What did you end up getting? I owned a Marshall JVM210H and 1960A cab and sold them in 2013 after owning them for over 4 years to get the Express Plus 5:50 and an Avatar 2x12 cab and haven’t looked back. I loved the Marshall at elevated volumes for overdrive and crunchy sounds, but it was always missing something at lower volumes and in the cleans. First I’ll talk about my favorite features of the JVM, then the reasons why I made the switch.
Things I liked: VERY versatile for live performances. So many foot switchable gain options available, two master volumes (I used the 2nd master as a solo boost), I never had to tweak my amp during a show (except occasionally for volume). It was “set it and forget it”. I don’t like to roll the volume off my Les Paul lower than 6-7 because I feel it sacrifices tone, cut, and clarity, so I loved the multi-gain stages always available in the amp. At gigging volumes (Master Vol ~2.5-3), the tone was pretty awesome. It recorded really well. It also looked awesome, people knew it was a serious amp just by looking at it, and it worked really well with my Les Paul Classic.
Now, reasons for the switch to the Mesa 5:50+:
1) Downsizing – size and power. Physical: The 5:50+ head is 11-12 lbs lighter than the Marshall, and the 2x12 cab I have is 25-30 lbs lighter than the 4x12 Marshall. Power: I love the 5 watt feature on the 5:50+, as well as the 25 watt setting. I use 5W at home, and 25W on stage, rarely use the 50W setting.
2) Clean channel: I wanted a warmer, richer tone. I never loved the cleans of the Marshall, they were always a little bit dirty and not very rich or warm at lower volumes. The Mesa is ridiculously rich and warm at all volumes; I now spend more time on the clean channel than the dirty channels combined. The basses remind me of a piano.
3) Versatility: While the Marshall was a little better for live performances from a practical standpoint (not necessarily tone-wise) because of the foot switchable gain stages, the Mesa 5:50+ is more versatile in tonal options: much better cleans, more usable gain, 5,25, or 50 Watts each wired differently for a different feel, graphic EQ, preset EQ, and ability to control the EQ for each channel, the solo feature is very nice for gigs, nice overdrive tones from the Blues channel, great crunch channel, and a slightly dark but good creamy sounding Burn mode on channel 2. On the Marshall, I could barely use the orange and red channels on the high gain channel without excess squealing; no squealing on Burn w/ the gain cranked w/ the 5:50+. I do wish the Burn channel was voiced a little bit brighter for my humbuckers, but that’s pretty easily made up by the Graphic EQ or preset EQ.
4)Build quality – while the Marshall never felt cheap, there were some cost cutting measures. I didn’t like that all of the knobs weren’t securely fastened to the front panel – you could grab and wiggle them if you wanted to and they felt fragile, and there was almost no friction while turning the knobs. They are also all mounted to a PCB, rather than wired flying leads like the Mesa. Also, the Marshall uses plastic nuts at all of the input/output connections vs. steel nuts for the Mesa. The build quality of the Mesa is better in all aspects, and Mesa uses better quality components.
5)Tone (the biggest reason)!! The tone of the Mesa, for me, is amazing. Great at bedroom volumes because of the lower wattage options, great tone loud and everywhere in between; this amp really wakes up nicely at about 9 o’clock on the master volume on all of the power settings. With the 5W setting I can get power section clipping on the clean channel (when I want to) at fairly reasonable volumes (it’s still fairly loud in a 12x11 room) with my hot humbuckers.
Overall, I like the 5:50+ better than the JVM210H, in nearly every way.
