Finally, a Marshall Astoria plugged in and working ;-)

TimmyO

I was beginning to think they were just for decoration (seen them at shows but not demo'd) - now there's an Andertons demo of 2 of the range.

The Captain and Strat made them sound lovely. Chappers made them sound like an amp being played by Chappers. 

Is it just me or do they sound a bit fuzzy/farty with the Les Paul ? 

jeztone2

Yeah, I don't want to be negative. But I'd sooner have less technical ability & get better tone than the other way around. Whereas Lee Anderton actually sounds great with that Strat.

Fortheloveofguitar

Overall the amp tone doesn't amount to much.

Pretty poor to be honest and for a lot of money

rhinofeet

Some of the recent Chicago music exchange vids use the Astoria, sounds pretty good on them.

Lodious

rhinofeet said:

Some of the recent Chicago music exchange vids use the Astoria, sounds pretty good on them.

Agreed....Joel makes them sound really nice on this video. The Chappers tone in the Andertons video does not do the amp any favors. 

TheBigDipper

I saw Bernie Marsden play one on the demo stage at Mansons Guitar show in  Exeter last November. Just him, a Les Paul and the amp. Sounded pretty good to me, within the blues/rock spectrum of things. But there's lots of choice in that area, isn't there? 

timmysoft

I think they sound decent, can't wait to try one for myself though!

TimmyO

They are so bloody expensive. I notice there was not even the briefest mention of price on the Andertons demo 

hugbot

I'm not sure i understand the point of making a new design, but insisting on handwired, point to point blah be blah. I mean if I can understand handwired versions of your stuff for purests who want that, but not launching a new amp line thats all HW.

Its about the same price as a mesa boogie but a boogie is extremely full featured compared to this stripped down design. Only one of the line has 2 channels.

monquixote

Perfect example of tone in the fingers.

They both played both guitars and both amps and captain sounded loads better in every configuration.

Chapters makes everything sound like reverb soaked mud.

Cabicular

Quite interesting to read this thread in parallel with the Marshall Code one
It seems they aren't addressing either market particularly well ?

ICBM

All they need to do is make amps that look and sound like the well-loved classics, possibly with a few modern features, with decent build quality and sensible prices, and they're home and dry. Fender do exactly that, Orange do it, Vox do it, why don't Marshall?

Marshall always seem to want to reinvent the wheel, and end up putting a vast amount of R&D into things that just miss the mark in one way or another (or several).

hugbot

To be fair thats why they've been claiming to do with every amp interation. 800, 900, 2000, JVM- "it gets the classic sounds but with modern features!". The JVM even had a big marketing speil about how the power section is based off the 800. Plus the reissues exist.

Evildurka

TheBigDipper;1089488" said:

I saw Bernie Marsden play one on the demo stage at Mansons Guitar show in  Exeter last November. Just him, a Les Paul and the amp. Sounded pretty good to me, within the blues/rock spectrum of things. But there's lots of choice in that area, isn't there? 

I saw Bernie doing a demo a Richtone music using his favoured PRS and it sounded epic. But it's Bernie marsden and a PRS so it's going to sound epic either way. He liked the custom best the red one and from what I have seen it is my favourite too.

ICBM

hugbot said:

To be fair thats why they've been claiming to do with every amp interation. 800, 900, 2000, JVM- "it gets the classic sounds but with modern features!". The JVM even had a big marketing speil about how the power section is based off the 800.

Claiming, yes. Also failing...

The JVM wasn't based on the 800 until Joe Satriani showed them how to do it right and they remembered that an 800 has a choke in the power supply.

What they need is to actually do it instead of just saying they have.

hugbot said:

Plus the reissues exist.

True, and these are the best amps they make. But they're too limited in terms of features for a lot of players.

What they never seem to be able to do is just to add the features without redesigning the whole amp and making it crap. (Honourable exception to fitting the 2203x with an FX loop.)

TimmyO

I can't get over the fact they are 2 grand a pop (or thereabouts)

timmysoft

What do people want?
If you want a vintage Marshall then there's plenty out there, loads of plexis, 800's, JMP's etc. I say fair play to Marshall for trying new products. I don't want a new version of an 800, if I want an 800 I will just buy an 800. I personally really like the cosmetics of the astoria range, I like the features and I don't think the price is that extreme, there are blackstar amps that cost £1200+ and they have no heritage and sound like dogshit.

It seems like you all want new Marshall models but what you actually want are the ones they already made.

earwighoney

Marshall should appoint ICBM to oversee their operations.... I agree with his observations in the post above. 

I really can't help but feel Marshall's line is too bloated with too many different options.  Like Gibson and Fender with a million different Strats and Les Pauls. 

RiftAmps

I've been thinking about the Astoria line for a while now, if I'm honest I didn't really understand it.

My problems with the Astoria line were:

A) Why can't you have the Green one in a Red box, or the Blue one in a Green box? Even better, can I order one in White with Basketweave cloth?

Why the hell are they so bloody expensive?

C) Who are they aimed at? Where are these customers who want this amp? I've never been asked to build an amp to those specs. Are they making things up as they go along? Whatever happened to proper market research?!


The answer to all three questions is the same.

It's entirely aimed at the USA market.

Read into that what you will.

ICBM

timmysoft said:

What do people want?
If you want a vintage Marshall then there's plenty out there, loads of plexis, 800's, JMP's etc. I say fair play to Marshall for trying new products. I don't want a new version of an 800, if I want an 800 I will just buy an 800. I personally really like the cosmetics of the astoria range, I like the features and I don't think the price is that extreme, there are blackstar amps that cost £1200+ and they have no heritage and sound like dogshit.

It seems like you all want new Marshall models but what you actually want are the ones they already made.

No - I want the best things about the ones they've already made, in one box.

eg - an 18W combo that looks like an 18W combo and sounds basically like an 18W combo but has one channel, a TMB tone stack and a master volume (or power scaling). And a bigger version which is the same thing in a Bluesbreaker cabinet.

Or - a two-channel amp where channel one is an exact Plexi circuit and channel two is an exact 2203 circuit, with an FX loop and possibly reverb (digital, since their spring reverbs have always been crap).

Or make up your own combinations.

That's the exact reason I use a Mesa Trem-o-verb - because it's precisely the amp I wanted Marshall to make, but never have. (I use it basically like a Plexi and a 2203.)

But what I don't want is any amp they've ever made since the 2203, because every single one has been a different circuit, more complex, with worse build quality and reliability, and a thinner, buzzier sound.

The Class 5 was a disaster because it looked nice (apart from the inexplicably cheap-and-nasty handle) but was poorly made, rattled, and sounded poor because the circuit was nothing like a classic Marshall at all.

The Vintage Modern wasn't terrible-sounding (at least when it was cranked up - it wasn't good at low volume), but was let down by poor build quality, badly-implemented reverb, FX loop and switching, and the purple styling put some people off. Even just a standard red panel light would have been better.

The MA and Haze series just sounded shit and were poorly made. etc etc

The little 1W amps are a possible way forward - but they need to sort out the pricing. Over £500 for them initially was so laughable that they took more than two years to finally get rid of the last of the "limited edition" runs they made. And the combo versions in particular didn't look quite right either.

Whoever has styled the bluetooth hi-fi speakers they've done has got it right though. Imagine if they made a 1W valve guitar combo that looked like the Acton and sold for a couple of hundred quid, just like a Blackstar HT-1 does...

jdbwales

James Dean Bradfield's been using these in conjunction with his usual Mesa Lone Star on the latest tour, sounds great to me. He runs his through a Greenback loaded 4x12 though, and blends in the LS.
Regarding the above demo, it's the usual unlistenable Andertons template - like others have said, Lee Anderton sounds great and Chappers maintains his unblemished record of making every single bit of expensive gear sound like fizzy, farty rubbish...