Worrying

ElectricXII

menamestom said:

If I wanted a decent Marshall amp i think the last company I'd get it from is Marshall themselves.  There are many better options for well built classic Marshall tone.

I would agree if you're talking about DSLs, TSLs and many of the modern, complicated, built to a low budget products, which are full of overlapping PCBs with multiple quick connects. However their Made in England classics, like the JTM45, 1987, etc, are still pretty decent, well-built and simple to maintain. 

For the particular Marshall tone it provides, my 1962 Bluesbreaker can hold its own against any modern version.

ecc83

Fiddlesticks_ said:

ecc83 said:

Regarding valves and their almost certain ultimate demise? Anyone with a valve amp they REALLY love should now be stocking up on bottles. If you are in your 50s now say, two sets of GOOD output valves and pre amp valves should 'see you out'! Maybe if your amp is fussy/hard on PI valves triple up on those.

What is likely to become an even rarer commodity are good techs that 'know' valve gear. Any 16 yr olds looking in who put their phones down long enough to learn?

One thing is for dead bang sure, valves will never get cheaper they could in fact be a better investment than Gold! Even left in a cold damp shed they do not degrade.

Dave.

I really hope this is hyperbolic - I’m 31 and can’t afford to stock up on enough valves 

Sorry but no, IMHO valves will be at least double their present price in ten years and keep on going. Much depends on Russia I guess? If Putin dies and Russia becomes civilized and the world trades with them again valve prices will slow a bit but never stand still.

You can surely afford a couple of ECC83s and a pair of EL34s  say for Christmas? Just steadily build a stock. They eat FA!

Dave.

Fiddlesticks_

ecc83 said:

Fiddlesticks_ said:

ecc83 said:

Regarding valves and their almost certain ultimate demise? Anyone with a valve amp they REALLY love should now be stocking up on bottles. If you are in your 50s now say, two sets of GOOD output valves and pre amp valves should 'see you out'! Maybe if your amp is fussy/hard on PI valves triple up on those.

What is likely to become an even rarer commodity are good techs that 'know' valve gear. Any 16 yr olds looking in who put their phones down long enough to learn?

One thing is for dead bang sure, valves will never get cheaper they could in fact be a better investment than Gold! Even left in a cold damp shed they do not degrade.

Dave.

I really hope this is hyperbolic - I’m 31 and can’t afford to stock up on enough valves 

You can surely afford a couple of ECC83s and a pair of EL34s  say for Christmas? Just steadily build a stock. They eat FA!

Dave.

Yeah tbh I was probably being a bit hyperbolic myself in saying that - I worried for a second that it would be time critical and I’d need to buy a shit load immediately 

ICBM

ryanverbena said:

I just read that Marshall make only 5% of their revenue from selling amps. They almost exclusively make money from selling their home Bluetooth speakers (70%) and headphones (25%).

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/marshall-group-amp-revenues

I wonder if that’s turnover or profit… ‘revenue’ implies turnover, but it might not be - it wouldn’t surprise me if the profit margin on the home audio stuff was a lot higher than on the guitar amps.

snowblind

The new swedish owners can just license the Marshall name to whoever they feel like. A bit like the Trump brand.
Only maybe successful.

gordiji

Fingers657 said:

It will be interesting to see where Marshall is in five years time now they are Swedish.

Good job they weren't bought up by Finland...... i'll get my coat

paulmapp8306

I had no idea Marshall even made headphones or home bluetooth speakers.  I certainly wouldnt be looking at them as a brand if thats what I was looking for.

To be honest, I dont look at Marshall when Im, looking for guitar amps either personally though.  

fretmeister

JCM800 is still my favourite amp ever.

Maybe I should find a good one and get a stack of valves for it as well.

Musical_Mystery_Tour

If they made one percent of their revenue from their amps, or even if they made nothing from them at all, it is and would still be a big part of their image as an iconic brand for music-making, and would therefore remain a worthwhile loss-leader for them. Valves and other spares would be an obvious example of where you have to keep coming back for more.

There are tons of companies which sell products as loss leaders for their other products, the most obvious example being printers, another being wood at DIY stores, which makes you then need to buy glue, nails, screws, hinges, handles, sandpaper and so on, usually at quite a high mark up.

I bet that Gibson Garage in the Smoke wil make more money from baseball caps and t-shirts than it will from guitars.

ecc83

fretmeister said:

JCM800 is still my favourite amp ever.

Maybe I should find a good one and get a stack of valves for it as well.

Not a bad idea. I don't know if you are up to biasing your amps Frets but it is something any practical person can learn to do safely IF the amp has a 1 Ohm 'sense' resistor in the cathode circuit. I don't know if the JCM800 is so equipped but it would be money well spent with a tech IMHO then you would be sorted at least until you got as feeble as me!

A schematic I found shows no sense resistor but other marks might have one.

Dave.

fretmeister

Musical_Mystery_Tour said:

If they made one percent of their revenue from their amps, or even if they made nothing from them at all, it is and would still be a big part of their image as an iconic brand for music-making, and would therefore remain a worthwhile loss-leader for them.

There are tons of companies which sell products as loss leaders for their other products, the most obvious example being printers, another being wood at DIY stores, which makes you then need to buy glue, nails, screws, hinges, handles, sandpaper and so on, usually at quite a high mark up.

Shush you - I want to show this thread to my wife!

Dave_Mc

fretmeister said:

Dave_Mc said:

Being serious for a second (against my better judgment, obviously  ), presumably if amps ceased to be profitable for them, it wouldn't be that hard for them to sell the Marshall name to let other people make Marshalls under licence? Presumably there'd be plenty of takers for that, though I could be wrong.

That company that actually makes all the Friedmans and Soldanos etc in the USA?
They'd be mad not to take it, if available.

Yeah someone like that. You would imagine it would be very lucrative, assuming they've already figured out a way to make valve amps profitably.

Bod said:

Dave_Mc said:

Fiddlesticks_ said:

Fingers657 said:

It will be interesting to see where Marshall is in five years time now they are Swedish.

The amps and cabs will come in flat pack

That was a much better joke than mine 

Yours took more effort in terms of keyboard gymnastics.

LOL I had awful bother even getting the thing to enter... it kept trying to correct it to "Marshall"!

Eventually I got it... I had to copy and paste the two diacritics and then put in the "regular" letters in-between to defeat the predictive auto-correction.

It was definitely worth it. Would do again.

Fiddlesticks_ said:

Dave_Mc said:

Fiddlesticks_ said:

Fingers657 said:

It will be interesting to see where Marshall is in five years time now they are Swedish.

The amps and cabs will come in flat pack

That was a much better joke than mine 

You laid the groundwork and that shouldn’t be under appreciated 

LOL thanks