This one is much cleaner condition wise - hardly any rust at all. I have no preference between 50w and 100w, but since I have the SL-X and a 100w JCM800 2203, I think it’d be cool to have all three of them in 100w form, even if just for the sake of comparison. The second arrived a day later, a 2100 model, 100 watter. I’ve already spent some time cleaning it up and it does sound great, however. It’s in pretty rough shape both externally and has a loose tube socket rivet, which makes it a big question mark even at the price I got it for… I have some time in the return period to decide. The first one arrived and ended up being a 2500 model, 50 watter. That means it isn’t a replacement for a high gain Marshall style amp on its own, since it requires pedals to get there, but it excels at classic low to mid gain rock and gets dirty enough for early metal styles too. Of course, it is still focused on the more classic JTM style sounds, so its voicing lends itself more towards those tones and it can be very loose in the bass response compared to more modern cascading gain designs.
While it’s no modern ultra-high gain monster, it’s surprisingly aggressive sounding, the mid boost is very effective at thickening it up for classic sounds, and like all bright Marshalls it excels when boosted too. The body and detail controls allow a lot of fine tuning to the sound - just like jumpering the inputs of a Plexi or JTM - but in “high dynamic range” mode engages another pair of tube gain stages what push it into that coveted “modded” territory.
I expected it to only do a JTM45/100 approximation, and a mediocre one at that but I am pleasantly surprised. These always intrigued me, but having owned a “real” plexi like the 1987x and choosing that over the JTM45 type Marshalls, I never made this amp a priority.