I think it was Saturday night I had a hard time getting the Marshall page to load. The auto-fill function on my various web browsers was trying to take me to MarshallAmps.COM which wasn't loading at all. Funny, wasn't I using that site pretty recently? Then I went Google and forced a new search (not auto-fill on my browser window) and was directe to https://marshall.com/
OK, this is something new. In fact a whole new web site that has a lot of short video clips on the home page. As far as sites of that sort go, it's pretty nice.
And along with it a bunch of new products (and perhaps so old products have been retired, as they usually are when new products are introduced, but I'm not sure about that.
The product lines have been re-organized, so the way that I used to think about their amps doesn't really fit anymore. He's the first product screen you get to after traversing a few screens full of hipster music video cuts:
The "Origin" and "Code" product lines are new, as far as I can remember.
The "Origin" series appears to be Marshall's latest attempt to build retro-styled amps, but with modern guts, not the more meticulous recreations of the "Handwired" series. They are all tube amps though.
The little guy is a 5 watt combo with an 8" speaker that is advertised as for "bedroom players". Funny that's a forum term being adopted by their marketing dept. 8" speaker - Marshall finally builds a Champ.
The next biggest is a 20 watt 10" (Marshall's Princeton). It sports 3 x ECC83 Pre amp valves and 2 x EL34 Power amp valves.
There are also head versions of the 20 and 50 watt amps, also retro styled.
The largest of the combos is 50 watt 12" model, with the same tubes as the above. All of them seem to be single channel amps with a foot-switchable "gain boost". They also have built in power-cutting switches, like a lot of new amps.
The "Code" amps let you connect computers and to the web and upload and download patches. I guess I would describe them as computer-enabled modeling amps. Fulltone pedals have had the "Tone Print" thing were you can down load patches to your digital delay, so I think it's that sort of idea. These are solid state amps of some sort. There are a variety of sizes up to 100 watt combo and head.
The JVM series remains unchanged, from what I can tell with a full compliment of 2 and 4 channel models in both 50 and 100 watt versions, heads and combos.
The Vintage series (which are more accurate recreations of specific older Marshall models, but not built exactly the same way, but again all tubes) seems to contain all the same models it did last time I looked.
The Handwired series though, appears to be down to only two models.
If choice is good then Marshall are doing great, they are certainly giving buyers a lot of options. The new organization seems pretty straight forward.
It's gotta be tough to be a retailer though. how could you possibly stock even a small fraction of all these models? And if it's going to have to be shipped to you anyway, sound unheard, why not order from a mail-order guy, instead of the a local shop? (I'm not in the music business, so it's not my problem. Amps are something I have always shopped for at stores, and never mail order. My last trip to Guitar Center they had no amps of any interest to me, even though they had 40 or 50 amps on the floor. So, I probably won't buy an amp from them, and I suspect they are having a lot of other customers with the same response. For small shops, it's gotta be even worse.)
I'll be interested to hear some reviews of the 50 watt Origin amp. That's probably the most interesting of the new designs to me.
OK, this is something new. In fact a whole new web site that has a lot of short video clips on the home page. As far as sites of that sort go, it's pretty nice.
And along with it a bunch of new products (and perhaps so old products have been retired, as they usually are when new products are introduced, but I'm not sure about that.
The product lines have been re-organized, so the way that I used to think about their amps doesn't really fit anymore. He's the first product screen you get to after traversing a few screens full of hipster music video cuts:
The "Origin" and "Code" product lines are new, as far as I can remember.
The "Origin" series appears to be Marshall's latest attempt to build retro-styled amps, but with modern guts, not the more meticulous recreations of the "Handwired" series. They are all tube amps though.
The little guy is a 5 watt combo with an 8" speaker that is advertised as for "bedroom players". Funny that's a forum term being adopted by their marketing dept. 8" speaker - Marshall finally builds a Champ.
The next biggest is a 20 watt 10" (Marshall's Princeton). It sports 3 x ECC83 Pre amp valves and 2 x EL34 Power amp valves.
There are also head versions of the 20 and 50 watt amps, also retro styled.
The largest of the combos is 50 watt 12" model, with the same tubes as the above. All of them seem to be single channel amps with a foot-switchable "gain boost". They also have built in power-cutting switches, like a lot of new amps.
The "Code" amps let you connect computers and to the web and upload and download patches. I guess I would describe them as computer-enabled modeling amps. Fulltone pedals have had the "Tone Print" thing were you can down load patches to your digital delay, so I think it's that sort of idea. These are solid state amps of some sort. There are a variety of sizes up to 100 watt combo and head.
The JVM series remains unchanged, from what I can tell with a full compliment of 2 and 4 channel models in both 50 and 100 watt versions, heads and combos.
The Vintage series (which are more accurate recreations of specific older Marshall models, but not built exactly the same way, but again all tubes) seems to contain all the same models it did last time I looked.
The Handwired series though, appears to be down to only two models.
If choice is good then Marshall are doing great, they are certainly giving buyers a lot of options. The new organization seems pretty straight forward.
It's gotta be tough to be a retailer though. how could you possibly stock even a small fraction of all these models? And if it's going to have to be shipped to you anyway, sound unheard, why not order from a mail-order guy, instead of the a local shop? (I'm not in the music business, so it's not my problem. Amps are something I have always shopped for at stores, and never mail order. My last trip to Guitar Center they had no amps of any interest to me, even though they had 40 or 50 amps on the floor. So, I probably won't buy an amp from them, and I suspect they are having a lot of other customers with the same response. For small shops, it's gotta be even worse.)
I'll be interested to hear some reviews of the 50 watt Origin amp. That's probably the most interesting of the new designs to me.
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