Marshall DSL20CR 1x12" 20-watt Tube Combo Amp Reviews

I purchased this amp 2 months ago, and noticed the amp is again on sale.
I own other amps, and have been playing over 50yrs, but for the price and 20 watts, and a great tone, this is a keeper.
Less $$ than my Blues Jr, and many other amps on the market. This one sounds great, enough power to keep up with the drummer, and El34 tubes.
I have read multiple reviews and some say it sounds like the more expensive British Marshalls, but IMO it does justice to the Marshall tone.
Great overdrive, the amp is only 34lbs and easy to move and take out to play live. I did change to a Neo Creamback to even make the amp lighter in weight.

Sounds great. Plenty of high gain and decent cleans too. Love the 'soft-touch' power & stndby buttons. Foot pedal is a great bonus too. Very happy!

A true do it all (most) amp.

20 watts are very loud if you need to get some walls moving.

Clean channel with gain down is beautiful. Gain up...you head into grittier waters.

Gain channel is pretty good. My pedals don't like it too much. But, turn em off and let it rip.

Swapped stock speaker for a neo creamback 16ohm. LOVE IT!

True classic Marshall tones in a small format.

I sold all of my tube amps 20 years ago, and had been using a Helix Modeling setup, along with several Fender modeling amps which have served me well. However, I missed the sound of a real tube amp, and I wanted to get something to remind me of my 1990 Marshall Studio 15. This DSL20CR has been the perfect product for me. (Note: I immediately upgraded the factory speaker to a NEO Creamback, which added even more warmth and drive to the already classic Marshall tone) At just over 30lbs (after the NEO upgrade) it's really easy to haul around on weekend gigs. As a clean pedal platform I've discovered 20 tube watts is more than enough for my current needs. The quality is great, and the circuitry never needs to be biased by design, which is a great relief to me. With an attentuator, I can use safely this amp to practice with at my office, without bothering others.

This amp delivers the sound you're looking for at a price you can afford in a package you can still lug around to rehearsals and gigs. Yes, the speaker could be better but an upgrade makes this a serious contender for a much higher priced amp. The cleaner channel is incredible and with the foot switchable high gain channel you almost don't need pedals - maybe a boost and tuner

Where do I even start with this little beast? First of all…I can go from nice warm and glassy clean tones…to downright disrespectful high gain tones. I'm a metal guitarist and I hardly ever have to go past 12-1 o'clock on the ultra gain channel. I also run a tube screamer mini as well just to tighten my tone up and add a little bit more saturation. I've gone through about four other tube amps before finding this little gem (5150 iconic, Vox nightrain, blackstar ht5 for example)… this DSL combo just has a certain sound that is almost old school while still having a tight and modern sound at the same time. My ONLY gripe is I get a little bit of feedback if my guitars volume is wide open but that's due to the gnarly pickups in my jazzmaster (jim roots signature jazzmaster with his signature EMGs). All in all…I tell every one I speak to that if they are looking for a super versatile and gnarly sounding tube combo…give the DSL a try. I actually plan on putting a Weber BlueDog speaker in mine just because I love the sound Weber speakers have. This is my first Marshall and I plan on buying the 20w head as well.

I've own plenty of guitar amps, fenders, peavey, and marshalls. This amp is better than my Plexi. How you ask? Because it is far more versatile. I get the "brown tone" at any volume level without killing folks. And it's clean channel is quiet and rich in tone. Not to mention it didn't drain my bank account. A great buy.

This amp has been perfect for me as I needed a powerful enough amp to gig with but not too heavy to carry. This is perfect at 35 lbs and 20 amp tube amp. It offers a nice sounding Clean channel and an excellent "dirty" channel or Ultra gain that provides a great pop for lead solos with that unique Marshall sound. I was concerned that the amp wouldn't be strong enough for outside gigs but its plenty powerful, no need to even mic up. I've used it now a few times at outside gigs with 100-200 people and had volume levels about 5-6 without mics and it was fine. Included foot pedal is perfect for switching back and forth. Takes additional distortion pedals well, also. I ran a MxR 78 distortion and this works fine with clean channel on; its overkill thru dirty channel. I didn't use fx loop to connect so no comment there,(connected directly thru input). The amp also has an audio in and emulated out jacks which I use to connect my computer and headphones respectively so I can practice at home playing along with you tube videos without blowing out neighbors. Both work fine for these purposes and a must have for me so you can practice at home quietly. Settings of Treble, Bass, Middle, Presence,Resonance and Reverb are all nice, although Reverb has to be set high to notice. Overall a great amp at a good price

Just got my dsl20. I am highly impressed. Everything I ever wanted. My Plexi was just too loud to get "the tone". Now I get that tone at will. Marshall got it right. Tone is GOD!!!

This Marshall 20Watt (3 X ECC83's , 2 X EL34's) sounds so good. Has a FX Loop. input options this DSL 20 has it all. Also this is a very LOUD 20 WATTS if you want it to be..... I have a few solid state Blackstar Amps and solid state axe FX & there not as good as Tubes Amps yet. and the way the Les Paul responds to your playing with the Tube Amp doesn't exists with a solid state amp. Nothing Beats Rocking A Good Tube Amp......

Swap the 70/80 speaker out with a v-type, v-30, greenback, or creamback. The 70/80 is a budget speaker to keep the overall cost of the amp down, but it does not suit this amp at all with it's harshness. The reverb is so-so, better off using a pedal. FX loop is nice on this amp, and this amp is a great pedal platform. OCD, Big Muff, MXR EVH 5150, Friedman BE-OD all sound tremendous through this line. Compared to the DSL40cr, the cabinet is smaller and lighter which is great for portability, but you do sacrifice a bit of bottom end. Ultra gain channel sounds great with the gain dialed back for crunchy JCM800 type tones, but I primarily use this amp on the classic gain channel for it's gorgeous cleans and with drive pedals.

One of the best amplifiers I have owned. Great sound. Superb controls. The ability to play at half power and effects loop sold me on this. Very quite (low noise) amplifier, great for bedroom volume, but can be turned up fairly loud if need be. Thanks Marshall and Sweetwater!

The Marshall DSL20CR combo amp I purchased is a lot of amp for it's size. Great tones, very responsive. Great gain options. Everything from classic rock crunch to full on metal mayhem. Great tone shaping features, very easy to go from British to American style overdrive and distortion. And it's LOUD for a 20 watt tube amp. Great feature is being able to drop it down to 10 watts at the flip of a switch. The amp was delivered to me very quickly by Sweetwater. I'm very satisfied with my new amp!

Hello and greetings

I own a DSL100HR, which plays thru a Marshall 1960 4 X 12 cab, bought that one first, then I bought a DSL40C, smaller and lighter and less hassle to move around still 45lbs, then I just purchased this DSL20C, 35lbs. I also own a small 20 amp Fender solid state amp, ( bedroom amp ), not suitable for a band application, 20lbs. After everything is said and done, for most of us average joe guitar players who don't gig every weak, but might play here and there mostly inside somewhere, this 20 amp Marshall will get the job done and sound good doing it, I do run pedals thru the effects loop, and pedals thru front of the amp which wakes it up quite a bit. It's small and light and easy to move around and pedal boards are not heavy, it will hang with just about any average band, for me it is the best way to go for what I do, granted the DSL100 and DSL40 are awesome amps, but they are hard to move around. I wouldn't give up any of the Marshall amps I have they all have there place, and I have the big ones if I need them someday. I use all three at home and the DSL20 is great at 2 in the morning.

This is a great amp, especially at the price. It's sound is pure Marshall, and the FX loop for more pedal options makes a great amp even better. Thanks, Aaron Smith and all at Sweetwater for the great service, as always.

Giving up on modelling amps years ago I wanted to return to tube amps, namely Marshall as my first choice and as a combo thats easy to carry around. Enter the DSL40, an older combo that Marshall came out with. Had a choice of four channels with choice of two you can use with the footswitch. All set right? I changed out the stock speaker for a Vintage 30 and found it much heavier, perhaps closer to 50 pounds and loud too so I cut the power to 20W. Still loud but ok in a condo. I tried the smaller DSL15, swapped the speaker out too but it did not have that Marshall tone due to EL84 tubes so got the DSL 40 back and never looked back for years...then I saw a few years ago Marshall updated their DSL line and had the new and smaller, lighter and lower powered DSL20.With EL34 tubes finally!
Now I may have the amp I will be happy with for years. The dirty channel can't be beat. With the drive set at 1 oclock and with an overdrive it sounds exactly like the older DSL40 but better. In the 10W setting, it actually sounded better with the volume at 2. The clean channel is a bit thin but I don't use it much but you can get a Plexi like tone with the drive near full with an overdrive. I tend to keep the gain at 9 oclock to have it nearly clean as I use the footswitch to toggle from clean to dirty. The footswitch does pop a little though and it also really pops loudly if you leave the dirty channel on when you turn it off. I always switch back to the clean channel prior to shutting it off. There is also a useable reverb but I don't use it as I use the effect loop for a reverb pedal along with delay and a graphic EQ. Weight wise its still about 35 pounds with the Vintage 30 in it which is still good for hauling around and not breaking your back.

I decided to buy a Marshall DSL20CR as a serious practice amp at the house so I could get some real jamming done when away from my band and my DSL40CR, which I've come to appreciate more than when I reviewed it last year. The DSL20 should get 5 stars for both tone and overdrive channel versatility (although I'd prefer the two subchannels such as on the DSL40CR, but you'd have to make the cabinet larger to do so). It can sound like the big brother model at a lot less weight. Good controls and footswitch, and my reverb actually works! The loudness is impressive, even on the 10-watt setting, for a small amp (see below note, as this was a problem for me).

Less impressive is the $... price tag, especially when paired with the Celestion Seventy 80 speaker. It sounds tinny for this kind of amp, so I just broke down and upgraded to got a 65 watt 16 ohm Celestion Creamback (NOT disappointed - see separate review). I think Marshall could at least throw in a "V"-Type stock speaker for the money, it sounds very good on the DSL40CR.

Overall, I'd certainly buy it again even with the price, but now I look forward to now being able to doing small gigs.

NOTE: The only issue I have that you may not is the volume is really loud on this little map, so I was having trouble getting the tone cranked and still not be blasted in my living room. My sales engineer Mike Defraties suggested rather than return the amp for a 5 watt model to just get na attenuator- in my case a simple fix was the JHS Little Black Amp Box for the effects loop (again, see separate review). It really solved the output problem and now I can crank up the preamp and still talk on the phone. Thanks for thinking the whole situation through as always, Mike!

I play mostly 30s/40s standards and at Church . I figured who"s better at a lotta volume that Marshall. Don"t get me wrong, I love the overdrive channel. But I wanted to have better volume and keep good tone across a Taylor 6 and 12 string and an Ibanez Prestige. The switchable power provides that extra push when needed. Haven"t had a standby switch in a while. Foot switch to change channel and select effects loop. Nice. I"ve been using the clean gain at 3 o"clock and the volume where I need it. At my small church volume in 6 and fine tune w guitar. Great sound played clean and loud. That"s why I bought it.? I"m not disappointed.

Some friends came over for gig night and one brought his new dsl 20. Well great because we don't over ride the drummer. But we got to messing around for just different intros and he put this baby to the test and it passed us with no good byes!! Immediately we found the sound quality from a speaker not even broke in left us in amazement. And he had to cut it back to half power of 10 watts for it to even start to break up! This little beautiful amp just took me to a new world when I got to plug in!! If your a home gigger or even a small club player, you need to go out and try out this hidden power house. And it is so light.
I'm going to get one asap . I've got a older Marshall code 30 amp, but the rich tone has sold me on a tube amp.

I've been playing guitar for 30 years, owned a lot of different amps. After 15 years, I decided to sell my Marshall DSL100 halfstack in order to downsize. I wanted a low wattage 12" combo with either EL34, EL84, or 6L6GC tubes in it. I researched several low wattage combo amps from Orange, Laney, Peavey, Fender, Blackstar, Egnater, and Marshall. I love Marshall's tone, I was already familiar with the DSL line, and none of the other amp brands listed had anything that really got my attention other than Orange. The Orange I liked was $200 more. So I went with Marshall. I am NOT disappointed! This Marshall DSL20CR has that familiar Marshall tube tone I love. Sounds great right out of the box. I read that many folks change the speaker but I think the stock Celestion Seventy-80 sounds pretty good. Nice full low end, smooth mids, and plenty of highs. Great clean channel with lots of headroom, just like a Marshall. Gain channel is sweet with lots of chunk and crunch. Push in the tone shift button and it's Marshall DSL high gain heaven! Resonance and presence knobs help to dial in and tweak your sound. Reverb is nice. Plenty of volume for a band setting. Also sounds great at low volumes.
The Marshall DSL20CR is a low wattage tube amp that sounds great for not a lot of money...Just what I was looking for. A big THANK YOU to Nick Huskins @ Sweetwater for all his help!

Excellent sounding amp. Perfect for my small apartment. Tone is awesome (what else do you expect from Marshall???). Sound good even at low volumes.

This little amp rocks! First time buy with
Sweetwater, it won"t be the last. Very
Good experience!

Don't even judge this amp with the stock speaker. Its crap and probably put in the amp to keep costs down. My recommendation, especially if you don't want to crank the amp (where Celestions come alive) is a EM12N. Its the Eminence Neo Magnet version of the EV12L speaker. The top end roll off of that speaker is around 4.5K which really takes away the high end fizz of this amp. Its a very full bodied speaker and doesn't need to be cranked to sound good (after break in of course). My rating is based on other combo amps I've owned so I can't give it a full 5 stars. Its a good amp but Marshall really needs to tweek the overdrive a bit more. Way too much top end "sizzle". That's why most people run their Marshalls with the Treble at 9 o'clock or non at all. I would say for under $ its probably the best amp out there...especially with a speaker swap.

I obtained my Marshall DSL20 combo earlier this year, it sounded okay when I first bought it. The studio that sold me the amp mentioned how it sounded so much better through a different cabinet.

Did some research and was able to visit a friend's studio who had a pair of 2x12 cabinets; one with Celestion Vintage 30's and another with a Celestion Greenbacks. The amp sounded so much better through those speakers, I knew I needed to swap the speakers. Borrowed a couple Scumback clones of Celestions and settled on a Creamback version. It sounded fantastic. When it was all settled, I purchased a Celestion Cream Back Neo from Sweetwater. Put it in my amp and haven't looked back.

Now with the speaker swapped, this amp sounds fantastic. The Red channel (ultra-high gain) was rather meh with the old speaker. But now with the new speaker, the channel is useable now. Key is to keep the master volume up and roll back the gain. Still retains that scooped, metal-like tones that can be dialed in for high sustain modern rock.

Used this amp in the rehearsals on the 20w mode. With a couple of pedals (JHS AT+, Earthquaker Plumes, and a Timmy), this amp was perfect for anything I was playing. Using the clean/classic gain channel, this amp was killer. Cut through the mix, master volume only at 10 o'clock. Didn't use the red (ultragain) channel, but I might next time.

Can't give this amp a five star because of the speaker and lack of a dust cover. I previously had a DSL40C which I found was too loud at times. It came with a footswitch, dustcover, and a stock Celestion Creamback (Sweetwater exclusive) and I paid less for that amp. Expected more from Marshall on this one. Dust cover is a must when traveling and storing the amp.

This is an early review, as I just received the amp three days ago. The only caveat is that the speaker is not yet broken in. I chose this amp, ironically, because I had had a chance to check one out at a local shop and was impressed with the clean tonality. Not necessarily something one looks for in a Marshall amp. But I mostly play clean, so it was an immediate attraction. On the clean side, I am impressed with the clarity of tone, and how articulate the amp expresses each note--highly desirable in what is marketed as a lead amp. I think that there is a fair bit of compression in the signal path, more so than in my Fender amp. I would like a bit more range in the eq section, at least at the lower end. The reverb is okay … I prefer light delay over reverb, but that is not a fault of the amp. The ultra gain side is has huge range, from a little bit of distortion up to the point where the signal becomes almost unintelligible, which oughta please the hard-core among us. This is especially pronounced with humbucking pickups--single coils produce a somewhat more manageable breakup. Note that the clean side will also break up lightly if the gain is dialed up. So--lots of tone-style options on this amp. I am not sure how Marshall rates the power output, but running this amp at the low power (10 watt) option, it easily exceeds the volume of my 15 watt Fender tube amp. At 10 or 20 watts, I believe that it could easily drive another speaker enclosure. I haven't yet used the effects loop, but will check that out this week although I don't anticipate using it much given my style of play. Weight and size are perfect for me. In checking out this amp prior to purchasing it, the only complaints that I have read referred to Marshall's selection of the speaker. I haven't made a judgment about that yet, although I definitely see it as treble-biased. And I am okay with that as the amp will definitely cut through the fog. Worst-case scenario is that I will at some point swap out the speaker, although I think that is unlikely. My thanks to Riley for facilitating the purchase, and to FedEx for getting the amp clear across the country four days after my order.

Been doing business for a while now with
Sweetwater. Consistent quality service
every time . Great little amp too.
Its got that signiture Marshall tube tone !
Great amp for giging or just practicing at
home. Its louder than it looks too !!
As always , a big thanks to Bob Mondok
and his high performance team !
Brandon

I like this amp, a lot. It's my first Marshall, and my first tube-amp, so I cannot comment or compare it to other tube amps. Many of my favorite musicians play and or played through a Marshall, so I know it fits my style.

Marshall cut some corners though. First, they put in a cheap budget speaker. The Seventy-80 speaker is awful. It's harsh and grating in the ears. I put about 200+ hours in on it, and it never improved.

I would highly recommend a 65W Celestion creamback speaker. Night and day difference! It's worth the $... But again, now this amp is about $... I think Marshall could have done us better by simply including it.

Also, they did a poor job assembling my particular cab. When I went into to replace the speaker, I noticed one of the screws was loose, and when I backed it out, I noticed it was stripped at the end and the t-nut holding it in place, was also stripped. I know this because it fell out of the wood when I backed the screw out.

I thought it would be an easy fix, and I could just find a replacement at the local hardware store. Wrong. It's actually hard to find. When I reached out to Marshall, they only referred me to a parts vendor, who then told me that they no longer supply that screw and nut. They were unable to help me. So I'm stuck with only 3 working screws on a new amp.

Ok for the price but has tons of hiss on 20 watt mode and only sounds good with a jhs black box in the effects loop

I've been playing the electric guitar for 9 years, my previous amp was a Roland cube40gx and its lasted me a long time until I felt like I needed something better to get tones my roland couldn't, preferably a tube combo. I researched all over the place about tube combos and the only option with a great price was the DSL20cr. When I tested it, the overdrive channel was way to fuzzy even with lower gain. When you max out the gain, it becomes near unplayable. The celestian speaker was one of the major causes to it having a not so great sound comparing to the higher end combos. I ran a side by side comparison of my Marshall dsl20cr with my roland cube40gx and I heard quite a difference. The sound produced by my dsl20cr is noticeably noisier than the cube40gx. But it had great clean tones, nice and warm, wouldn't entirely recommend it to people who want a beautifully sounding amp.

I've been playing small to medium gigs with a band for 3 years with a Deluxe Reverb. I also have a Marshall Mini Silver Jubilee Combo, Mesa Triple Crown Combo and a Princeton 68 Custom. I purchased a DSL20CR and used it for a practice. It doesn't have the low end to hold its own in a live band situation compared to my other amps. It would be a great home practice amp or bedroom amp. It may be better with a better speaker, but I wasn't getting a good enough sound out of it in the practice situation to warrant giving changing the speaker a try.

I dug the tones but the FX loop in the DSL 20s is really poorly deisigned imo. The level of your delay, or looper, or whatever effect you have in the loop will change according to the level of the channel you"re on with no regard to the gain. So you record a nice clean track or maybe something with a pedal on the clean channel and then switch over to the gain channel for some leading out and the looping track volume dies, or your delay level drops - really stupid.

The DSL 5CR works great, just like every other amp I have with FX loops (all my amps have a loop, its a requisite). So I"m gonna wait a few months to see if Marshall revamps it. Too bad cause I was liking the tones. One other thing is that you"ll almost certainly want to swap out the 70/80 speaker, the greenback I plugged into to try sounded much, much better.

Huge disappointment. This amp has so much white noise/hiss that it is unbearable to play. With or without a guitar plugged in, regardless if the volume is turned all the way down, the hissing that comes this amp is so loud it overpowers everything else. EQ pedal, swapping out cables, etc., nothing was able to get rid of this noise. Sadly, after doing some research this has been an issue with this amp for years and is hit or miss - sadly, mine was a miss.

It's hit and miss with these amps. Should have bought the first one I tried. The one I purchased had a lot of hiss and noise (with our without anything plugged in). It's back at the dealer for repair. Tube swap made zero difference. They have received some capacitors from Marshall and have an experienced Marshall warranty tech looking into the whole problem. Love the amp, just not usable with the amount of hiss/noise it generates. This is a common issue with this model from what I've read on the various forums. Not every amp but a large percentage.