Marshall DSL20CR

I use this amp as my home studio amp, practice and noodle amp. It does all 3 jobs well, with the distinctive Marshall sound we know ( and most of us love).
So, the pro's:
Typcially Marshall. If you have owned a Marshall, the controls will feel natural.
Built like a house. Mind you, this is not a top-of-the-line Marshall, but it still comes in at 20 kilo's. DSL may be the "affordable" range, but the first impressions do not align with this truth. It feels solid, and like it can handel the road, if you want to use it for gigs.
The Cleans are lovely. It takes pedals with no problem.
Gain channel is good, and many rock/metal players will have fun with it. But I would stick a TS (TubeScreamer) in there, somewhere.
Send/return is handy. footswitchable. No level control for it.
20 watt or 10(ish) watt-mode. Big pro, because 20 watts of tube amp is still a lot of LOUD. Lower power mode is much more workable in a home studio situation. The 20 watt's can carry you in band practice or even a live situation. This is not a bedroom practice amp :) ...
The Tone-shift. Metal players of a certain style will love this: it cuts the mids in a very metal like way, (mid-scoop).

The con's.
The Tone-shift. Great for metal, not so great for anything else. Make sure it is not engaged the first time you try it, or it will confuse you ;) .
Reverb. It has it, but it feels more like a selling point than actual effort to put a good, usable reverb in. It is vage, or in your face. No or little inbetween.
It is a very beefy sounding amp. If you are looking for a bedroom or living room tube/valve practice amp, this one is mostly likely too loud for that, even in lower power (10 watt-ish). This is NOT a bedroom practice amp. look at the 1 or 5 watt for that. Really. I mean it. :)



For those who like to mod their gear, I do think this amp would like a V30 or greenback a little better than the Seventy-80 that comes with it. But the Seventy-80 does what is asked of it.

This is a very good amp, great tones of it's own, and takes pedals and fx well. It will take whatever you throw at it, and make it louder, with no issues.

I bought this amp for a gig. Before I was using a Peavey envoy that didn't sound any good when turned up loud. This amplifiet is quite the opposite. It sounds great loud,and the louder it is the better it sounds. However, if you are like me and you want to use it mainly for home practice this amp is not for you. When played at low volume it sounds fizzy if you use channel 2, no way you can get a good sound out of this amp at low volume. Clean channel is good however it's not super dynamic and it feels kind of "plastic" with singlecoils. I mean compared to a fender the clean channel is OK. In OD channel it delivers the Marshall growl, but the amp has to be very loud until it reaches the point where it starts to sound very good. The reverb is very subtle, the line out function is not that great.

I've been wanting a Marshall tube amp for a while, but I was never satisfied with the available options. I play mostly at home for my own entertainment, but I would like to at least BE ABLE to keep up with a drummer in band practice. You can hardly do that with 1 or 5 Watts. Then again, 40 or 50 Watt are too loud for me, since I'm almost never on stage (and Marshall tube amps in that range cost more than I am willing to pay). In that sense, a 20-watt amp with reduction to 10W seemed perfect, so I just ordered a DSL20CR. It sounded awesome for my taste! I was really satisfied, until it started to produce weird, rustling background noises. Thomann was AS ALWAYS super uncomplicated and exchanged the amp for me... and then the second unit had the same problem! A quick search on MarshallForum or YouTube reveals that sadly this is not uncommon for these models. From these discussions it was clear that the quality assurance of these made-in-Vietnam amps leaves much to be desired. Thomann sent me a third unit, and made sure to test it before it was dispatched. This one works, and I'm keeping it! The fact that I tried three times until I got a good one shows how much I wanted to have this amp. Maybe I simply had lots of bad luck, but in general people should be aware of these possible issues. In general, if it works (as one would expect of a brand new product), it is a great-sounding amplifier, for at home and in a band situation. Please also beware that 10W might still be too loud for some home environments! In that case, a volume pedal on the FX loop (like the JHS Little Black Amp) can be of great help.

I like the beefy rock sound a lot! Tested a few other amps like the Blackstar HT20 and Boss Katana Mk2 which couldn't compete with this one in my opinion, sound-wise.
There is an emulated out for recording and emulated in for practicing, which is perfect. The EQ Options are great.

This would be the perfect amp, if there wasn't that very loud background noise. Even on clean channels it bothers me very much, especially when you hear it on your recordings on emulated out. Even when my gain and volume are on zero, it's noisy. I don't know if I just got a wrong model or if this is normal for tube amps but I didn't notice comparable noise on the Blackstar HT for example.

I think I am going to keep it because the sound for the price is just awesome. Maybe I can do something about the noise with filthers