Marshall DRP-1 Direct-Recording Preamp

Pretty easy. But it doesn't lend itself to turn everything to "eleven". One have to take care of which output to use. There's six knobs.

Main guitar is EMG-equipped Strat (single coil). The unit is prone to picking up RF, and noise from other stuff. A giant 50-60 cycle hum can be detected. But it shure does emulate a marshall. It is good at producing half cranked amps too. The Master volume turned up all the way reduces pick attack and "thud". So it is best used with the line volume at max, and Master set to half, and gain 75 %. Bass control at full. Clean sounds are not that good, but decent. It lacks a bit of pick attack. However in the long run, the sound doesn't last like a real marshall, one seems to get tired of the sound, and there is very little versality. It is Ok for occasional solos or metal riffs during a recording session. Passive single coils on your guitar makes this box a noisy SOB.

Had a little problem with knob (the pots really) scratching, due to that once you've settled your favorite sound, you don't have to tweak it, but if you do, it will scratch. But tweaking all of the knobs to extreme ends back and forth will fix this problem for a while. Used it on a gig, very reliable. Tip: Get rid of the battery, use adapter instead. This one is one of the few boxes that immediately shows a drop in sound quality (and gets flukey distortion!) should the battery drop only a little voltage.

Good, decent Marshall simulation. Could do better with further speaker simulation...a ambient type room or cabinet reverb...However, a little bit limited.

Gain, master volume, boost channel switch, bass-mid-treble and line out level....pretty straight-ahead. The "manual" just shows you what each jack on the back does, by and large, so you might be tempted to ignore it. The one thing in there you need to know is that the bass tone control is active, while mid and treble are both standard passive.

Some hiss in the headphone output, but other than that it's reasonably quiet until you get into ultra-gain. The non-boost channel is reminiscent of the old "no master-volume" marshalls and sounds best with the master maxed-out from the git-go. Crank the gain all the way up...and stick an overdrive in front, too. Boost channel is more like modern marshalls, and will roar with authority. Speaker emulation is pretty darn good, and if you get the bass tone knob up to about 3 oclock you actually get some of that good ol' marshall "thud." It's hard to get the thing to sound really good through headphones, as the line out(headphone out) volume has to be up a bit for the beast to develop full tonality...and then it can be a little too loud for comfort...your mileage may vary, etc.

No problems in the last year or so....nicely built.

don't know.......

This box is a joy. Very "tube-y" sounding for a solid state device. Direct to tape it SOUNDS LIKE A MARSHALL!! Much more authentic "marshall" sound than sansamp, etc. It won't replace a JMP-1, but it costs less than 25% of the JMP-1's price. It does a good job of "marshallizing" the front end of an amp, as well. And awhile back I ran an fx send from the console to a 50DB pad and thence to a transformer and into the DRP-1. Cranked up all gains to max and used it as a snare drum effect...with the right balance it nicely livened and "trashed up" a pretty boring snare drum sound. No reason it has to just be a guitar preamp, eh?

There is a pamphlet with you that shows you how to set it up as just a preamp, or for direct recording. No indications of good settings for specific sounds, which is a shame, but it is fairly easy to use and experiment - just tweak the knobs. Have yet to work out if it can be used as just as speaker emulator (might be handy for gigs, putting guitar into the PA without troublesome mics - guitar amp DI->DRP1->PA?).

There is some hum if you crank things up to maximum, and there are sources of eletrical noise about, such as computer monitors.
The basic sound goes from clean to quite crunchy. You can get a great early Neil Young sound out of it.
Turn on the boost as it is more traditional sounding Marshall territory, up to really quite high gain with some additional sustain. Definitely has a tube sound to it (a friend commented on this), and goes right up to fuzzy sounds with a hint of speaker break up. You can get some good early Led Zep sounds.
The speaker emulation seems to work. Not as good as actually miking up a 4x12 (it claims to be a 4x12 emulation). Slightly fizzier, although Marshalls can sound a bit fizzy (I'm more of a Fender man really, but Fender don't make anything comparable, and it is nice to have a Marshall sound for when you need it).
My criticism is that it can sometimes sound a little thinner than I'd like when playing solo, but that having been said, it sits well in a mix. Great for early rock sounds like Young and Led Zep, both of whom used fairly thin guitar sounds at the time.
I have used it on its own, used it during recording a CD demo, but I mainly use it in the first effect loop of my Zoom 9150 to give better speaker emulation, and an expanded range of tones (and if needed completely over the top square wave distortion). It emulates speakers better than the Zoom does.

I have it for direct recording so I don't annoy the neighbours, so I wouldn't gig with it (I'm a bassist anyway), but a friend used it to warm up his amp live, and it worked. Used it for recording when two guitar amps blew up, and did basically all the electric guitar with it, and it sounded fine. Mine has worked perfectly.

I would buy it again. It is compact, cheap, and does the job. A Sansamp is probably better, but twice the price.

As far as gear goes...it doesn't get much easier than this! Anyone who as used anything by Marshall will be instantly at home, but for the rest of the world... a gain to set the drive level, a boost channel selector micro-switch (not footswitchable), a master volume, bass middle and treble and a line out volume. The back panel consists of input, line out, pre-amp/FX out, stereo FX return and phones. It's easy to use, but you need to know exactly what sound you want to really get the best out of it! The manual may as well be in Dutch for all the good it is. It only shows the use of each control and socket with no suggested settings. Perhaps not for beginners would be a fair statement.

The unit works better with the line-level set low, and the master volume cranked to about 75%. The tone section then gets a much better signal to work with. These DO need to be set very carefuly to get the best out of it...don't walk in, set it all to 80% and expect it to sound good...it won't. On the clean side, things are very usable with some great sounds from country through to jazz/fusion. Switch the channel onto boost and things just get better! The gain covers everything from Fender twins to full-blown stacks! I found the gain on about 60-70% is about right...anything more and the Duncan's in my Eggle just overloaded the thing! Be careful when you try this in a shop...I used a Epiphone SG and was very near to not buying it. The assistant suggested I try an Explorer Custom Shop with DiMarzio's, and that sold me. As with most Marshall stuff, you DO need good pickups to get nice rich harmonics and a chunky distortion. The DRP1 is supposed to be used as a direct recording preamp...no waking up the street with your 4x12 when you put down a killer solo at 3:00am!!! All I can say is that it works! No fizz, and using the Line Out puts in the 4x12 emulator (not switchable) and there's very little hum and buzz except on monster gain settings, and then what do you expect!

I've only had it for a week and can't say. I've never had any trouble with Marshall stuff before. It's a nice chunky metal case. The boost switch is a bit small, but as it's designed for home/studio use it's not really a problem. I wonder how long the battry lasts?!!

Never had bother with Marshall...Jim's a nice bloke though!

I got this for about half price in a sale (RRP 105 Pounds sterling) and I think I've got a steal. Brilliant for home recording, no cabs to set up and although the emulators basic, it's about right. Plug your rack FX into it and use it as a practice amp, or on it's own anywhere (it's battery powered!) or even carry it as a spare pre-amp in case your rack goes down (it's 6" x 4" and weighs about 12 oz!) Every guitarist should try one, you'll probably end up buying one! I wish it was a stereo unit, but then that would push the price up a bit but it would be worth it. I'll certainly be taking it out as a back-up pre-amp in case my JMP-1 ever fails (god forbid!) and would have no qualms about using it in a home/small studio environment where it's just impossible to use a miked cab.