Dean Markley RM-40 112 Combo

I got this thing in 1986 when my other amp fried due to faulty wiring at a club gig one night. My buddy owned a music store and we did some horse trading. I gave him a strat harness loaded with EMG SA's and I got the Markley in return. I gigged steadily with the little amp for the next 5 years. This is a bit different than the others reviewed in that it is a single channel amp. It does have distortion built in via a pre and post control and a rocker switch. The eq, however is shared. The head does come out of the cab via a few screws and is rack mountable. The controls are active and it does have a 12AX7 tube inside. The reverb is surf approved and gets real "Dick Daleish" anything over 3. A 12" "MAGNUM" speaker rounds out the features. It's a nice, light amp. This amp has seen a crap load of gigs and has never let me down. Recently got it out again several years of storage. After moving the pots back and forth and a few shots of pot cleaner, it's as good as new.

This amp has had strats, teles and 335 ran through it. The clean channel is actually very nice sounding for a solid state amp. The active controls let you dial in a wide variety of tones, but to me it sounds best doing cleanish blues with a touch of reverb. The overdrive channel is pure shite imo. Very buzzy, nasaly and downright unpleasing to the ears. The good thing is it loves dirt pedals! Vox Valve Tone, Shannon Overdrive, Old Marshall Bluesbreaker, 69, etc, all sound very good with this amp. 40 solid state watts don't sound like much, but it was perfect for the smaller club gigs we did back then. Never had to trun the volume past 6 or 7. Nowdays, I use it to run stereo in conjunction with a Roland Blues Cube for praise and worship.

For a die hard tube amp lover, these two solid state jobs ( with the addition of the fore mentioned overdrives ) do an excellent job at getting me a great clean rhythm and chunky lead tone. With a few delays in the mix and a stereo volume pedal, the ambient, atmosphereic tones are a pure joy.

I actually gave this amp away to a friend in need at one time only to have him give it back a few years later when he quit playing electric ( he also gave me his PRS guitar! ) to concentrate on acoustic. So, it's come full circle ( well, I guess it would be full circle if it went back to my bud who owned the music store...but I digress ) and I'm glad to have it back. It makes an excellent practice amp and a great grab and go jam amp. I won't insult anyone here by giving it a 10 in tone. It's a solid 6-7...and that is good enough for what I need it to do. It's a damn fine sounding little amp. I've run across a few RM & RD Markleys in the last years, but never an RM-40.

Well, I gigged for years with this thing without a back up! Not very smart, but when you're a poor gutiar player, what the hell ya going to do? I was happy just to have one amp. Now that I don't gig, I have 4! Go figure. I've replaced the tube jsut for the hell of it. It has recently deveolped an intermittent problem where the amp sounds very staticky and buzzy....like the speaker is blown. I had a hard time ( I'm no amp tech ) tracking it down. I thought it might be a bad midrange pot. The other day in a fit of despiar, I turned the switch on and off 10-12 times in a row. This seems to have solved the problem! I've had to do it 50-60 more times over the past week, but it seems to have fixed whatever the problem was. So, after 20 years of abuse/storage in cold garage/knocking around in the trunk of a car/ I would dare say it's very reliable.

"Hello Dean??? Dean?, Dean, are you there??"

I've got more gear than I care to discuss these days. I'm i nthe process of selling off 10-12 gutiars I no longer play and whittling the gear down to a managable level. The Markleys goingto stay. If it ever does die, the cabinet would be a perfect platform for a Winnie Thomas amps or a 5E3/Marshall 18 watt kit. I have afeeling though, much like the old Peavey stuff from the 70's, this things going to be here for a while.