Marshall Lead 12 Owners...is this normal?

[Suproman77]

Hey guys, I picked up a Marshall Lead 12 off of eBay and got it today. Got a great deal on it, $75 + shipping, and it's in nearly perfect shape cosmetically. Hard to believe that this amp is around 25 yrs old or so since it looks like I just bought it new.

However, I've never played one of these before, only it's big brother the Lead 100 Mosfet, so I have to ask if this is normal. The amp basically has no middle ground distortion wise. I turn the volume up to around 4-5 and then slowly add the gain and it's almost perfectly clean until it reaches around 8-9 and then it just goes into high gain heaven. I mean, it's a really sweet tone, but I thought that was odd. Somewhere right around breakup, I noticed that it's just kinda fuzzy and static sounding...like something just doesn't sound right at all. Keep in mind, this amp is solid state.

Any ideas what this is? Thanks.

[Suproman77]

Update...I noticed that whenever I hit the low strings and chords, there is a sort of rattling or buzzing...The tone itself sounds great, but it's always followed by this consistent rattling and buzzing only when playing.

Blown speaker maybe? Perhaps a loose connection somewhere?

[Seakayak]

I have one of these. All of the pots are very noisy, and the "Low Sensitivity" input jack doesn't work anymore. I cleaned the pots years ago, (just sprayed some contact cleaner in them) ...couldn't be bothered to do it again.
If you want to keep your Lead 12, you may have to replace the pots and the input jacks. Also, the speaker in yours may be damaged.