Marshall JVM 410H

That's interesting, thanks for your experiences. I'd be interested in yours (or anyones) comments on my situation.

I never use it at home for practice, it's solely used for live performance. I have some little combos and practice amps for home, so it only ever gets an airing on a stage.

The band I play in cover everything from The Shadows/Beatles/Elvis through to ZZ Top, Skynyrd, Bryan Adams, Gary Moore etc. The idea is we cover virtually everything, with about 140 tunes in the repertoire, to appeal to the specific audience we are asked to play for. Thus, it's impossible to create specific accurate tones for everything. I therefore have to have each of the four channels covering a broad basis. We play in small/medium venues to between 60-250 people, usually.

I have the res and pres at about 3 on each dial, although I may try your suggestion of keeping them zeroed.

I tend to keep the masters up high with each channel vol adjusted for balance. Channel 2 is used for solo boost.

I keep the clean channel on green, with minimal gain, for as pure a clean rythym sound as I can. I'm not blasting out solos in every song we do.

The crunch channel I have on orange with gain half way, which gives me a decent tone for songs like You Really Got Me by the Kinks and so on.

The OD1 channel I sit on green and dial in gain at about 4, but like you, it's sometimes too much or if dialled back, sustain seems compromised for the ballsier numbers.

I never use OD2 as with the exception of songs like Jump by VH, the gain is OTT for me and fails to cut through.

My weak spot is the cab, which is a basic Marshall 1936 2x12, I know I need to improve this.

Out front, and I know many will do a facepalm at this, I am lazy and stick a Boss GT8 unit through the effects loop in manual mode, using it as a stomp box only, for delay, flange, chorus, auto-wah, comp sustain and on stage tuner. All my individual pedals are gathering dust in the studio.

The diversity of tone is complete by the fact that on stage, I usually use a Fender Strat and Ibanez JS100 to ensure I have trem and multi-pick up versatility. My beautiful Les Paul or Fender Flame tend to only get an airing if we play Just Got Paid or Empty Rooms by Gary Moore, and due to the venues, it's rare. Most of them would freak out - "what the ***** this??"

Budgets are tight, but if anyone can suggest what they would do, in my shoes, I'd be delighted to hear it. And yes, getting a blues rock band together (again) is on my radar! lol

rocky, the JVM may simply not be for you.......as I read your second post and the fact that your are in a cover band playing so many styles etc.....it seems like the JVM would be nearly the "perfect" amp for you and your needs.

sometimes it just doesnt work out that way.  but with that said let me offer a few more ideas based on some of the info you have shared.

the reason i run the resonance and presence on zero is because when on zero it basically is the same way a regular jcm 800 or similar amps come......the JVM's resonance and presence are to add some girth or sparkle overall depending on the room you play and for me it just seems to make the sound a little to hollow.

i also agree about the cab situation......i have played the JVM thru several 4 x 12 cabs and thru at least 3 different 2 x 12 cabs and to my ears it sounds considerably better to me when played thru the 4 x 12.

i dont know if this will sound different to your ears or not but i much prefer running my channel volumes up at five to seven and keep the master volumes down lower and adjust based on the venue.

I also run the boss gt-8 thru the effects loop on my jvm for live applications strictly for delays, chorus and those types of effects.....the gt-8 just makes sense because i am able to change the jvm channels via midi thru the gt-8....so one tap of the button does many changes for me. and if it's good enough for nuno bettencourt to use live then it's good enough for me!!!  LOL

when describing your primary problem it seems that you dont "cut thru" the mix enough for your taste...i would highly suggest putting a ts-808 or a bb preamp in front of the amp and kick in on your rhythms and solos but keep the gain on the pedal very low.......not for adding too much additional gain or distortion but rather when used on low gain settings i notice that it really tightens up the JVM and adds a nice girth to the midrange frequencies and really allows the amp to cut thru better.

i hope some of these ideas help but if not i think its perfectly fine to look at playing a different rig all together...i love my stuff but i am open to anything that works for me.  i played thru a bunch of rack gear for years when playing thru the rack gear wasnt popular but had tons of folks coming up telling me how awesome my tone was and asked what i was using......even though all my rack gear was tube stuff from mesa/boogie they would always "lose their enthusiasm" once they saw or figured out it wasnt a traditional head....to me that is just stupid......i dont care if its a vintage amp or an axe fx 2......if it sounds great and gets the job done then its right for me or you if you like it.

tone is subjective.

good luck on your quest....give the ideas a try and see if any help you out.

and below is a link where me and a buddy of mine did a remake of the sammy hagar tune "one way to rock"......all of it was done on the JVM......i believe crunch red with the BB preamp in front of the amp on the rhythm and solos.

http://www.musicexe.com/1Way.mp3