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Marshall's Kerry King signature head: very metal

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Sadly, guitarists in ferocious metal bands rarely get the praise they deserve as far as their technique goes but make no mistake: Kerry King is an extremely good player. If you've heard Angel Of Death, you'll know that the rhythm parts are incredible.

For a company of Marshall's stature, very few players have been recognised with a signature amp and those that have been, such as Jimi Hendrix and Zakk Wylde, have used amps bearing Dr Jim's iconic logo since day one of their respective careers. That's certainly the case with Kerry King too, and his signature tone is made up from a JCM800 2203 head and a 10-band graphic MXR EQ pedal with which he boosts both the mids and the gain.

King has dubbed his main 2203 'The Beast' and Marshall took scrupulous readings from both the amp and King's own EQ pedal to ensure the new head could recreate the tone on demand. Thanks to a switch also named 'The Beast' on the amp's front panel, it can. A specifically designed and voiced EQ section is engaged that provides the King rhythm tone that works alongside a high-quality noise gate, controlled by the threshold pot.

The amp's master and preamp volume pots still operate in The Beast mode, as does the main four-way EQ, allowing you to colour the tone as you wish, while the Assault control lets you regulate the level of boost.

Original 2203 amps followed Marshall's traditional practice of combining EL34 power tubes with ECC83/12AX7 preamp valves, but here the power section uses a quartet of KT88s in order to take advantage of that valve's characteristic girth and additional low-end thump.

Elsewhere only the provision of a single input and a front panel decal based on the tribal tattoos that cover King from head to foot give anything away regarding the amp's departure from a classic 2203 spec and subsequent potential for aural damage...

In use

Hear the 2203KK here:

With The Beast still in its cage for now, we instantly find that the classic JCM800 rock tone is present in spades. To our ears the best tones are to be found with humbuckers rather than single-coils, but a warm overdrive complete with a wholly musical valve bloom and associated compression should be easy to enjoy with pretty much all guitars.

As Kerry himself found back at the beginning of his career, a stock 2203 won't get quite dirty enough for those extreme metal tones but, for all styles of rock it remains among the very best amp configurations of all time. With the master set at around half and the preamp at three-quarters, we dust off a Gibson Les Paul and revel in the tone, full of Marshall's familiar warmth and upper-mid clarity.