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The Haze MHZ40C is more classic rock than modern metal

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Amp titan Marshall may be best known for those towering stacks but the company has periodically produced tasty little amps too. The new Haze series is designed to offer a sensible range of real-world features in compact packages to meet our rehearsing, recording and small gigging needs.

This Haze MHZ40C is a 40-watt 1 x 12 combo that runs on a pair of EL34 output valves. It is a two-channel design; 'normal' handles clean to crunch, and 'overdrive' goes from crunch to higher gain. The combo also has an additional boost function that works in both channels.

According to Marshall's R&D designer James Marchant, this boost changes the overdrive stage from a clipping- to a saturation-style character, courtesy of a clever bit of bias adjustment.

Boost

The amount of boost is considerable but it's fixed, so your guitar's volume control is all-important in achieving the texture and response you like best from the boosted mode.

If you go for the optional Haze Footcontroller (£39), the boost is also footswitchable, giving you four basic sounds at your feet. The standard, included switch is a two-button unit that changes channel and switches the effects on and off. The MHZ40C also boasts a global three-band EQ section with an additional presence control.

This combo comes with a collection of digitally created effects that are designed to retain a good deal of analogue warmth and feel. The emulated spring reverb has its own pot and can be switched completely out of the circuit if you so desire.

In addition you have a choice of vibrato (vibe, orange), delay (echo, green) and chorus (red) courtesy of a push-switch that changes colour to indicate the effect selected. The adjust pot changes an effect's parameter: delay time from short slapback through to 1000ms; vibrato depth and chorus depth.

Effects settings

One cool thing about the effects section is that each channel 'remembers' its effects settings. So, for example, you can set up a clean tone with a bit of reverb and chorus, then switch to a no-reverb overdrive sound with delay in channel two.

Until you physically switch off any of the effects, they'll always be there in that specific channel: neat. One minor downside is that there's a short but noticeable delay when switching channels due to the relays used. The pay-off is that switching is silent with no pops or clunks.

Marshall has gone to the trouble of incorporating speaker-emulated line-out and effects loop options into the combo.The loop is a simple series affair, so pedals and units with their own level controls work best, while the line out offers a direct feed straight to a desk or mixing console. It's not as realistic as a sympathetically mic'd speaker, but it's immeasurably better than a dry, non-EQ'd DI.

The combo is in a sensibly sized, rear-ported box; not so small that the tone is boxy, but not too big that it won't fit in the back seat of the car, or indeed in the boot along with a modest pedalboard, leads bag and two gigbags.