I first saw the Marshall Mini Stack back in the 1980s when it was the Lead 12 model. As a kid in high school it was about the coolest thing I had ever seen. The mini or micro stacks as Marshall calls them are scaled down full stacks for the home player. Originally it seemed to be a novelty, but the tone is good enough to record if desired.
The mini stacks include one angled and one straight cabinet like a full stack. Instead of the cabinets having four twelve inch speakers each cabinet has a single ten inch speaker. The head is modeled after a full size Marshall head, it’s just a little one. The small stacks have a large sound that can be cranked up and are not toys.
The first generation mini stack was the Lead 12 model that originated in the 1980s. The Lead 12 has a faithful following and can be considered a vintage amp these days. The tone is really good as it was modeled after the JCM 800 which was the amp to have for playing the rock music of the time. The Lead 12 is solid state and only one channel but it nails the sound it was built for and does not do clean well. The Lead 12 has a low and high input jack and is the only head in the series that does. The lead 12 was also cool in that it was primarily produced in black, yet red, white and the gray Silver Jubilee models. The Silver Jubilee model was produced for one year only in 1987 for Marshall’s 25th anniversary, and is often regarded as the holy grail of the Lead 12 series. The Lead 12 cabinets are also valued as they are said to have true Celestion speakers in them. I have loved the Lead 12’s and have owned four of them with two being the cherished red ones.
In the 1990s Marshall moved on to the JCM 900 series and the Lead 12 became the MG 15MS Micro Stack. The MG 15MS went to one input jack and added reverb, a CD input and a button that switches between clean and with gain. The MG 15MS series was only produced in black as the stack craze of the 1980s had fallen off. Three years ago The Zakk Wylde Micro Stack was designated as the MG 15MSZW and was limited to a run of 1400 units. The Zakk Wylde Micro Stack was a modeled after the famous guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne and Black Label Society. Though the amp does not have tubes or a footswitch it does look like the full size stack. The vintage speaker cloth and gold Marshall emblems set it apart from the others as does the bulls eyes and signatures. I bought one of the Zakk Wylde models when they first came out and the review was one of my first on Associated Content. Besides looking cool I really like the clean channel on this amp and find it to be versatile.
The mini stacks have been some of the most fun I have had playing guitar. I have owned four at one time and it is fun to move the cabinets around a room and experiment. Full stacks would be hard to move around and often impractical for that type of experimentation. I have used A/B switches and a George Lynch Tripler pedal to try different sounds and experiment. Having four going at one time creates a true wall of sound and with eight speakers going can be quite loud. A really good combination in a room is my Zakk Wylde in one corner running clean with lots of reverb and in the other corner my Orange head with Marshall cabinets running dirty. I know this is a Marshall article but when I got the Orange Tiny Terror Marshall didn’t make minis with tubes. Marshall does make a half stack now with tubes in the Haze 15 but I have never seen one in a store. I like to play it before I buy it, especially when it is $800 for a half stack.
In the last few years there have been quite a few manufacturers that have started to put out tube mini stacks. I have yet to try them out as I am very happy with my current Marshall and Orange combinations. All and all if you want a stack that can do clean and reverb the MG 15MS is the way to go, if you only play straight up rock a vintage Lead 12 is the ticket. With the economy dropping the price on Ebay on musical equipment the used mini stacks have come down into a reasonable range again. For anybody who plays at home and not Madison Square Garden the mini stacks can make you feel like a rock star.
