Marshall MG10cd: little amp, BIG sound!

WOAH!!!! That's the first word that comes to mind with this little Marshall practice amp -- WOAH! The Marshall MG 10 CD practice amp is a small sized, inexpensive practice amp with a BIG rocking sound!

I am the proud owner of a full 100 watt Marshall stack which I use for gigs and band practice, and for at home low-volume practice I already had a Marshall G15R CD practice amp which I'd been happy with. However, a few years ago I bought a cheapo guitar as a birthday present for a young friend, and knew he needed a small practice amp to go with it. The MG 10 CD amp seemed just right -- it cost only $69.00 at Guitar Center (note: they now go for $80.00), is nice and small, and when we brought the amp to my place and jammed -- him on the MG 10 and me on my larger G15R-- I noticed that the MG 10 was just as loud as my larger amp, and sounded TWICE as good! So good I had to run out and buy one for myself...

The MG 10 CD is a ten watt practice amp with a 6.5" speaker and has two channels -- the clean channel and the overdriven channel. There are only four knobs on this baby -- a volume knob for the clean channel, a pregain knob and volume knob for the overdrive channel, and one "contour" knob for the tone, which is basically the EQ. No reverb or digital effects on the MG 10, but it does come with a headphone jack for private non-obtrusive jamming and a line out/CD input jack which can be used two ways: you can plug in a CD player or drum machine or what have you and play along, or you can run a chord from it into a mixing board to record the amp without micing it. I like to plug my drum machine into it and rock along with the beat, it's a very nice feature to have, but I've never used the line out to record as I prefer to mic the amp.

The MG 10's clean channel sounds decent enough, but it's the Rock sound I'm after and this little guy really delivers. The overdriven sound of this little amp is just unbelievable, you don't need any distortion pedals at all, it sears and rips and has great lows and tone which you wouldn't expect out of such a small amplifier. I find myself playing lots of metal riffs on this thing and it almost sounds just like my 100 watt Marshall at a low volume. I love the sound of it so much it makes practicing at home more fun than ever. It does sound best played at low volumes and when turned way up it starts sounding a bit grating and muddy, but what the heck -- this is a PRACTICE amp, not an amp you'd bring to a gig, although I have used this amp for some home recording when I'm too lazy to set up my Marshall half-stack, and the recorded sounds are actually quite good.

Truly, this amp sounds awesome and is perfect for home rock/metal guitar practice. I've owned mine now for over four years and it's still rocking like Dokken and I've had no problems with it at all. It's the smallest practice amp I've ever owned, but it's also the best sounding practice amp I've ever played through. I give it three thumbs up.

Now go rock!!!