Marshall DSL5CR

To begin with, this thing is built like a tank. I own a Bugera 6262-212 combo and the casing is a lot more thicker on this small 5W Marshall than on the 120W Bugera combo so you can tell just from this that Marshall put some attention into building this sturdy little monster.

The clean channel is very nice, goes from mild, jazzy tones to crunchy stuff with that classic Marshall ring to it.

The lead channel is where I spend most of my time & it's really something to write home about. I play a Jackson Dominion DX2 (Dimarzio pickups) and an ESP LTD Eclipse (EMGs) through it; the mids are very well defined and the bottom end is very very focused so very good attack & note definition. The treble may get a little harsh on the very high gain settings but that can easily be toned down by the tone on the guitar or the Treble switch on the amp itself.

The foot-switch is metal so not plastic which is a BIG + in my book!

The reverb is also nice (nothing to write home about but decent) but it needs to be cranked up to get the best out of it.

Finally, my favorite feature: the "Low-Power" mode switch. 5 Watts can be very loud so having the option to get this thing to play apartment levels with a simple push of a button is awesome.

This thing can easily do live gigs (seeing how nowadays, most engineers mic up the amps), rehearsals (if your drummer is not crazy loud) and even recording.

All in all, I like this amp very much. It's easy to carry around and very versatile.

Good job Marshall & great stuff Thomann!

It's my first Marshall amp and I don't regret buying it. It only has three valves in it, but it delivers 5 glorious watts of beautiful harmonic distortions as I imagined it would. Power chords simply sound delicious :). It is built like a tank, the emulated output is acceptable when you don't want to use its speaker (you'll have to disconnect the speaker before turning the amp on in order to use just the emulated output, otherwise both the emulated output and the speaker will work in simultaneously, as I understand there is an internal load that is engaged when you disconnect the speaker). I think the 5 watts are more than acceptable for my current use in my apartment, I usually keep it on 1 watt power the volume pot somewhere between 3 and 5... no, it does not go to 11. I don't think the amp would manage to be heard in a club gig without putting a mic on it, if that's your objective then go with the 20 watts version.

The only drawback I see, is that at some point I'll have to replace the power valve and I wasn't able to find documentation on how to check and fine-tune the bias of the output valve, but I guess I am supposed to go to a dealer or tech to do this job... right :). We'll see that when that time will come.

I bought one of these for my son for Christmas, he'd been using a cheaper solid state amp previously and had asked for a Marshall as that's what many of his musical heros seemed to prefer. His Les Paul Tribute sounds fantastic through this amp, it sounded fine before but the quality and overall range of tones he has available now are really impressive. The amp sounds excellent on the lower power settings too and both clean and overdrive channels are very impressive. The amp gets used mainly at home, however I'm sure it could be used in a pub gig or similar smaller setting, the 5 watts it has pack quite the punch and if the drummer isn't too loud, I'm sure it would work well. Very happy overall, footswitch included is a nice extra, everything looks extremely well made and hopefully will last. It's not the cheapest 5 watt combo out there but if you like the Marshall logo and are willing to pay a bit more you'l have a smoking little amp on your hands.