2008 Splawn Quickrod

Overview

This was the first Splawn amp I ever played, and I bought it in person at a local swap shop, Jimmy’s Vintage Music (where I’ve gotten quite a few other amps since). This is the first thing I’d ever bought from that store as well. At the time, I’d driven there to look at a mid-80s Marshall 2204, which was just too loud for me, and I think I really wanted a bit more gain and didn’t have much experience with boost pedals yet. Jimmy told me to plug in to this head and try it out, and I was blown away by the sound, and ended up taking it home (without it’s matching 4x12 though).

This era of Splawn amps adds an extra preamp tube, dedicated to the clean channel, which drastically improves that channel - no more cleans being affected by the gain setting of the overdrive channel, it’s completely independent now. The clean channel also gives up its middle EQ control, in trade for a new gain control which can be used to add some grit back if you missed it from the previous design.

The voicing of this overdrive channel differs a lot from the previous circuit, with a lot less brightness and a much thicker, more mellow sound. This is also when I remember Splawn getting a lot of publicity, so I think this is where the “honky” mids statements started, and it’s true for sure. I think the previous design, and the post-2012 circuit have a much broader appeal, but these 2007-2012 year Quick Rod’s still sound great, just different. The amount of gain on tap is still massive, and stays super tight in the low end - this amp is all mids and sounds killer for leads. Rhythm can get buried in the mix a little bit, and while the amp isn’t muddy, it doesn’t cut through in the upper mids quite as well as others. It’s too bad this circuit is effectively gone, since the 2006-era circuit can still be had on a new Splawn via the New/Old switch - it’d be cool if that were a 3-way switch that let you access all 3 eras of Quick Rods with Gears (note: There was a Quick Rod without gears and a high/low input jack from 2004-2005 that predates all of these). This amp is also incredibly loud, too loud even, and lacks the Loop Master that later Splawns have. Scott will add this control for you if you send an amp without it back to him, I just have been using a volume box in the effects loop instead for now - same result. It’s also worth mentioning that the EQ on this amp (or any Splawn for that matter, but especially evident with this one) does not have has wide of a sweep as you might expect from other modded Marshall designs. It’s something that’s very unique to Splawn, you can fine tune the sound, but it’s always going to have that trademark Splawn mid-heavy tone and you can’t really dial it out - probably part of the reason opinions on this amp can be a bit divisive, since some players may have only ever played a 2007-2012 QR and have formed opinions about how it sounds, how it can be EQ’ed, and haven’t had the chance to try the earlier or later circuit revisions of the amp. I’d really encourage anyone to try them all - I have a comparison video on my youtube channel showing the difference between 2006, 2008, and 2018 circuits that some might find useful.