Are Marshall amps poor quality

martinw

lonestar said:

Every company has had their share of great amps and bad amps. Same as most things in life... you have to take the good with the bad.

I don't think that's strictly true. Of the major volume manufacturers, some are much worse than others. Not all mass-produced amps are of the same build quality. Marshall are one of the worst, in my experience. Orange, for example, are far better built and designed. As are Fender, modern Voxes, Jet City etc.

lonestar said:

 I've also gigged a DSL401c with no issue and apparently they're prone to overheating (?)

Yes they are, and amongst other issues, they have a known problem with a bridge rectifier which is marginally specified and overheats. It usually ends up desoldering itself causing loss of output from the amp. I guarantee you that if you'd opened your amp up you would see evidence of overheating around that component. Just because yours didn't fail doesn't mean that there's not a problem. This kind of penny pinching is typical of Marshall, and given the couple of pence involved for a correctly specified part, shows how little they understand how to make reliable amps.

lonestar said:
 But I think it's fair to say that most modern amps from larger companies aren't made to the same standard as yester-year.

Again, I disagree. (Sorry to keep picking on you! ). There have always been good and bad amps around, and there are some good well-designed and built amps around nowadays, just as amps back in " the good old days" were made as cheaply as possible and there was a lot of crap around. Most of the crap is now in landfill, and we only see the survivors.

However, we also now have access to products at much, much lower prices, so it's logical that you're going to get a lower quality, built-to-a-price product designed for a short lifespan with no repair-ability.

Back in 1968 a 50W Plexi might have cost you a months wages, and would still have been thrown together by factory workers who didn't really care about the quality of what they were doing (apart from Rosemary of course!) I suspect many Plexis bit the dust in the 70s, being regarded as just another failed consumer item, not a future collectable.

Now if you pay a month's wages for an amp, you will probably get something of much higher quality.

However you won't, you'll pay £150 with free shipping, shop around to save the last £10, complain that the courier didn't bring it in under 24 hours at the weekend, send it back because you don't like the treble content, complain about having to pay return shipping, or perhaps keep it for 6 months then complain because the tech wants £50 to repair it (if he can, as the importer doesn't carry spares - it was made in China of course), then eventually throw it away after a year or two, then repeat the process.

Sorry, went of at a tangent there. Some or all of the above paragraph might have been exaggerated for effect, but you catch my drift.

You see, we bring this shit on us-selves. It's the curse of modern society - education outstrips intellect. I blame Martin Lewis.

impmann

martinw said:

 I blame Martin Lewis.

Not Trump and Brexit. Pfft! ;-)

I actually agree with this. Most modern stuff, in real terms, is so cheap - and cheaply assembled, with designs that do not learn from the experience of the techs that even work for their own company! Modern Marshalls have left me cold - and experience of them going pop for other members of the band and the experiences they had when they did go pop has put me off even more.

Strat_a_tat_tat

@AllthegearNoidea... if you really are 'Allthegear', you should be telling us what Marshall amps are like.

Bridgehouse

Strat_a_tat_tat said:

@AllthegearNoidea... if you really are 'Allthegear', you should be telling us what Marshall amps are like.

Yeah, but he's got no idea..

Telejester

AllthegearNoidea said: lo

fretmeister said:

Don't buy that one.

I'm looking for a small plexi. If not the class 5 what could you suggest

Look at the cornell plexi 7

ICBM

impmann said:

I actually agree with this. Most modern stuff, in real terms, is so cheap - and cheaply assembled, with designs that do not learn from the experience of the techs that even work for their own company! Modern Marshalls have left me cold - and experience of them going pop for other members of the band and the experiences they had when they did go pop has put me off even more.

It's a real shame. I *want* to like Marshalls… they were the amp I aspired to when I started playing, and for the first few years I had good experiences with them. But since about 1990 they have just gone seriously downhill in terms of quality, reliability and (in my opinion) to some extent tone. It is true that some of the very most recent - the JVMs and the Vietnamese-made DSLs - seem to have reversed this trend, but at the expense of being if anything even harder to repair, if they do actually go wrong.

In the mean time Marshall have blown an absolute fortune on designing series after series of poorly-designed amps which have bitten them in the backside for warranty repairs and then been discontinued after a fair short run when buyers realise this. It's really not a good track record.

They *do* still make good amps - the reissues. The build quality of these is up there with anything they've ever made, so I'm not purely bashing Marshall! If only they could take a big step back and start again with the 'modern' range - based directly on these instead of tearing the whole thing up and starting from scratch as they always seem to. The Vintage Modern was a good idea in theory - but badly executed.

I say all this as the owner of a TSL122 combo by the way… it doesn't sound that bad, although I did modify it somewhat to fix the main fault it had by an alternative method. But it still isn't reliable, and has at least one other fault which needs to be looked at when I can get round to it. There's just so much wrong with the design of it.

GoldenEraGuitars

If Marshall spent more time looking at good amplifier production to back up their "made in the uk" badge they enjoy trading off rather than making headphones and gadgets they could yet have some classic amps left in them. As it stands, of their most recent models it's fair to say the jvm has stolen the show. Everything else recently hasn't been too great.

But wait... what about the Astoria range? Point to point hand made isn't it? 

As far as larger companies are concerned I'd obviously and naturally rate Mesa up there. We don't half pay for it in the uk though..

professorben

lonestar said:

If Gibson spent more time looking at good guitar production to back up their "made in the US" badge they enjoy trading off rather than making headphones and gadgets they could yet have some classic guitars left in them. 

FTFY

Ancient_Mariner

Marshall are trying to compete in a saturated market, trying to contain costs instead of building the best they can, and that's sadly reflected in the thread here. As an interesting aside, I visited the Marshall factory a couple of summers back, and when talking to the chap showing me round, he said that the exact same components went into the hand wired amps as the PCB based jobs. Consider me unimpressed.

To the OP, have you considered building your own amp from a kit? Have a look at www.ampmaker.com for British designed and made kits that are easy to build & with good instructions & support.

ICBM

Ancient_Mariner said:

As an interesting aside, I visited the Marshall factory a couple of summers back, and when talking to the chap showing me round, he said that the exact same components went into the hand wired amps as the PCB based jobs.

Not really true. A few are the same, most aren't. You've only got to look at the pics of the insides to see the difference.

Handwired Bluesbreaker:

http://i545.photobucket.com/albums/hh384/buckethead_311/Amp stuff/1962 Bluesbreaker_zpsjvjuiepr.jpg

Standard JTM45 reissue:

http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z84/ibanezking/jtm456.jpg

rawk100

lonestar said:

But wait... what about the Astoria range? Point to point hand made isn't it? 

I noticed today that Guitar Guitar are knocking out the Astoria range at nearly half price now, probably means they didnt sell as many as they thought they would.

ive had 5 different Marshalls over the years and the only one I had a reoccurring problem with was a JCM900 dual reverb.

clarkefan

rawk100 said:

lonestar said:

But wait... what about the Astoria range? Point to point hand made isn't it? 

I noticed today that Guitar Guitar are knocking out the Astoria range at nearly half price now, probably means they didnt sell as many as they thought they would.

Wow.  But sort of expected.  It isn't just in design that Marshall have problems,  their marketing people should be fired.  The minute the Astoria amps appeared the internet lit up with criticism. How could that happen?  How do you fuck that up?  It's like nobody in Marshall gives a fig about what users actually want from them.

Edit- I love Marshall, I've owned many types all my playing life, even a '69 PA head, I'll use my DSL head till it goes puff.

shaunm

Marshall can make brilliant amps. The JTM45, the JCM 800...... 

its a wonder that some brain at Marshall hasn't thought "why don't we do an amp that does both of those amps" 

surely that would sell?

clarkefan

That's the problem, they have people there getting paid to understand what people want who are not worth a shit.  And management listening to some MBA genius who doesn't understand shit about Marshall, just the beans.  And I say that as someone in finance.

They really really need to read and then get their expensive heads around the 6,000 plus posts in the Boss Katana thread over on TGP.

And listen to their fans.  Not rocket science.

ThePrettyDamned

I think Marshall will fix this. 

I know it's a long time coming, but the Internet is a powerful tool and surely by now they've seen what people want. 

A JTM45 ish channel and a jcm800 channel in one amp, with a good effects loop and a well built pcb with a good layout. That's what people want - it doesn't even need to be astonishingly amazing sounding, just ballpark those tones in a reliable package that looks right and they've got a absolute winner. 

I bet it'll arrive within the next couple of years. Hopefully. 

Telejester

If marshall made a jtm45 head with power scaling and an fx loop id be all over it.

Ancient_Mariner

ICBM said:

Ancient_Mariner said:

As an interesting aside, I visited the Marshall factory a couple of summers back, and when talking to the chap showing me round, he said that the exact same components went into the hand wired amps as the PCB based jobs.

Not really true. A few are the same, most aren't. You've only got to look at the pics of the insides to see the difference.

Handwired Bluesbreaker:

http://i545.photobucket.com/albums/hh384/buckethead_311/Amp stuff/1962 Bluesbreaker_zpsjvjuiepr.jpg

Standard JTM45 reissue:

http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z84/ibanezking/jtm456.jpg

As an amp builder myself, I did question the comment at the time, but he was quite adamant - the same components he said.

I can only imagine he meant the same values, which isn't the same thing at all. 

Monstronaut

rawk100 said:

lonestar said:

But wait... what about the Astoria range? Point to point hand made isn't it? 

I noticed today that Guitar Guitar are knocking out the Astoria range at nearly half price now, probably means they didnt sell as many as they thought they would.

ive had 5 different Marshalls over the years and the only one I had a reoccurring problem with was a JCM900 dual reverb.

They are brilliant though. I had my doubts about the Astorias but they do sound fantastic.

TTBZ

ThePrettyDamned said:

I think Marshall will fix this. 

I know it's a long time coming, but the Internet is a powerful tool and surely by now they've seen what people want. 

Yea, they're expanding the marketing/media departments a bit. I know cause I'll be working there in about a month I'll pass these comments on! Seems like everyone on forums been on about a good jcm800 channel switcher for ages.

martinw

TTBZ said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

I think Marshall will fix this. 

I know it's a long time coming, but the Internet is a powerful tool and surely by now they've seen what people want. 

Yea, they're expanding the marketing/media departments a bit. I know cause I'll be working there in about a month I'll pass these comments on! Seems like everyone on forums been on about a good jcm800 channel switcher for ages.

Good luck, but you'll probably find yourself working on phones, tea caddies, golf umbrellas and all sorts of other 'lifestyle' products.

If they made decent amps, they wouldn't need a media/marketing department. Well, not much of one. They get more free marketing than any other company in the world; every time someone thinks of a rock god on stage, he's in front of a 'wall of Marshalls'. It's in the language. We use 'Marshall-ish' as an adjective.