http://www.madisonamps.com

Cryptopsy, Deicide, Vital Remains, Behemoth all use them. They might be worth looking into

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DONT DO IT. DOOOONTT DO IT.

theyre made out of particle board and shitty chinese tubes. (new pre and power tubes? thats what... 150$?)
Shitty chinese transformers which SUCK BALLS. (300$ replacement)
have no character in the tone. --> think of a giant EMG in amp form
Will break down faster than a behringer (ouch)
and make a very loud POP noise when you switch channels (which is not fixable in any way)
the construction of these make old krank's look good.

The same amount of gain + better tone can be achieved by a JCM 2000.

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There has been alot of talk about this company. Good and bad! I havent tried one but if you search the Harmony Central Froums you will find alot of bad. And then of course you have other people that say dont listen to the people on the Harmony Central forums that the amps are good. So I dont know!

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Horrible customer service too, despite being a small company they don't give a flying fuck about their customers' problems I hear.

Derek at RSA no longer stocks em, makes you wonder why.

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i want to add a follow up... my amp pops when you change the channel... but it pops in the head internally (its a physical switch, DUH its guna pop), and you can only hear it if you're standing next to it... madison pops through the SPEAKERS.

If you're during a gig... it will sound something like (clean guitar) *dingdingdingding* *POP* "everybody get down! theres a gangsta popping caps!" (distorted guitar) *chugga chugga chugga SQUEE chugga SQUEE*

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Sexy looking,horribly built marshall clones.

whats funny is i've noticed that pretty much everybody on harmony central owns mesa's and other high end amps (framus, engl... blahblahblah)... but pretty much none of them have marshalls... oh the time and hassle they would have saved if they just bought the real thing.

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Behemoth uses Bogner now, don't they?

The thing is IMO, with guitar amps people want to go for the coolest ones. ENGL, Framus, mesa like you said. Yeah, they sound awesome, but they do buy them for the name.
Marshalls are uncool these days because they are old, and popular. Haha seriously, I would put the fact that all those people on harmony central have those amps to simple demographics.
The two guitarist's in my band (im playing bass) have interesting setups for melodeath. One plays a usa strat straight into a Marshall JTM30 with no boost/overdrive pedals. The other, a Brian Moore into and Orange AD30 with a screaming tubes pedal (Australian company) as a boost. Anyway, the tone is fucking perfect IMO, best ive heard together in a band.
Basically what im trying to say is that more people need to go out and spend more time in second hand music shops trying out ALL the different amps. You know, its all well and good seeing a band with a Mesa and going out to buy one. But its not the same as finding your own sound. Same deal with brands like Madison and Krank. They certainly dont sell on tone, they sell on image.
Vintage/semi-vintage medium to low gain combo's are way funner to play around with anyway.

Here some madison sound clips. In a few the guy is switching channels and I don't hear a pop. Actually sounds pretty decent to me but I have zero experience with Madison gear.

http://madisonamps.com/2006%20archi.../soundvideo.htm

maybe he got one of the early ones before they were COMPLETE pieces of shit. Supposedly the first few didnt click.

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Well, they're supposed to be a shitty clone of the JCM2000 TSL as stated earlier. Ask JerryP, i think he was the one cracking one open and discovering crap I think the pop thingie is related to no relay clamps, and apparently the power supply was the worst ever seen..

For whatever reason I can't imagine, 3 Inches Of Blood switched from fucking Triple Rectifiers to Madison amps.

i highly doubt that any of the bands that supposedly use madison will EVER take them into a live situation, thats just a set up for something to go wrong.

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it's called an endorsement... why else do you think people play kranks?

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Well Triple Rec's arent all that great either. If any of these bigger names are playing Madisons, they have most likely completely gutted.

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like putting a marshall chassis inside of a madison box?

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I think they just set the kranks up and have a bogner or something on the floor behind the stack that they actually play through.

Hahahah I would seriously not be surprised. I mean you could get endorsed by any company and totally gut the amp and just keep the logo.

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They probably give the endorsees something that they've throroughly gone through, tested and/or handbuilt to make sure it isnt a p.o.s. like the production model....

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No, they put 50 stacks behind the player on stage and people don't realize the player's real amp is backstage miked through the PA.. this is what Dimebag did i think..

I saw a picture of Shadows Fall live and you can clearly see by the light shining through that their Krank stacks do not even have tubes in them... its just an empty chasis. Im sure lots of bands do this with their endorsements.

From what ive seen first hand they have a problem with durability, Ive seen multiple heads break down over the course of a tour. Tone wise its kind of blah.

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I think both happens. For instance, I'm pretty sure the Madisons that get displayed at NAMM would'nt give anyone any problems. But when the common man gets a mass-production model ...

Deicide, Vital Remains, and alot of other endorsees of madison have switched to Vader cabs, and Mesa heads. Fuck Madison, they're a piece of shit, and my fucking 200 marshall blew it out of the water from the distortion.

lol, that was funny.