Are Marshall amps poor quality

Collings

No. Jim's only real contribution - although it is a big one! - was the design of the angled 4x12" cabinet. He was a woodworker, not an electronics technician, and knew nothing about the circuitry - Ken Bran, Dudley Craven and later many others were employed to do that… although it's debatable how much they knew either, since all their good designs were basically copied from other companies with some changes which tend to imply a lot of it was luck!

I thought the first designs were in effect copied from Fender which in turn were just based on the valve manufacture's data sheets.

ICBM

Collings said:

I thought the first designs were in effect copied from Fender which in turn were just based on the valve manufacture's data sheets.

It's a bit more complicated - Fender's first (late 40s-early 50s) designs were taken from the RCA and Westinghouse manuals, but by the late 50s they had evolved heavily and become more or less original, including the 5F6-A Bassman.

Marshall then copied the 5F6-A circuit *exactly*, but they made a critical change - because they couldn't spec their own transformers, they bought what was available off the shelf… the OT was for a 16-ohm output rather than the Bassman's 2-ohm. This matters because the negative feedback is driven from the speaker tap, so as a result the JTM45 has over three times the NFB (square root of 16/2)… and is why I think they didn't really know what they were doing, because someone who did would have changed the NFB resistor value to give the same NFB ratio! So the crunchier, more solid overdrive tone of the Marshall is a happy accident really - as well as being added to by using 12" Celestions in a closed cabinet rather than 10" Jensens in an open one.

The next thing they did was to add tremolo to it and make the Bluesbreaker, but it's a very crude circuit really and doesn't work anywhere near as well as the classic Fender tremolo.

Then the 100-watters, which are just doubled-up JTM45s really - and the 50s which are just slightly evolved ones with EL34s and then solid-state rectifiers, nothing that different circuit-wise, although they were beginning to sound different.

They also copied the Watkins Dominator to make their 18-watter, increasing the voltages and using better speakers so again it sounds crunchier and more powerful.

But their first original design was the 200W 'Pig'. This was not a success…

ThePrettyDamned

Danny1969 said:

I still have a lot of time for Marshall, it's always been my sound mostly and I admire the man and the legend he built. 
The trouble is building anything in this country is expensive, a recent tour round the factory was great but I could see straight away the huge overheads it has and the relatively small output for the size of the square footage. It makes you wonder how much longer the MK factory will be there for before all manufacturing is moved east 

I don't understand the bad designs though .... even on the tiny scale I made and sell things if something breaks you learn from it and change it so it doesn't happen again. 

Maybe part of the problem is the modern way we design things ....... building the circuit in software and running the Spice simulation ..... does that sim really take in account things like HT volts  bleeding through the PCB ...... leg'ed through hole components that would normally be fine failing because they are getting hot AND vibrating for hours on top of a 4 x 12" speaker .....  I don't know I've only ever built relitivilty low (3v to 80V ish ) circuits  ?

It isn't just Marshall though, I see shit designs every day on my bench repairing things. Holbart dishwasher PCB's using cheap relays to switch rinse and drain pumps when it would be far more reliable to do it via Triacs. Samsung phones using a 29p micro USB port on a £400 phone ... which "no shit sherlock" breaks ... and oh yeah now I gotta remove the poxy screen with hot air to replace it.
Behringer products with the worlds worse SMPS units blowing up....Asus laptop DC sockets always breaking in the same place because one part can move and the other can't.
 Fender HRD resistors desoldering themselves from the PCB ... Ashdown pots constantly crackling and failing ... where do those guys buy their pots from ? Presonus using a 30p consumer firewire port designed for infrequent use on a professional mixing desks designed for constant use ... they put 2 of em on there to give you some chance but of course both break cos both are equally shit.
 Mackie SRM sub volume controls snapping off because the design guy made the knob  long enough to protrude past the cabinet recess!  Roland SPD sampling pads false triggering because the ribbon cables are sandwiched between the earthed chassis and the pads on something the designers KNEW was going to be hit constantly !! 

I have taken hundreds of photo's of stuff on my bench being repaired over the years, I don't know why but they may come in use to someone else at some point

Bean counters. That, or they weigh up odds - if a cheap, shitty part breaks on 5 percent of the sales before warranty expires, does it make enough money back to be more profit than speccing everything up and having 1 percent break?

andyp

Big discount on the Astorias right now...

http://www.guitarguitar.co.uk/electric_amps_detail.asp?stock=15051811361216

At the same time, this landed on my YouTube feed...

professorben

Haych said:

monquixote said:

Reverend said:

monquixote said:

I think if they did do a modern jcm 800 a lot of people would be disappointed as people are used to amps having much more gain.

Also for those people who want a well made inexpensive jtm 45 with power scaling then it exists and is made by fender as the bass breaker 45

They are used to more gain, but the 800 and an EQ is all you really need for heavy music. I've seen so many bands use far too much gain over the years. 

Totally agree 

Loads of modern amps have lead channels that have more gain than you'd use for a metal sound by half way up the dial.

Haha!  All of this ^ is so true.  A buddy of mine bought the EVH LBX mini head which has two channels: ludicrous gain and uber ludicrous gain.  He loves it, I quite liked it on channel one at about 10 o'clock on the gain dial.  How much gain do you actually need anyway?!

More, always more.

im worried people might hear the notes.

Cirrus

I have to be honest, and I feel quite dirty for admitting it... I really like the looks of the heads in the Astoria range. And the demos intrigue me, I think the cleans and edge-of-breakup tones sound really good. Distortion sounds nice in some vids and bad in others.

Definitely would like to play through one to form my own opinion. In fact, I'd really like to hear the 2-channel blue head through something that isn't an open back 1x12 - wonder what it'd sound like through a closed back decent sized cab...

Sassafras

Yes, I don't mind the looks of the heads but those cabs are hideous. In fact I can't think of an uglier cab design off the top of my head.
FWIW the only Marshall I've ever been impressed by was an old Bluesbreaker.
Never been able to get a clean sound I liked from any other Marshall.

gibsongretschfan

I always thought that the JMP-1 (minus the crap power button cover that always flew off) and 50/50 or 100/100 power amps were constructed well

Teetonetal

ICBM said:

Collings said:

I thought the first designs were in effect copied from Fender which in turn were just based on the valve manufacture's data sheets.

It's a bit more complicated - Fender's first (late 40s-early 50s) designs were taken from the RCA and Westinghouse manuals, but by the late 50s they had evolved heavily and become more or less original, including the 5F6-A Bassman.

Marshall then copied the 5F6-A circuit *exactly*, but they made a critical change - because they couldn't spec their own transformers, they bought what was available off the shelf… the OT was for a 16-ohm output rather than the Bassman's 2-ohm. This matters because the negative feedback is driven from the speaker tap, so as a result the JTM45 has over three times the NFB (square root of 16/2)… and is why I think they didn't really know what they were doing, because someone who did would have changed the NFB resistor value to give the same NFB ratio! So the crunchier, more solid overdrive tone of the Marshall is a happy accident really - as well as being added to by using 12" Celestions in a closed cabinet rather than 10" Jensens in an open one.

The next thing they did was to add tremolo to it and make the Bluesbreaker, but it's a very crude circuit really and doesn't work anywhere near as well as the classic Fender tremolo.

Then the 100-watters, which are just doubled-up JTM45s really - and the 50s which are just slightly evolved ones with EL34s and then solid-state rectifiers, nothing that different circuit-wise, although they were beginning to sound different.

They also copied the Watkins Dominator to make their 18-watter, increasing the voltages and using better speakers so again it sounds crunchier and more powerful.

But their first original design was the 200W 'Pig'. This was not a success…

So basically the problem with marshall is that the never have designed and built a really good amp from the ground up?

jeztone2

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.

Ask them why they don't do a mark 1 Guv'nor reissue in a new compact box with a better footswitch? It's insane how they've basically surrendered market share to other pedal makers. Could you imagine Ibanez refusing to reissue the Tubescreamer???

digitalscream

monquixote said:

Reverend said:

monquixote said:

I think if they did do a modern jcm 800 a lot of people would be disappointed as people are used to amps having much more gain.

Also for those people who want a well made inexpensive jtm 45 with power scaling then it exists and is made by fender as the bass breaker 45

They are used to more gain, but the 800 and an EQ is all you really need for heavy music. I've seen so many bands use far too much gain over the years. 

Totally agree 

Loads of modern amps have lead channels that have more gain than you'd use for a metal sound by half way up the dial.

What's wrong with that? I use ludicrous amounts of gain on my lead sound, so that it's just on the edge of all hell breaking loose. Much more fun to play like that