I’ve owned a lot of gear over the years, and I
have more than a few regrets of selling some
of that equipment. One amp I kick myself
for getting rid of was an early-’80s Marshall
JCM800 50-watt head with forest-green vinyl
covering and wheat grille cloth. With its no-frills,
single-channel setup and biting, brilliant
tone, it required you to hit the strings really
hard to get that famous Marshall grit. I ended
up trading it for a channel-switching amp
because I wanted to play heavier music at
the time. Ever since then, I’ve dreamt about
that amp’s sound, which started my love for
British-voiced amplifiers.
Scarlett Amplifiers’ Paul Marchman has
very similar tastes, and this is evident in his
Wildcatter 35, Lead Special, and Darkheart
amplifiers. Most of Marchman’s creations
are tonally influenced by Marshall amps of
the late ’60s and early ’70s. But with a nod
towards early-’80s Marshall JCM800s, the
red vinyl-clad Screamer 70 represents a new
direction for his company.
Digging In
Consisting of a simple 3-band EQ and Gain,
Presence, and Master volume controls, the
Screamer 70’s front-panel layout made me
feel right at home. Marchman designed
the Screamer 70 to be a bare-bones rock
machine, so there’s no effects loop and only
one input jack. The amp’s internal construction
is immaculate, with a 1/8" fiberglass turret
board with riveted, nickel-plated turrets.
The amplifier delivers its pummeling gain
via three 12AX7 preamp tubes, which feed
a muscular power section that features dual
Tung-Sol 6550s. Marchman’s design also
makes use of a unique presence circuit that
can drastically change the amp’s tone. In
most amps, the presence control affects how
much negative feedback or dampening is
applied to the highs and high-mid frequencies.
Marchman’s design uses only the bare
minimum of negative feedback. At the highest
settings, there’s almost no negative feedback,
which results in a major volume and
gain boost. The trick is to find the right presence
setting to keep the low end tight and
under control. Of course, this depends on
your guitar and how hard you pick, too.
Pushing It to the Limit
Like JCM800s of yesteryear, the Screamer 70
is designed to be cranked up. Back before
preamps with hugely saturated gain stages
were all the rage, the only way to achieve guts
and definition in guitar tone was to push the
amp’s power section. This approach creates a
very different feel than preamp distortion and
causes you to play a little differently, too.
Armed with Gibson Les Paul Custom loaded
with Tom Anderson pickups—an H1 in the
neck and an H3+ in the bridge—I used
the Screamer 70 to drive a Bogner 20th
Anniversary 2x12 into submission. As I
explored higher volumes, I really started to
appreciate the Screamer 70’s dynamics. The
amp was very responsive to pick attack and
changes in my guitar’s volume knob, and
it surrendered gobs of gain, with a perfect
voicing in the mids for cut and definition.
It sounds and feels like a combination of
a mid-’70s Orange Overdrive 120 and the
aforementioned Marshall JCM800. All the
grind and smooth cut reminiscent of that
era of JCM800s was there, combined with
the massive, squishy low end of those famed
Orange heads. It’s a combination that’s perfect
for huge riffs à la Kyuss, High on Fire,
and early Queens of the Stone Age.
When I laid into the strings with galloping
palm-muted riffs, the low end didn’t have
the extreme tightness that type of playing
demands. It sounded like the amp’s low
frequencies were struggling to keep up and
attempting to swell into the sweet bloom
I’d heard earlier when playing slower, more
melodic riffs. I usually throw a booster
pedal into the signal chain to counteract
this effect, so I pulled out my BBE Freq
Boost pedal. However, I discovered that
the Screamer 70 does exactly what it was
designed to do no matter what you throw
in front of it. The Freq Boost tightened up
the sound, but the low end’s inherent tonality
remained.
With its incredible range, the Screamer 70’s
Presence control plays a crucial role in shaping
sounds, and the amp really started to
show its true colors when I maxed it out and
set the Master at around 11 o’clock. This
yielded huge, razor-sharp tones, and the
Screamer made every pick stroke an authoritatively
percussive blow to my chest. This
quickly became my favorite way to run the
Screamer 70.
It might be cliché to compare the nature
of the Screamer 70 to an angry animal, but
that’s really what it reminded me of. The
high-gain tones were straight-up vicious,
and the lower-gain tones weren’t really
that different. The glassy highs and snarling
midrange never vanished at lower gain
settings, and the amp’s biting tone stayed
intact throughout the whole range of its
Gain knob. I was able to coax a decent
clean tone out of the amp, but it was difficult
to eliminate all the grit, no matter
where I set the controls. Eventually, I had
to back off my guitar’s volume control to
approach a clean sound. This isn’t surprising,
though, because Marchman says he
never intended to incorporate clean sounds
in the Screamer 70—he aimed to serve up
the best high-gain tones he could muster.
The Verdict
As its name implies, the Screamer 70
offers a unique blend of some great British
overdrive tones, but it’s not for everyone.
Guitarists who love the wide-open sound
and feel of a cranked Orange Overdrive
120 or an early Marshall JCM800 might
be astounded at how well the compact
Screamer 70 mimics aspects of both models.
Other players may be turned off by
the lack of a usable clean channel and the
amp’s aggressive, biting voice. If you’re a
high-gain player and are on the lookout for
a unique-sounding amp, the Screamer 70
should be on your radar.
Buy if...
you want a lean, massive-sounding
high-gain monster with a bold,
aggressive voice.
Skip if...
you need clean tones or want
features like an effects loop.
Rating...
