I bought a Marshall DSL15H for $350 brand new off Sweetwater and loved the idea of it: Marshall DSL but 15 watts with 6V6 tubes instead of stupid EL84s. It is a channel switcher. It has the Green channel (no boost) from the big amp and also has the Lead 2 from the Red channel from the big amp too. The problem is that the Green is a touch too clean and the Lead 2 Red channel is just over the top an pretty much unusable. However, the idea of this amp works and using the past 5 years worth of internet history, I performed some mods that really transform this amp into something special. Clips will come later.
What did I change?
- R15 got lowered from 1.8K to 900K (two 1.8ks in parallel). This takes the Green Channel and gives it a bit more gain. It also affects the Red Channel a bit too but more on that later.
- R40 was bumped up from 1.8K to 5.6K to drop the available Red Channel gain considerably. There is simply too much gain on tap in stock form.
- R82 was missing from this board completely. Install a 150K resistor there.
- C34 is an electrolytic that I inserted a 10K resistor in series from the negative lead to the trace where the negative lead of the cap was pulled. I am pretty sure this is the bypass cap for the V1B which is on the Red Channel
- C75 received similar treatment to C34 except that it is not an electrolytic cap so either leg works AND the value is 10M. I am not sure what this accomplished, but the people who did this in the interwebs said it was a good idea.
- C76 was changed from 470pf to 100pf to balance the overall brightness between the Green Channel and the Red Channel. This apparently makes the amp more usable as a channel switcher as opposed to having two channels that are good on their own but do not function well together.
C75 & C76 &R82 are at the top leftish of the picture. To the right of where it says BAR CODE.
C34 & R40 are at the bottom right of the photo. R40 is hidden behind the poly cap but you can see R43, R42 and R41 in a row so it is just to the right of that.
R15 is not on the picture but it is down below where C34 & R40 are.