Just put about an hour on my new green stripe combo.
First impressions compared to my purple--
AAAAAHHHHH OW OW OW THIS SUCKS
Oh, wait, previous owner had Presence dialed up to 7 :shock: Take that down to 1. Better. With the Presence up that high all the bass was sucked out in favour of a really stiff, stinging upper midrange.
R1 tones are the same, allowing for hotter tubes in this amp (he's got all Mesa 12AX7s and I usually run JJ ECC83s in v1-3 and 12AT7s in V4-5.) However, the channel is louder-- I can actually play clean AND loud, which I can't on the purple.
Lead on this amp seems a wee bit tighter and smoother than the purple, but, again, I think tubes would make a bigger difference. Just like the purple, the fun doesn't start until the master is over 3.5. Compared to the purple it may sound a wee bit better at lower volumes, but still not, y'know, actually good.
I don't like this R2 as much as the one on the purple. The one on the purple takes some work but has great big round, lively tones in it. The R2 on the green is thinner and has more gain; it *is* more Marshall-like, in a bad way. I keep playing the riffs from "Love Removal Machine" by the Cult because nothing else sounds very good. I don't know if you do R2 volume mods on green stripes, but this one hasn't had it.
However, since R1 and Lead volumes match a lot more closely on this amp, I don't need to use R2 as a clean channel like I do on my purple. the purple is a 3-channel amp but R1 is too quiet; the green is a 3-channel amp except one of the channels sucks.
They are slightly different amps, but I think that except for R2 there's nothing that would be more different than different cabs or preamp tubes.
More impressions when I have changed tubes in the green stripe and tried it through the same cabs I use for my purple. Note-- this is a combo with the stock Black Shadow; I usually play my purple into a 1x12 with an original EVM-12L.
