Marshall's new Chinese ownership

I'm simultaneously encouraged and saddened by the idea that young people won't know what the amp on a room feel is.

On one hand: plugging straight in is something that's been done for a long while now. The Beatles "Revolution". All of NIN's "The Downward Spiral" (Run through one of Trent's synth's LPF).

There's pros and cons. Pros...well, it's easier to maintain a stage mix when you don't have a goddamned 100 watt monstrosity behind the guitar player. Except that live music is kind of going the way of the dodo.

DSP opens all kinds of worlds for manipulating guitar sounds too. Especially with the horsepower available today. Great for folks who want to get crazy with their shit.

But also, I'm an aging metalhead that wants to headbang and throw the horns and feel each palm mute, and PAs can be quite good at such things so long as the person doing the mixing knows what they're doing. Which, for metal, most of them don't.

But then again, live music is dying. So who cares?

Maybe folks that don't care to fuss with hooking a modeler to a PA to jam with a drummer, but drummers are dying. Cause, ya know, spinal tap.

Then again, the earth is dying as well. And I can't think of a better genre for our descent than metal. So come on folks, let's make some zombies. Zombie metal. Err, arg, it's OK. You can't really tell what the lyrics are anyways
 
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spi said:
One thing I find interesting is that we all know Marshall because of their amps, but their amp sales are miniscule compared to headphones and speakers.

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What FY is this info from? Zound's goal was to pivot into a "lifestyle" brand so of its from the last 2 years, yeah, that tracks. Judging by the currency, I'm guessing this data is recent. I think amps were ~5% revenue for them in 2023.
fontoponto said:
. Was Marshall on the brink of shutting down? There you have it. Let it die or sell it and let it die later in a different way.
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I'm not sure how well they exited covid but after a down year in 14, they had several years of positive.
Oddly enough, they announced the new modified series of amps concurrent to zound's announcement of the sale.
 
As someone who has grown up with "the Marshall sound" as part of the backdrop to my life it's sad to see what Marshall has become. Part of what I love about the Pretenders' first album is that 1979 Marshall sound that James Honeyman Scott used, for example. Or the incredible sound of Clapton's guitar on the Bluesbreakers album - and I'm no Clapton fan. But what a sound! There are plenty of obvious examples of wonderful Marshall sounds, produced by hot glowing tubes in black plywood boxes. Often not a pretty sound, but an exciting, powerful sound. And one of my favourite amps to work on is a late '60s Marshall.

Current Marshall amps are pathetic. I have no problems with modern construction techniques - a good PCB is fine by me. But the cost cutting at Marshall has made their amps sound more like a buzzing insect than a force of nature. Obviously there is little call for a 100W Super Lead anymore but build quality could be 100 times better.

The only Marshall I have now is a fridge. And even though it's cool it's not cold enough! It was a present from my wife. I keep my beer in it and it's only just cold enough. I would prefer a little colder.
 
I figured it was that Jim died in 2012 and his kids have been looking to ease into retirement ever since. I would think that the branch off into headphones and Bluetooth speakers was just part of that plan.
 
manfesto said:
One thing I can actually see them doing is licensing out their branding to the modeler companies to make some cash, doing like an "official" Marshall amp model pack. Ampeg's got a few official models in the Helix, Mesa's done it with ToneX, etc. Probably a relatively cheap way to keep your name familiar to the next generation of players who might one day grow up to be the sort of well-heeled blues-lawyers who'll buy a hand-wired tube amp from the boutique line you keep making as an aspirational "halo" product.
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Not quite the same thing since it's not useable on a modeller, but Softube has an officially licensed Marshall amp sim pack.
 
I blame Guitar Center for this. They all but wrecked Marshall when they couldn't pay their bills.
 
I don’t think live music is dying? I have been at more shows in the last 5 years than in my teens. And there are more that I couldn’t go see! But maybe I am an exception.
 
giovanni said:
I don’t think live music is dying? I have been at more shows in the last 5 years than in my teens. And there are more that I couldn’t go see! But maybe I am an exception.
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Maybe not dying but I feel there's a shift away from small DIY gigs/bookers. I mostly go to metal and hardcore shows and I'm seeing less and less gigs with local bands as support, and more and more set-in-stone tour packages of already accomplished acts, some with ticket prices that 10 years ago I would have laughed at but are just the norm now. There's still small time bookers that help keep the underground alive, but most of those seem to be purely passion projects without much hope of ever sustaining themselves monetarily.
 
jwin615 said:
What FY is this info from?
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That was from 2023. Even weirder, their 2022 year declared 0 income from amps. Which makes we wonder what kind of accounting is happening--did they just write their amp business off as a loss that year?

This is the link

Also, when I look at their 2022 pdf flyer to see more info, I notice the word "guitar" only appears once. In 2023 it appears 22 times.

The word ampifier appears only 4 times in 2022, and only in the context of history (never mentioned as a product). In 2023, it appears 37 times.

Sometime after 2022 they remembered they built guitar amps.
 
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lowpitch said:
Maybe not dying but I feel there's a shift away from small DIY gigs/bookers. I mostly go to metal and hardcore shows and I'm seeing less and less gigs with local bands as support, and more and more set-in-stone tour packages of already accomplished acts, some with ticket prices that 10 years ago I would have laughed at but are just the norm now. There's still small time bookers that help keep the underground alive, but most of those seem to be purely passion projects without much hope of ever sustaining themselves monetarily.
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The real estate market and it's speculators have done a number on smaller DIY spaces. When I was a teen and into my early 20s there was a decent supply of old shithole venues that small touring bands could play and have locals open for them. The spaces I loved going to have shut down. Theres still other clubs and theaters that the larger touring acts used, but live nation /clear channel along with ticket master have really screwed that market too.
 
Speaking of live music:

Man, there were a ton of bands that got their start in my neck of the wood.

The Cactus club, the Pound SF, little venues scattered around the SF Bay Area have all closed one by one. My old bands used to be able to book little shows at a venue in Campbell called "The Gaslighter" fairly easily. Hell, I even arranged a full show at that venue for all the different bands at my High School.

I, ah, may have also played in three of them. One out of distress, because of some drama where two of the bands shared a drummer and the vocalist of the more successful of the two forbade the drummer from playing with his other band at that show. High school bullshit. I'm a shit drummer, but I got them through the set. Pop punk, not the most difficult stuff to keep pace with. That dude was a bit of a pill. I wonder if he's still alive.

Back in my 20s I played bass in a metal band that...for once...was actually pretty damn good. But by that time we only had a handful of places to play. One in San Jose folded shortly after it opened. I'm pretty sure 9 Lives took over the Gilroy Gaslighter...that was a fantastic little spot. But it also ended up folding.

The third burnt down. The Long house. So it goes.

It's been...well...it's the result of constant attrition. Municipalities don't much care for small venue spaces on account of noise and the disreputable reputations of those who congregate there. People don't tend to go to see local bands much either, partially because they're all absolutely enslaved to ridiculous work hours, partially because...ah...a lot of the bands were just *bad*.

The only folks it seems like who have the money and time to actually engage with music typically are A) those with boundless energy, B) the extremely wealthy, and/or C) The very young...though thats becoming less and less of a thing.

I did a lot of good shows. Played the Ace of Spades in Sacramento once. That was a thrill. I've known guys that played venues like that a whole bunch...but they tend to be older than I.

I get the impression that a lot of musicians ended up doing what I did: they quit, because their jobs demanded too much of them to be able to keep the dream alive.

Not "the dream" as in, like, becoming successful and famous, but "the dream" as having a relatively successful hobby where you could play shows every now and then. Even doing a cover band these days...it's hard to get gigs.

I know one guy, the drummer from my old metal band, who still goes at it. He's part of group A, and is phenomenally talented. Anything approaching a local metal scene is pretty...well...there's just not much of it anymore.

Most folks are doing the record at home thing. That's led to some fantastic artists coming into the world, but with all the people making all the music on all the SoundCloud accounts...fuck, man, it ain't easy to wade through all that.

Art exists in conversation with it's world. Nowadays, for musicians, it's hard to get your art heard, to get feedback from the world. It turns music into a one-way exchange...where art is something you do AT the world, as though screaming into an empty void, with nary as much as a soft echo in response.

It's alienating. It's depressing. So most of us just, kinda, go back to our lives as workers while tech CEOs dream of a world where they build an AI model that displaces all the annoying humans that go about making art and thus capture that particular market for themselves.

Which is, to me, a really...really funny thought. Mostly because people like Bezos famously don't actually like music and can't comprehend why some people *do*. So, you know, it's a bit like asking a blind man to paint the something representational that will achieve the cultural awareness of the Mona Lisa, but also fuck you, I grew all the money, and in 30 seconds please.

I also have a fairly bleak, dystopian view of the world and how things are going in the USA, of course. So that may color my perceptions. I've still been able to hit shows for lesser-known but still fairly successful bands in the last few years, but I find that, increasingly, my country isn't producing many of those.
 
giovanni said:
I don’t think live music is dying? I have been at more shows in the last 5 years than in my teens. And there are more that I couldn’t go see! But maybe I am an exception.
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are you referring to shows for legacy bands, or shows where musicians don't actually make any money?

Stickman393 said:
Art exists in conversation with it's world. Nowadays, for musicians, it's hard to get your art heard, to get feedback from the world. It turns music into a one-way exchange...where art is something you do AT the world, as though screaming into an empty void, with nary as much as a soft echo in response.

It's alienating. It's depressing.
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very well put.
this entire thing has been/was/sorta still is quite an existential problem for me, im sure it's not unique.

having said that, i was very fortunate to be invited to play for a local metalcore band that was just starting out a couple years ago, which was quite shocking to be honest (there's fuck all original bands out here with musicians that aren't in their 20s ......im 37 - i'd basically given up...)

it made a huge difference and gave me something to actually work towards, a real and tangible goal, as opposed to aimlessly/pointlessly writing riffs for no one with no direction or purpose. yep -alienating is the perfect word for that feeling.

the immense satisfaction when i was able to actually use my stupid homebuilt gear in a rehearsal/jam setting, let a lone on a stage, holy crap.
 
DJ

There. I said it.

That's what killed live music.

Cheaper to hire a record-player player than a full band.

Gen-pop's tastes changed, and ...


Which came first, the shitty drugs or the shitty "music"?





Then along came Covid to fuck over whatever was left of live music.
 
Feral Feline said:
DJ

There. I said it.

That's what killed live music.

Cheaper to hire a record-player player than a full band.

Gen-pop's tastes changed, and ...


Which came first, the shitty drugs or the shitty "music"?





Then along came Covid to fuck over whatever was left of live music.
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Techno and house clubs are dying as well here in Germany. I think the younger people just aren't as outgoing anymore, especially after covid.
 
JTEX said:
Unpopular opinion: guitar amps (at least the big, chunky ones) are slowly going the way of the Dodo bird, with silent stages, in-ears, modelers and all that. There's no serious money to be made anymore, so the previous owners just bailed out.
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I would probably say "cashed out" instead of "bailed out" but I agree with the post.
 
Things change and evolve.

Used to be small- to medium-sized "BIG-bands" roaming the countryside — then that new fangled thingamajiggywatchamacallit ... recordings could be played at home or in an establishment, a Public House... but it wasn't real music, it was aptly-named phonygraphs. Suddenly the sheet-music publishing companies were dropping like flies after an air-Raid, bands folded, people stopped playing at home and at their local harvest hootenany... all replaced by that evil scourge, the phonygraphic-wreckording-discus.


Everything has its Zenith.
Neanderthals.
The Mesopotamians.
The Roman Empire and the Qin/Han Empire more or less concurrent, though the Romans lasted a wee bit longer IIRC.
Only time will tell if Marshall's time is over, or whether it'll reach a new Zenith.

BYOC hit its zenith.
RockabillyBass.com reached its zenith and got bought out and killed by a DB company. I then moved to TalkBass, and while TB is still going strong, I reached my zenith with it as the Banned-Hammer was coming down over there for a while indiscriminately, which left a bad vibe and taste to the "place".

PPCB forumites are awesome; I hope that the forum is nowhere near reaching its zenith yet and that we have a long time before seeing its denouement. I like this place and the people within it, but if it gets more popular, more people will come, moderators might then be needed...


Maybe China is entering a new zenith, and will take Marshall with it, onwards to new heights.

GRIZZ & LEMMINGS GUITAR & MIC.jpeg
 
new frontiers in land and technology drive innovation, until there is enough competition to drive regulation to the point of saturation, and that usually pushes more demand for innovation. or something like that.
 
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