Marshall 9001 Tube Guitar Preamp

With no FX loop=no hum.. .so no more hum there well at least 70% of it is gone, but there is a little hum left so I cleaned it out there went about 25% of it then if you mix high gain and high volume you get noise.. but you can advoid that!!!

I dunno about the channels some say it has 3 I see two and you can mix the two together? I only use the first one for the brightness it givese me the Rhythem channel is too blan for me. It has a FX loop that makes noise alot and it ticks me off over and over so I don't use it and the preamp is last in my chain. But I can get over it and sacrifice the FX loop, I have like 3 other pieces that have an FX loop. I did find the difference in the channels now... good and crap.

GREAT pawn shop piece read my othere review..

never dealt with it

I still use it now and it is like the worst looking piece in my rack people can tell what it is... all the writting is gone and I still gig with it.

VERY difficult to use - not so much that it is strange, but the settings are DECEIVING! Read below!

This thing gives AMAZING crunch and 'NuMetal' tone as they call it. It will give you Mesa-like grind, with extra-sexy Marshall complexity to it - man does it BURN! WoW! :))

What you gotta do is not very obvious - but believe me the tone is in there.

Start by turning all your speaker emulators off and turning the bass way down and trebble way up, and detune your guitar, try different tubes, etc. It's in there, believe me. The reviews on this site are from people who have not gone that deep into it.

Think outside the box! Just because it has a speaker emulator doesn't mean you gotta' use it. Just becasue the bass goes up to total flab doesn't mean you gotta use it, etc...

Well - it sure is amazing how some people bitch about these preamps and don't know what the hell they are talking about. For one it is dead quiet :P Check your location for rheostats and flourescents before you bitch. Disconnect your guitar from the unit - that's how to test how quiet it is for god's sake :P

Fine

People bitch about Marshall support. I managed to get manual coppies from them for this unit - didn't even charge me - not so bad :)

Man I wish Ebay was around when I bought these - it's so much cheaper now! I paid $300 each and have 2 of them! :P But I must say they do have amazing sound quality so it was worth it :) You clowns who can't get a good sound of it to save your life - start by thinking outside the box - this is a bass-heavy preamp. You need to 'de-bass' it for best sound - unless you are after the grunge tone LOL

This think Hum like crazy!!! I had to buy a Hush II super c to shut it up! It is in the main volume also... I can crank the gains up no change and the master volume up no change just after the 9 o'clock postion it goes crazy.. but I bought it so my solid state 8008 would sound more Marshally... you know that clasic gain.

Well the 5 band EQ is nice for the rounding of my sound I have three EQs, a parametric 3 band, the Pre's 5 band, and a 15 dual graphic eq for room modification and cab/amp changes(fine tweaking). Its got good channels but I only use the clean channels because I get my od and distortion from my RP7 that is the best piece ever made! I only give it an eight because some reason I can't tell a difference in the channels.

thing must be dependable. After I bought it, that rackmounts were bent in the bottom so I hammered it out and still works... for 35 buck i don't care... great tho. NEver broke on me and I don't crank it much tho.

never dealt with it, herd bad things about it tho.

great piece expectially for the price I paid... ripped the pawn shop off like crazy!

I don't understand why so many people feel that Marshall support is crap. I took my pre amp to Milton Keynes, left it with the service dept & picked it up the same day. I can only speak as I find & I can't fault Marshall servive.

I no longer own the pre amp. It was great - loads of valves, but it had a shared EQ & I needed something more versatile, so I finally took Geoff Whitehorn's advice & example & traded it for a JMP1. I was amazed at how little the pre amp was worth then even though it was stuffed with so many wonderful valves.

its not complex if you have some time to prepare a mix, between the 3 channels and the 5 band Eq, you have to start from the balance between all the 3 channels, clean, crunch, and lead, the Eq applies on the 3 bands, you can make a full complain on this gear if you are not into this for at least 10 years, if you have the appropriate guitar, effects and amp, you can make something really good with this preamp.
NOTE: if you put the speaker filter on, you have deeper bass tones, like megadeath or metallica, if you turned that off you have more crunch distortion and bright clean sounds
there is a shame that the clean and crunch doesn't have different gain controls.

I'm using this preamp with:
-Gibson les Paul custom equipped with a strange paff humbucker customized mic on the bridge (the one on the neck, is the original)
-zoom 1010 on the loop (a piece of crap, but good for a little touch on the clean sound)
-Marshall JCM 900 4100 (100 watt model) with Britt valves (5881)
-Dunlop cry baby wha GCB 95 (killer)
sometimes I use a whammy pedal, but doesn't make sense to put it here.
ok ok ok, I spend some time working between the amp, preamp, and effects to get what I was looking for, but lets make the review:

noise: if you have a good power outlet you might not have any undesired buzz, or tension line noise (eeeeee) , one thing that i have to say about this preamp, is that I never get radio interference on this gear, (I got that on many marshalls, fenders, dean markley)
On the clean channel you haven got anything but your guitar sound, and even in high volume and distortion, I never have a undesired feedback noise.
so I can rank this on 10, you can get many sounds if you know the right combination (remember that this is only a preamp, not a multieffect rack unit, so if you look for a Gilmore sound get also a multi effect rack unit)

I have used it for a year on heavy duty situations, sometimes every day, you need to take a pair of fuses and valves, if I ever have a problem with it I can jump back the preamp and use the Marshall, I can keep going with the Marshall distortion. But in any case I'm planing to get another for backup

if you ever see any replacement for a Marshall gear buy it!!!, don't think it twice!!, never relay on Marshall support at all, its like looking for the gold at the end of the rainbow!!!

i play hard rock, and as i am a fan from Slash and Zakk wylde, and i ofenly need a ton of distortion to achieve what i need, i play the guitar since i was 10 and now im about to be 23, so in my 10 years of guitar playng (the first 3 i was training to be one!) I used a lot of distortions, and amps, and i learn this, nothing is a piece of shit (exept the zoom 1010) its only a metter to find the perfect mach between guitar, amp an efects, you never are going to get blues sound on a jackson soloist!, so every thing is good for something!
PD: if you are looking for a good foot swich tor this try the FS4 Footcontroler from Laney

It's not too hard to figure out, but it's got way more bells and whistles than are really needed. Once you get everything just so, if somebody screws with your settings it may take hours to get back to what you had unless you write down your settings somewhere.

For the money it's pretty poor. The tone is very tinny, not typical Marshal sounding. I've used it though a variety of heads (tube and solid state), and noticed the same problems. The best sound I ever got with it was on an ancient Marshall Bass head, which had it's own issues.

I had problems with the foot controller and one of the effect loop jacks. Not major breakdowns, but annoying all the same. Both are still broken because Marshall support won't return my calls.

Marshall support is absolutely useless. You time would be better spent talking to a rock.

I've been playing almost 20 years, mostly blues and rock styles. I bought the 9001 to get the stereotypical Marshall overdrive sound. It didn't deliver. There are a lot of cheaper and easier to use units on the market that sound much better. For all its controls, it has a surprisingly limited tonal range. I am sorry I bought it.

More than that though, the lack of attention from Marshall when I had problems (and was willing to pay them for service I might add) has convinced me never to buy products from them again. I don't know what makes them think they can demand a premium price on products with the Marshall nameplate and turn around and treat paying customers like they don't exist. MARSHALL SUCKS!

I bought this unit in a big lot of "repairable guitar stuff" with no history. It is minus the three tubes and one pot is missing, the one for "rhythm mode R2 voice". I don't have the schematics so I don't know what the pot or tubes should be. It had three prongs that go into the board like all of the others. I don't know what tubes go in the sockets. Nothing looks fried or abused. I think it's worth fixing. I've been able to fix most of the other stuff.

I need the schematics or at least if one of you current owners happens to pull the cover and see what the part descriptions are for what I should buy I could get started. Also, when I get the parts, if something else is bad, where do I go to get troubleshooting information, or maybe I could just go there and get all the information I need about this unit. I saw one comment hat customer suppoprt is N/A.

It's a rack mounted Marshall Series 9000, model 9001 guitar pre-amp serial number 1880x. It has a sticker inside that says rf 1988, which could mean refurbished 1988? Any help would be appreciated hlee@bellsouth.net

Where do I get it?

I've been playing since 1965 and still can't get it right. I like fender amps the best. I like customizing my own guitars in every way. Since I can't play that good I can at least build them better than most, especially the pickup wiring. They're just now making factory models with a fraction of the features I can do myself.

took me a while to figure out. If your used to using a jcm series its kinda wierd cuase it gives you all these stupid knobs like drive and voice. What the hell is that? i guess im just used to seeing gain and volume. what else is there? anways, the eq makes it sound a little better. The sound is muddy as hell on the ditortion channel. i fail to see even cheap ass peavy tone in the distortion channel. the rythym and clean channels actually sound really good, however you cant squeez much distortion out of the rythym channel. If you need a footswitch, you are fighting a never ending battle. Marshall customer service are asholes dont even talk to them, Good luck finding one.

Muddy as hell in the distortion. Sounds like a Crate.

I bought it used, its beat to hell and working great, it pops every now and then, but god knows how much beer and cigarrett smoke this thing was exposed to before i had it. You can actually see where someone used it as a coaster for their drink on the top. Its Great!!

wHAT CUSTOMER SUPPORT. mARSHALL DOSENT CARE, THEY ALREADY HAVE YOUR MONEY WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY WANT TO TALK TO YOU? MUCH LESS HELP YOU. THEY ARE TOO BUISY COUNTING THEIR DIRTY MONEY.

ITS WORTH 75 BUCKS. yOU BETTER HAVE A BADASS AMP (Mesa 50/50) to make this thing sound good.

Setup: Ibanez Jem555, 9001 preamp, Marshall el34 50/50 poweramp, Marshall 4x12 with Celestion Vintage 30 speakers. I did not buy the preamp, so that will I tell you at the begining. Some guy was seling it. Used of course. However, as I was reading the rewievs, I really didnt want to miss it. I own a Yamaha DG1000 preamp. It is modeling gear. It sounds great on some sounds. Not on all, but you defenately wouldnt think, that the sound is actually coming from 1 and 0 sequences. I mean it is a really interactive preamp.
What I was trying to say is that I A/B-ed both pres side by side trough my poweramp and cabinet. The guy that brought it with was kind of loughing to me because I had a digital preamp and his was valve powered. Well the comparison showed that 9001 sound is ful of insects and the DG souns more natural (I am talking about overdrive settings of course). The Marshall semed to increase the volume of those insects (bzzzzzz, bzzzzz) as I played on low strings. Then I turned on my DG. The guy who was selling the 9001 just couldnt find any excuse for his preamps tone. I mean it was night and day and the preamps are basically the in same price range. No buzz with Yamaha. I looked into literature, cause I wanted to find out what those buzzes in 9001 were. Guess What? This buzzy sound is produced usualy when the signal goes trough solid state transistor. The transistors are known for ultra tigh or tight damping on low frequencies. The looser the damping on lows the more warm and rounded the tone seems. And that is where valves take their advantage over transistors. That is in dinamics mostly. So I have read. To test the theory I have used my first amp in my life (Squier 15R, totally solid state, bad tone, god only for starting with a the first amp and then when the money drops go on). The sound of 9001 and that preamp in that little combo were so similar that a was shocked. The combo costed 100$ new and the guy was selling the 9001 for 300$. No way. Maybe was something faulty with the 9001. But it is still maybe. I cant understand how can people give such high grades for this preamp. Maybe it is because that they havent tried anything else so they dont have any deasent reference point. This preamp just sucks. it is ten times overpriced and it is solidstate, just look at the chip that is hidding just after each valve in the circuit. But I am not trashing this unit. From my experience3 i can tell a lot of preamps in 600$ region and sound buzzy. The real deal starts somewhere at 1000$. And even there you will find a quarter of units that dont have even (or just a hint) the hint of valve tone.

Bad Bad Bad. I ordered 1960 cab with Vintage 30s. They lied too me every month about the delivery time and price. Imagine I have waited for the cab for 8 months. They have told me that it will arive in three weeks time. Give me a break.

I use a Charvel w/EMG 90s; It's a Marshall, hell it only has one sound- GOOD. I use it with a custom-built switch system & 2 other pre-amps. By itself, the best in my rack. Has a very good Eric Johnson tone if you take the hi/hi-mids out drastically and use a compressor in-line.

3-chan, fx loop, tubes

Veery reliable (crap, I hope it doesn't break down now...)

Never had to call, never hope to.

I've been playing pro since 79 and had a JMP 50 then. I'd like another for a spare if I could find one. The JMP-1 is cool, but MIDI switching still suks.