Marshall Review: MG100DFX

History:

Purchase: I purchased this amp for $395 at Guitar Center. (Whenever you go to a dealer, always haggle! You will defintely get a lower price!) I purchased it to practice with my band and to play shows (which is not going to happen any time soon).

What I Like About This Marshall MG100DFX: The unit is small, not so heavy, and very versatile! The tone is incredible, especially with distortion pedals. You can hear every note clearly with the OD2 on. And it can get loud! Although it can generate an onslaught of feedback; it's nothing that a good noise limiter can't handle (like the Boss NS-2 Noise Limiter). And when you hook it up to a 4x12 cab, prepare to melt! The tone becomes even sweeter! The amp actually gets louder! It's perfect for nu-metal, metal, hardcore, punk, blues, jazz, etc. You can get just about any sound out of this great little amp.

What I Do NOT Like About The Marshall MG100DFX: Now, there are a lot of great things about this amp, but there are also quite a few bad things... For one, if you put the volume knobs too high, you can already start to hear the sound quality deteriorate (which can be fixed with a 4x12 cab, and a noise limiter). Secondly, the reverb channel cannot be switched via the foot switcher, which is kind of a pain. Also, you can only hook it up to one cab... The MGHDFX head has outputs for 2 cabs. Last but not least... It can be very unreliable. Read on...

Marshall MG100DFX Quality Rating: Like you may have already read, the amp will give out on you eventually. For me, it was about 4 months in when the fan started to make a "buzzing" sound. It faded out after a while, but it got worse as the next 2 months progressed. Eventually, the fan would completely stop (it wouldn't spin any more), and the sound on the amp would constantly die out. I haven't had a chance to take it back to the store yet, but I'm sure that the next fan I get will die out, too. I wouldn't recommend using this amp for shows (unless it's new, or has been recently fixed).

Review Summary: Bottom line: This amp is great. It sounds amazing for the price you would pay, and hooking it up to a 4x12 cab is pure extacy. It might eventually break a few months after you purchased it... But that's okay. Just get it fixed. It'll be worth it. If you want to use it for shows, I'd recommend getting the half-stack (MG100HDFX head and MG Series 4x12 Cab). I'm giving it a 4 because of the problems this amp is givin' me. Oh, and it sounds a LOT better than the Line 6 Spider II :)

Rating of this Marshall product: 4

This Marshall MG100DFX Guitar Amplifiers Review Submitted By: Richard de Llano

Review Date: 2004-09-27