Marshall Review: MG15R CD

History:

Purchase: I paid about £85 for the amp in a local guitar shop

What I Like About This Marshall MG15R CD: The clean tone is rich and convincing, and you can achieve a reasonable distortion level with the gain controls. You can hear everyone of it's 15W's when you crank it up, and I'm sure they squeezed a few more in somewhere...it's size is an obvious plus, being able to fit in just about anywhere (it's about a 1/3 again as big as my SP-10, and compared with the shockingly bad sounds that thing can produce the Marshall is worth the extra room). The CD input is also useful for jamming, and the line-out makes it a breeze to record straight out of it.

What I Do NOT Like About The Marshall MG15R CD: Not an awful lot to be honest, considering the price and the fact it wasn't made to rock in a 30,000 seater stadium. The headphone output is definitely not all that it could be, in my experience - slightly too tinny, too much background noise and not enough of the much-vaunted 'contour' coming through. And the speaker output is a bit harsh when I turn my MT-2 on, even with a small level of distortion set and little gain set on the pre-amp. But it doesn't cause a great deal of trouble, and it still sounds fine.

Marshall MG15R CD Quality Rating: What I've come to expect from Marshall. The corners are rounded off with protective covers, and the unit feels solid. I'd be ok ferrying it back and fore here, there and everywhere.

Review Summary: For the price tag and the type of amp it is you couldn't ask for much more from it...it would be nice to feel less wary of plugging my headphones into it, but that's a minor flaw in an otherwise great unit. If you want a solid practice amp without breaking the piggybank, let alone the bank, I'd say your money's safe with this.

Rating of this Marshall product: 4

This Marshall MG15R CD Guitar Amplifiers Review Submitted By: Scott Hudson

Review Date: 2002-07-17