haze 40 was way too loud, the Haze 15 might have been a better choice, many other valve amps might have been ideal.
The claim is that 40 Watt is not much louder than 15 Watt (just over 3 dB louder?), but there is no way I can even open up the Haze volume to 5 (1-10 scale) for “indoor” playing with the Ibanez. Max seem to be at around 2½ - 3, which must be very few Watts, with the guitar volume at about 2. This is still loud. Being a bedroom player, I put it up for sale. No takers.
Since joining this Forum, I have gained a lot of Internet knowledge about electric guitars and amplifiers. Seems that “HAZE 40” is not words used in polite conversation. Early production problems. Seems that “Marshall” and “Haze” should be mutually exclusive terms as well. But, for every nay-sayer, there is a happy yay-sayer. The internet has lots of information on modifying the Haze series to resemble a Marshall amplifier. Seeing as nobody was interested in buying this almost-new amplifier, I decided to try and use it anyway.
Since advertising the amp, I have moved into a bigger room. That should help. Apart from being too loud, once I reached “maximum bedroom level” (too loud) my ears experienced the amplifier as “harsh” and unpleasant. Too much horrible high frequency on the Normal channel. A jarring, not-nice tone, to my ears. Ah, yes, the “treble” control to the rescue? No. The amp sounded bad. The “Overdrive” channel is darker, and I ended up playing on the OD channel, with Gain down low, allowing me to turn the Treble control up from zero. Which made me think a Master Volume on the clean channel might have helped too.
I resisted the suggestions to fit an attenuater, but have come to accept that as a way to open up the Volume to drive the understressed valves past “idle”, and into sweet-spot valve-sounds territory at “bedroom” volumes. Dissipate about half the wattage going to the speaker as extra waste heat. What would another 5 Watts waste heat matter? I hope to test this soon, and hope that, at low volumes, the attenuator will not impact the tone too much. Of course, at low volumes the speaker is understressed as well.
An aside: This is a budget amp – low-cost material. Removing the chipboard self-tappers that help to hold the back panel on is a quick way to damage the holes in the soft frame. The screws do not go back quite the way they came out, I had to re-drill some holes, and I can see that the solution will be glueing some threaded studs into the framework, for normal machine screws, like the ones going into the metal chassis at the top. I lowered the value of a sought-after amp by cutting the one-piece back into a top and bottom pair, so I can work on the electronics without having to remove the whole back, and leave the “speaker cabinet” closed while working and testing.
Split back. Will fit two more screws to the bottom panel.