General Guitar Gadgets MGV vs. Original Marshall™ Guv'nor™ - Video
PUBLISHED:  Apr 01, 2010
DESCRIPTION:
StompTone is no longer in the business of building and shipping pedals.

A customer of mine in Georgia ordered an MGV because he wanted to retire his old Guv'nor™. When he got to comparing the two he found the MGV a bit of a disappointment as compared to the original. He was having trouble with the DC jack on his Guvnor™ so he sent it to me to fix and sent along the MGV to see what I could do to make it sound better.

To my surprise and delight, he owned an original first-line Guvnor™ made in England and I quickly noticed there was a major difference in output, tone, and sustain with the Guvnor™ winning on all counts. Though the circuit of the Guvnor™ has remained the same over the years, there have been many incarnations of the pedal. There are also countless schematics out there of the circuit as traced from various incarnations but I found none that exacted the components in this Guvnor™. After deciphering values (the original Guvnors™ used axial caps that look exactly like resistors with color bands and I needed to find a reliable source for decoding them) I made the changes to the MGV and all was right with the world. I also made taper changes in all but one pot though the values remained the same. Made a huge difference.

It's a bit obvious the pedals don't sound exactly the same in the demo but I want everyone to know that with a few tweaks here and there it is tremendously difficult or impossible to tell the difference when the MGV is clipping with the red LEDs. I didn't take a ton of time for the vid to try and place Bass, Mid, and Treble to exacting specifications (this is actually harder than one might think [i.e. 12 0-clock isn't exactly 12 o-clock on each pot]) but I was able to toy around with both a/b-ing for an extended period of time and found them to be practically identical in tone and output.

Frank, in Georgia, is tickled to death and even happier with his MGV because he has the secondary clipping option which he swears sounds better than his original. He can now consign his Guvnor™ to the collectors case and enjoy the sweet tones he loves in a smaller yet sturdier package.

I used my Les Paul™ Deluxe through George Ls™ into a Carvin™ Vintage 50™ out of a Carvin™ 4x10 cabinet.
follow us on Twitter      Contact      Privacy Policy      Terms of Service
Copyright © BANDMINE // All Right Reserved
Return to top