ROB MATH: Hey out there. I’m Rob Math with Marshall, and I have the pleasure to introduce you to the MG100DFX. This is an awesome combo. It’s part of Marshall’s MG Series. It’s a 100-watt solid-state combo that has many cool features. It gives you two separate channels here, a clean and an overdrive but for each channel you get two modes. So, on the clean channel, you get the clean mode, and then you get sort of like a vintage crunch mode. And as you go over to the overdrive channel, you get two separate overdrives: one that’s pretty bitin and in your face, and then one that’s even mode in your face and over the top, more saturation, more gain for leads.

The MG Series is our all-solid-state series, and it incorporates Marshalls proprietary FDD technology which stands for “Frequency Dependent Damping”, and let me just talk a little bit about what frequency-dependent damping is and what damping is. Through the years, Marshall has always been making tube amps and is known for the Marshall tone. What we want to do is recreate the feel of a tube amplifier or a Marshall tube amp to say and also the Marshall tone but with solid state technology and solid state circuitry.

So, one of the key differences between tube amplifiers and solid state amplifiers is how the power amp section interacts with the speaker, and this is something called damping, the damping characteristic of how the speaker moves, the interaction between the output transformer and the speaker. On a tube amp, we like to say that a tube amps power amp section allows the speaker to misbehave, and it’s frequency dependent. So, depending on the different frequencies that you play on your guitar, the speaker is going to respond or react to that. On a solid-state amp, you don’t get that type of response, so it’s usually just a stiffer exact response every time you’re playing.

So, in order to get a solid state amp to feel and respond a lot more like a tube amp, Marshall came up with a technology which they call Frequency Dependent Damping which makes this output section interact with the speaker in the same manner and the same fashion that you get from an all-tube power amp, so the result is you get the feel and the response of a tube amp out of a solid state combo, so very cool.

This is part of our MG Series. We’ve got the MG15CD, the 15CDR, the 15DFX, smaller 15-watt combos. We got the MG30DFx. We got the 50DFX, the 100DFX, the 250DFX, and this also comes in a 100DFX head. This has a custom Celestion speaker here. It’s a closed back cabinet. In fact, all our MG amplifiers are closed back except for the 30. It’s footswitchable as the FDD, and as you look over here it’s got a CD in that stands for CD input. So, you can plug in a CD player here, and what it does is it actually runs that signal directly through the power amp section, bypassing the preamp. So this way, you can go ahead and blend say a distorted sound that you’re jamming on top with a clean backing track running through the speaker system, which is very cool.

You’ll see here we’ve got an emulated line out and an emulated headphone out. This is actually if you want to go direct out for recording or if you want to use this for live, you can take that signal and go out to a mixing console and get the sound of, say, a mic, you know, a microphone being placed in front of the cabinet. It’s an emulated line out, so it’s going to give you that same response. Another cool tip would be is if you want to run that emulated line out and throw a mic in front of it if you’re doing some recording or if you want to really, you know, try to blend some sounds, that’s another cool feature. But if you just want to -- If you’re recording at home and you can’t crank it up and you can’t mic it and you want to get a mic’ed sound, go for that emulated line out. It’s killer. Emulated headphone out: Again, if you plug headphones then you’re going to get that same sound that you’re hearing out front through the emulated headphone out.

As we take a look at the front, we’ve got digital effects here, so MG100DFX, digital effects. So, what do we have? Well, we’ve got chorus and delay. We’ve got a delay, a chorus, and a flange. So, chorus and delay, that’s one effect together, and we’ve got separate delay, separate chorus, and separate flanger, and then we’ve got a separate reverb over here. And as you’ll notice, we have a parallel effects loop too with loop level control on the back for depending if you’re plugging in stompboxes or effects processors, A +4 for effects processors and it’ll be -10 for stompboxes. Let me just double-check that. Yeah, -10 for stompboxes.

Okay. So, we’ve talked a lot about the amp, frequency dependent damping, Marshall tone. Let’s give this amp a little listen, okay? Let’s start out -- I’m just going to take you -- This is overdrive 2 actually and let you hear how great this amp sounds.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

Okay. In this side, we can get everything from vintage gain. Let’s bring -- Let’s got to OD1 and go back to -- bring the gain back a little bit and go for more of an older style Marshall tone.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

So, you get that response which is very cool. You would normally only get that out of an old tube amplifier. Let’s crank up the gain a little bit more and we’re going to get -- The gain stage is voiced from say an older Plexi to a hot rodded JCM800 right on this first mode.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

Okay. Some more heavier type.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

And one of the great things that we have here is a contour control. Marshall actually they call this the old-guy-new-guy control because if you crank it up, it gives you what more the younger guys want, which is essentially it’s sort of like a mid sweep so it scoops the mids here.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

And if we bring it back, it gives you more the old guy sound.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

That’s one real cool thing to mention, so if we crank the contour up, it’s going to scoop the mids, okay, and we can bring up the treble. Let’s go to overdrive 2 now. Listen to that.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

And that’s where we can really get our real heavy...

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

...heavy tone out of this amplifier that’s why a lot of guys love the MG100DFX. You’ve got Wayne Static from Static X that uses them, Tommy Victor from Prong, and those guys do a lot of...

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

Okay. That’s great for lead stuff.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

Okay. What about digital effects? God, I’ve gone through a lot of different sounds just without effects, so let me hear you the same sound. Remembering the contour back, if you want more of a nice, mid rangey lead tone, you can turn on a little delay, bring the contour back.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

Let me just turn it down just a little bit. Sorry about that.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

Okay. You can bring the effect level down here. [INDISCERNIBLE] Sorry. Or bring it up.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

Let’s bring it down.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

Okay, and we also have some other digital effects which I’m going to go through on the clean channel. So, let’s move over now to the clean. What you’re going to find here is you’ve got a really great, really versatile clean tone. So, let’s take a listen. It sounds great. This is on the clean mode. There’s also a crunch mode here.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

Pretty sweet. Okay. Great for all different stuff. Let’s add a little chorus to that. Let’s see how it sounds.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

So now, what if I wanted to add a little delay? We just go to our delay section. We turn the dial until it says delay, and then we can use the same adjust control or preset select control to adjust the parameter. And over here we have our effect level, so now I’ve dialed a little slap.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

Okay. Okay, so this is great for a little country style, soul.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

Great response is why you can hear how tight the closed back is with that speaker section. So, I can get lots of different great sounds. Here’s with a little flanger...,

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

...kind of psychedelic. Okay, and now the first channel we can also get a vintage crunch-style sound. Let’s give that a little listen. Bring the gain back.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

So there you have it. One last demonstration I wanted to show you is what the FDD sounds like in and out, so let’s go over to the high gain channel.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

Okay. So here’s with the FDD out, so it’s not in.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

Now, here’s with it in.

[ROB MATH PLAYING GUITAR THROUGH THE MARSHALL MG100DFX]

So, you can hear a level difference. There’s also a difference in response to your picking technique. It just kind of brings it into focus, brings the tone into focus and gives a little bit more width and dimension to the sound. So, just a recap, it’s the MG100DFX. It’s killer combo part of the MG Series which is our all solid state series for Marshall. It features two footswitchable channels here. Each channel has its own mode. You got a clean channel with a crunch mode. You got OD1 and OD2, two different overdrive gain stages, one that’s more of like a Marshall JCM800, hot rodded to even more gain and beyond to a DSL -- to now to a JCM2000 Marshall. Contour control is more of like a mid sweep. Essentially, we call it the old-guy-new-guy control. If you crank it up, it’s going to give you -- on the MG100, you crank it up it gives you more scoop the mids essentially, so more of the younger sound and the other direction gives you the older, more mid rangey type of tone. It comes compact with digital effects, CD input, emulated line out, emulated headphone out, and a custom Celestion. I’m Rob Math with Marshall. Thanks for listening. Take care.