Mojave Ampworks
Special Edition Plexi 45
Anyone familiar with the JTM45 would surely
be jealous of Victor Mason. Not only has
he seen more than his fair share of vintage
Marshall, Vox, Hiwatt and other rare treasures
come through his shop, but Victor recently
acquired 26 of the all-time greatest JTM45s
ever assembled via the Kronemyer collection,
and he’s got the pictures to prove it! This is just
one of the factors contributing to the obsessive
nature of Mojave (and the associated Plexi
Palace). Having been around for over a decade
on the internet, Vic has been repairing, restoring,
buying and selling vintage Marshalls for
quite some time now. Stemming from his early
desire to find out how EVH created the classic
brown sound, Victor embarked on his journey
through countless hours of digging into vintage
amps and learning where their strengths and
weaknesses lay. Mojave now offers an entire
line of amps to serve the classic Marshall tones
and well beyond with innovative features and
designs. The Mojave Plexi 45 also has two very
unique features over a stock JTM45. First is a
simple feature to allow volume control by way
of throttling the power level. Second is a line
level output, which is adjustable and incorporates
a ground lift.
Standing apart cosmetically from the rest of the
amps, the Special Edition Plexi 45 is built on
the same footprint as the Coyote and Scorpion
designs, with a white-and-black color scheme
and chrome hardware. The head is built with an
open grille cage that allows for maximum airflow
to keep the set of completely NOS glass cool.
The 45 supplied for the roundup consisted of
a pair of 1970 NOS Genelex KT66s, 3 Mullard
12AX7s and a Mullard GZ34. Like the Germino,
the Plexi 45 is based on the R/S transformers,
which are custom wound by Mercury Magnetics.
The chassis is a thing of beauty; the .09” thick
aluminum, with a high tensile strength and welded
edges and seams will ensure it will not flex,
bend or develop fatigue, like the early, folded,
softer chassis, and will prevent the heavy transformers
from causing the chassis to sink in and sag. Mojave deviates from the original JTM45
by using modern, tight-tolerance parts. Custom
manufactured caps and metal film resistors allow
each amp to sound as close to the one built
before it as the one after it. Consistency is something
that Vic definitely strives for, and it shows
in the build quality and attention to detail, and
the desire to add convenient functionality to his
amps.
We found in testing that not only did the
amp have an extremely low noise floor, but that
it was an authoritative and powerfully voiced
amp. There was definitely something different in
the tone of the Plexi 45; it was cleaner sounding,
but still very bold. Having been to Vic’s shop,
I was fortunate enough to play one of the 26
JTM45s he had acquired, and I’m positive that
the experience with those amps had more than
a little to do with the design of the custom R/S
transformers made for his Special Edition model.
The amp is built like a tank.
mojaveampworks.com
