Good Complementary (Replacement?) Amp for a Marshall

[Halowords]

I am probably not "replacing" it, as I love my Marshall. It is a Marshall 50 Watt Vintage Modern through a Carvin 4X12 half-stack, really nice amp to be honest. Does most of what I need pretty much all the time.

And yet, being The Gear Page, you knew it would not end with us living happily ever after, right? Actually it might, however, I am considering at some point adding another amp. I would like something that can do the clean-and-chimey thing a bit better. The VM cleans up pretty well, surprisingly, so it is not a huge rush. I do think it would be cool to have a Vox or Fender type of clean for, well, clean (obviously) and the less-dirty overdrive. I would also not be opposed to something that had a second higher-gain-than-my-Marshall channel, but that seems like something my nice overdrive pedal already does. So if the second channel was there and I could use it as another flavor to play with then so be it, if not then well I doubt I would really miss it.

Any suggestions for a nice complimentary amp (or I suppose amps, this is after all The Gear Page)?

-Cheers

[and44]

try looking at the blackstar range, (HT stage 60), they are the "new marshall" in a differnt jacket bascially, - but also offer an amazing fender clean sound along with "silly-o-matic" amount of gain on the 2 channels.

[gulliver]

I picked up a Prosonic to compliment my Marshalls, very nice amp. At first I tried to make it sound like a Marshall, but am much happier with it dialed in brighter and splashier in class A mode, which is more dynamic.

I'm also very impressed by an RP1000 modeler that I picked up recently ... put it through the clean channel of the Marshall and you get all kinds of choices. You just need to turn the speaker sim off. I even use the fender tones through the Prosonic clean channel to sound more bright type fender and more cranked. A month ago I would have never thought I would be saying the above.

[Fireball XL5]

Vox AC30. :aok

I own & love Marshalls too (especially early NMV 4-hole models), but I've recently gone back to using my Vox AC30 TBX's and I'm just loving them!

What I love about AC30's is that you can crank them and/or hit them with an overdrive/boost and they get this great aggressive yet creamy overdrive that has way more harmonic content and personality than an overdriven Marshall - which has more of a dryer type of blasting overdrive to my ears - and I find that I can cover the much of the same ground (overdrive-wise) with my Vox that I could with my Marshall amps.

For cleaner tones there's not many amps that can compete with a Vox AC30 IMO - and to my ears, no Marshall I've played can match the swirly 3D chime of a good Vox AC30 with Celestion Blue speakers. Just a classic, and arguably the greatest amp ever!

[Halowords]

The Blackstar & Prosonic are intriguing options. I might try to check those out.

I had a Vox AC15, and would not mind an AC30, not at all. My conundrum there is I suspect the authentic British made are maybe outside my economic bracket, and I worry about the Chinese ones. Otherwise, I really do like Vox, which also makes the Prosonic kind of appealing as I read they are Fenders that are a bit Vox-like. I agree, they do that chimey sound very well and break up nice with a creamy overdrive. That is one thing I DO miss about the Vox, how I could go from clean-to-overdriven just by going from picking lightly to digging in with a more aggressive pick attack and not changing anything else.

I would also consider something like a Mesa Boogie Mark IV or IV or a Dual-Rec, or Rivera Knucklehead Reverb. Just as examples, but those are amps I have heard have good Fender-like clean channels and higher-gain Marshall-like channels. The Blackstar might fill that niche as well from the sounds of it.

Anyway, just kind of throwing those out as examples as far as my train-of-thought.

-Cheers

[Halowords]

Just to ask, is there anything that does a nice job with a multi-channel setup of doing a Vox AC30 sort of sound, then either a second channel with nice higher-driven Marshall sound (I would not mind a bit more gain/drive with my VM), or a second channel with a more vintage/Plexi Marshall sound and then a third with a nice higher-gain channel (maybe something I can dial in to a slightly more modern, or just higher-gain-but-still-sweet-sounding Marshall sound without it getting into)?

Otherwise, something like the Vox AC30 or Prosonic, along with my Marshall, plus my OD pedal, sounds pretty appealing and would probably do the job pretty well for what I would like.

-Cheers

[james...]

How much money do you have?

[Halowords]

How much money do you have?

That bad, huh?

I guess I could save up in the near future around $1K, if there was something that really fit the bill, I could save up ~$2K, give or take, for down the road with maybe a bit more if I did a trade in.

Why? What do you think would fit this description, and how much should I expect it to set me back?

-Cheers