Hello Group! I am about to receive my new Marshall Origin 50 watt head on Monday (March 5th). I'm excited as hell! I was looking for a 50 watt platform to go through my hand made Tweed 1X12 cab with a EVM12L that I built three years ago. I just had a bad expierience buying a Fender Bandmaster VM with a blown digital effects board. The repair facility could not obtain this part from anywhere. I wound up returning it to Reverb.com and was out all the repair money, two 5 hour round trips and $55 to ship it back. I was really devistated until (by accident) I stumbled onto this Origin series amp. I owned a few Marshalls in my day but this one really caught my eye. My question to you guys is this; normally amps come through with pretty basic tubes. I have no idea what the Origin comes with as far as stock tubes. Being the perfectionist that I am and the gear freak I've always been, I'm already wanting to upgrade the 12AX7's (EC83s) and the EL34s. Any suggestions as to a good upgrade or are the stock tubes pretty good? Thanks guys (and gals)
Lonnie,
I changed out the EL34s to Mullards and the 12AX7s to JJs.
This gave the amp a warmer, fuller tone and reduced the harsh high-end.
Matt
Hello Lonnie,
The valves in the Origin 50 are selected to give best tonal quality for the design.
Kind Regards
Marshall Support
Hi Lonnie,
Sorry for reviving an old post. Just curious to know what tubes you went with in the end? I've had my Origin 50h for a couple months now and I love it. It sounds good to me just with the stock tubes, but I'm interested in experimenting a little with the preamp tubes to see how it effects the tone. I think there's probably a little room for improvement. From what I've gathered the stock tubes are Marshall rebranded Chinese 12ax7's in V2 & V3, JJ ecc83 in V1, and a pair of JJ EL34(ii?) for the power tubes. So far I've only tried a Tungsol reissue in v1, which was only a subtle change from the JJ. I've ordered a JJ ecc803s for the v3 phase inverter position and I'm hoping this will help reduce some of the noise and high-end harshness. Not touching the power tubes yet to avoid having to go to an amp tech for biasing.
