Marshall Valvestate 8100 head

...

Reviews Revisited: The Marshall Valvestate 8100 from 1991

It's difficult to stress just how good the new Valvestate range from Marshall was. Here's our first taste from 1991.

"The normal channel has two modes of operation, clean or crunch, selected by a push switch. In clean mode the gain pot acts like a straightforward volume control, but when the crunch option is selected the amount of crunch is increased as the pot is turned up.

"Soundwise it's well up there, with lots of warmth and richness on the clean side, staying clean even with the volume right up. Crunch is just that, with a definite solid-state bias to it when the gain pot's cranked to the top."

Want more? Click here to read page 1 of the original review.

Click here for page 2

Click here for page 3

Simon Bradley is a guitar and especially rock guitar expert who worked for Guitarist magazine and has in the past contributed to world-leading music and guitar titles like MusicRadar (obviously), Guitarist, Guitar World and Louder. What he doesn't know about Brian May's playing and, especially, the Red Special, isn't worth knowing.