Marshall JVM210H

Marshall JVM210H, 100W Valve head

If you’ve read my drivel regarding my JVM410H, you’ll know that I like it. I like it a lot actually. So much so that it convinced me to get hold of my JVM1, which I also like a lot. The little JVM1 makes a couple of the awesome tones of its big brother, but (especially when switched down to low-power mode) can be completely cranked without tearing your ears out ... try cranking the full-sized JVM410 in a smallish room and you’ll be wearing your spleen as ear-rings. The JVM210 might be seen as an awkward middle-child between the JVM410 and the JVM1, but that’s certainly not the case; the 210 is a full-fat 100W valve amp, and is every bit as capable of the “spleen as ear-rings” thing as the JVM410 is.

So. The JVM410H is a quad-channel beast, with 12 effective channels. That’s a lot of channels, and I tend to use four or five of them most of the time. The JVM210H is essentially the same as the 410, but does away with half of the channels ... so just the six then. Thankfully, those 6 channels contain “the good shit” and go to both extremes of the 410’s range, so from glassy crystal cleans up to completely savage gain. Too much gain, to be honest, but it’s good to get the gain you want without having to max out the gain control (as I did with my TSL, and still do with my 6101). So all’s good.

Santiago (the chief designer of the amp’s internals) has confirmed that the 210 isn’t just half of a 410, but that the internal ... er ... ‘stuff’ (the wires and resistors and shit) in both amps are pretty different, but the proof of the pudding is in the listening, and I can safely say that it is packed (indeed veritably RAMMED) with juicy, ballsy tones.

This does all the same silly MIDI stuff that the 410 does too, but, for the record, I tried that tomfoolery, didn’t see the point, so gave it up. As I ease through middle-age, I’m far more of a “plug straight in” type, so the advantage of MIDI switching all of my fancy pedals at once isn’t that attractive, given that I don’t bother with any fancy pedals. I’m far more comfortable with a bunch of gain and the amp’s reverb ... and I’m glad to say that the 210 does both very nicely.

In case you’re wondering what the hell the point is of running a 210 alongside (and often at the same time as) a 410, the 410 goes into my 1960a and the 210 goes into the 1960av cab ... as I’ve said, the difference between the two cabs (G12-T75s versus V30s) is pretty significant, so the two end up sounding pretty different to one another. And they go together really nicely, to save you asking.

There you have it. There are no interesting eBay haggle stories and no odd sellers; this was simply picked up from my local gear store when I got my 1960av. Given that I was dressed in my best work gear, they clearly thought that I’d never loaded Marshalls into a van before, so they even carried ‘em to the car for me. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I was loading Marshalls into vans back when they were still in nappies.