I’ve always loved my Splawns - starting with the 2008, then adding a 2018. Once I got the 2006 though, I was blown away, and I was much more interested in trying out some of the older revisions of the circuit. I happened across this Marshall 1987x modded by Splawn, dating to 2003, and I had to find out.
The core tone is classic Splawn, with thick mids, and it retains the same bright cut as my 2006 Quickrod. It does have noticeably less bass response compared even to the 2006 - which itself is less bassy than the 2008 and in turn the 2018’s I’ve had. It’s cool to see how over time, more and more bass was added to the tone as players tune lower and lower.
Despite lacking the modern super-deep bass thing, it does have a killer core tone, perfect for 80s hard rock and metal. It has a footswitchable rhythm mode and solo boost, but lead is obviously the focus of this amp. The only negative I can say is that just like all of my other Splawns, the gain control is really more of a “suggestion” and panning it from 3 to 7 is hardly any different, adding a little more compression but not drastically affecting the tone. Couple that with the somewhat odd, Splawn signature mids voicing and it’s really not able to cover classic plexi crunch tones, despite what the head shell might indicate.