Studiomaster Leadmaster 112 - what do you think?

[fourmations]

Hi all

what do you think of this baby - there is one available local to me
this is just a link to one thats on ebay for your information

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie ... otohosting

harmny central reviews:
http://www.harmony-central.com/Guitar/D ... mbo-1.html

I know its huge but its very well featured and may be a steal at about 300 euro
its only a bedroom amp, but could be a keeper forever

Regards

4

[fourmations]

This is a 1980, Studiomaster - Valve Leadmaster 112, 60w
in glorious mahogany!




It sounds fantastic, it has so many sounds,
its really really loud (1 is as loud as my acoustic)
I cant wait to open it up properly! 

It has lots of features, 2 channel, footswitchable,
standby switch, spring reverb, fx send and return,

the clean channel has a push/pull bright setting which is lovely,
the dirty channel has a boost push/pull, there is a preamp gain knob
which allows o/d without blowing the house walls down,
it has a 5 band eq, which is really sweet, very responsive,
and puts an extra punch in the overdrives and crunches
the range of tones from clean, crunchy to very dirty are endless,
enabling the eq enhances screaming leads,

it has a "Fane" 12" 200w speaker,

it has 5x 12ax7's and 2x 6L6GC's,
these valves have never been changed (in 27yrs!!)
do they need to be changed? it sounds fantastic as is
any way to test them? can i assume thing will improve
with new valves, this is a whole new subject for me!
(any good "valve amp beginners" links welcome)

i would not claim to know anything about amps
but i know that i have never heard anything like this in
all my playing years (15yrs),

I was just about to buy the 5w Peavey from thomann
and spotted this in the buy and sell about 10mins from my house!
im chuffed! 

rgds

4

[zhivago]

never seen one of these before....it has too many options for my situation....but that's just me...if it sounds great, then it's all cool!

[Superfuzz]

It reminds me of Mesa Boogie Mark IV

[fourmations]

thanks guys

its really cool,

zhivago, its got the options but you can do whatever you want
the reverb turns off, the 5 band eq turns off, you can plug into either channel,
the push-pulls are all optional, you could set the master volume and leave it at that
if thats what you want,

would you guys know the condition of the valves if i posted a simple mp3 sample?
they are 27yrs old! - Im curious if this baby could get even better with new valves?

rgds

4

[mezcalhead]

would you guys know the condition of the valves if i posted a simple mp3 sample?

No, not really .. I think it would be pretty hard to tell.

I'd go with the simplistic: if it sounds good, it is good .. old valves are often sought after, and I wouldn't go looking to replace them if they're doing OK. Old capacitors often need replacing before they go bad, but if the valves sound and look okay I'd leave them.

What you could do is buy a replacement set of new valves and try them to see how they sound. If you decide not to put them in, just keep them as a backup set.