Since I’m going through the whole range of Marshall amps anyway, I knew I’d have to try the JVM eventually. I never got the appeal of the 2 channel models, so when this four channel popped up for around the same price I went for it.
I’ve heard these compared to JCM800’s, supposedly sharing the same power amp design and similar topology in the 3-gain stage mods of the crunch channel, or green mode of OD1.
Well I have to report that is not at all the case. The JVM is definitely a versatile amp with some great tones, but it is no JCM800 replacement, at least not for me, and not even close to replacing my split channel 800s.
OD1 is very close sounding to my TSL head, nearly identical in fact, but more congested than that amp. Something about the overdrive channels of the JVM is that all of the frequencies seem to be condensed a little to a more focused spectrum - it has less deep bass and less “air” highs than the TSL, or my JCM800’s. On top of that, this amp has as much gain as the TSL has at max around 1 O’clock, but it also has far more background noise - and I’d never call the TSL a “quiet” amp. I’m not sure why they decided to do this, I’d think a smoother taper on the gain controls would be much more usable.
OD2 can get a pretty close to rectifier tone, but with a squishier, more saturated attack to the bass notes. I’m not the biggest fan because the same issue with the focused frequency spectrum means I preferred my actual rectifiers, but I can see how a JVM410 would be a killer amp for a cover band - you could do 80s metal on OD1 right up to Nu-metal recto tones on OD2 all with a couple of taps on the footswitch.
My favorite mode on this amp is Clean Red, which oddly uses all 4 gain stages but stays just a tad overdriven and clear. I find this mode to be the most similar to my Plexi’s normal channel, which is funny because my actual Plexi uses only 2 gain stages.
Crunch felt a bit underwhelming as well, it just doesn’t have the punch of… flow? of the JCM800’s. A certain je ne sais quoi that the 800’s have that this amp does not on any mode. Again, red mode was my favorite here.
I can compliment the digital reverb, which was very close to my TSL’s real spring reverb when A/Bing these amps. The TSL was just a tiny bit bouncier on the clean tones, for example playing surf style music, but for most tones and especially on distortion channels to add some weight it was functionally identical.
With so many other fantastic Marshalls in my collection, and no plans to ever drop down to only one or two amps ever again, I’m not sure where this amp fits in. I think this is another one to be returned - but it was fun to try out for a little while.
Grab one on Reverb here: Marshall JVM on Reverb