Marshall creates quite a stir with its exact 1988/1992 Classic Pedal Replica Reissues - Guv'nor, BluesBreaker, DriveMaster and ShredMaster

The very first pedal in this sequence was the Marshall Guv’nor - its take on its own legendary JCM800 amp - which pedal most famously went on to become the signature sound for virtuosos guitarist Gary Moore. There was then an approximate 4-year hiatus until a set of 3 pedals was issued in fairly short order. Some say the first of these arrived late 1991 - while 1992 properly captures them all.

Most notable was the BluesBreaker which launched a million other pedals - and ended up on John Mayer’s pedalboard relatively recently in the grand scale of things - and most famously probably. Then the DriveMaster which was largely just an update of the Guv’nor - which lost its FX Loop along the way. And then we had the ShredMaster - of non-specific origin - really just a super high gain Marshall Voiced Pedal for that time - most famously used by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood on the OK Computer album. For sake of easy placement I’m going to say that it’s roughly in JVM410 territory - which is Marshall’s Highest Gain amp - while certain modded and custom editions of the JCM800 and JCM900 get into similar territory too.

I’m little late with this article compared to most - and certainly compared to they guys at Pedal Pawn who first broke the story - via securing very early on and slightly fortuitous erroneous Thomann.de preorders. Marshall has denied for months that it was making these - but PP’s Chris and Paul were able to get their hands on the first of those pedals out there and spill the beans.

These are incredibly exacting part-for-part replicas of the original - made like those at the Marshall Milton Keynes Factory. They reached out to all the original parts suppliers to build those replicas - the only differences being that the manufactures of the Potentiometers and Footswitches had long since gone out of business - so Marshall had to source someone else to make those same exact parts to the original specifications. And everything looks pretty much identical to those originals - apart from the colour of the circuit board which is a slightly different green - possibly the original models’ PCB’s have just changed colour with age.

So the get essentially the exact same large format 90’s style pedals - which compared to most everything out there currently, can only be deemed to be somewhat cumbersome and clunky. This is prime example of Nostalgia Marketing - and really seems to have hit the spot - as so many are snapping these - up - often going for the full set of four.

They sound pretty much identical to the originals too - and since they’re exact replicas - they come with those one’s flaws too - most obviously on the underpowered BluesBreaker - which really needs to be run with both Gain and Volume Maxed out - but still doesn’t deliver enough to render at Unity levels. It did not have to be so - as Josh Scott owns one of the pre-production prototypes - the one which his now Morning Glory was based on - that one does not suffer from stunted / reduced output - but for some reason Marshall decided to launch a version what was slightly flawed, and that is the same version we’re getting again today in duplicate.

I’m actually not a fan of those builders who slavishly follow the original circuits designs exactly - with their weird powers requirements typically, and offten all too little output - several of my vintage style fuzzes are woefully underpowered.

Modern builds can exactly replicate and reproduce a circuit and overcome any inherent flaws of the original - while still delivering the same verve and dynamics. For a while I got sucked into this vortex and was thinking which of these I needed to get - and indeed should I get them all. Where the answer is of course a most probable ’no’.

The reissue BluesBreaker is essentially an over-sized flawed 3-knob clunker - where there already exist more capable iterations of that circuit. I have around 20 BluesBreaker inspired pedals at various sizes - and I thought It worthwhile reminiscing a while of where the BluesBreaker had evolved to over these 40 years. So in a strip at the top of the visual - we have the Analog.Man Prince of Tone, Bondi Del Mar II, Fredric FX Blue Monarch, Jackson Audio Golden Boy, JHS Morning Gllory, Snouse BlackBox, Tsakallis Six Maís, VFE Blues King, VS Audio Straight Flush, and Wampler Pantheon - which I would warrant out-play the original Marshall BluesBreaker.

At the base of the page I’ve listed some of my favourite Marshall JCM800 / JVM410 style pedals for the same purposes - The Boss JB-2 Angry Driver, Jackson Audio El Guapo / Asabi, JHS @ II, Menatone The King, MI FX Super Crunch Box II, Pettyjohn Gold II, REVV G4, Sinvertek N5 MGAT-1, Tsakalis Room #40, and ThoorpyFX The Bunker.

In fact you can cover all 4 Marshall Reissue pedals with just the Sinvertek N5 MGAT-1, if you wanted to be really precise - then the Sinvertek N5 MGAT-1 + the Snouse BlackBox Stage Pro Edition would give you ultimate coverage. And those two would pretty much take up the same space as just 1 of these 4.

For various reasons these Marshall Reissues are very much collector’s editions - and I feel that they won’t be on too many boards a few years from now - because of their lesser practicalities!

I still love that they been so lovingly and carefully made - while a big part of me kind of things of these as ’museeum’ pieces. I may change my mind - as these really do sound very good, but I have over 50 Marshall style pedals already and most of those sound really amazing too - with more range and granularity typically - and in a usually much more compact and pedalboard-friendly format.

Being made in the original Marshall factory with original parts - means that the £169 asking price per pedal is incredibly reasonable. The Marshall stand at the recent Birmingham Guitar Show was doing really brisk business - and it looks like all those pedals that went into UK dealers as part of the first batch are already mostly sold out! Longer term yo should find it relatively easy to get hold of one of these as Marshall is so widely distributed around the world - near enough every other dealer will have some of these eventually!

These will probably be made for another 4 years or so - before being discontinued once more. You certainly should have a fairly lengthy window to get one or all even - if you’re still interested.

Me personally - give me my Sinvertek N5 MGAT-1 and Snouse White and Gold BlackBox Stage Pro any time in preference to the reissue quartet! I’m still very happy that the Marshall Reissues are back around again - they’re just not essential for me - I really don’t need them!

Most of my pedal friends have bought at least one of these, or are intending to - so Marshall is going to do particularly well out of this. Funnily for me - this is another example of Marshall being stuck in the past - and having more innovative manufacturers - like Friedman say - beat it at its own game. Often when Marshall tries to be innovative and contemporary it cuts the wrong corners and ends up with something that just doesn’t match up to its legendary classics - so it will probably continue to mine those old circuits as long as it lives! I totally understand why these reissues were done and in this fashion - the Guitar Industry really has a peculiar fixation on Nostalgia and Heritage - where a lot of those designs are actually deeply unergonomic and flawed!

I would love to hear your views on the subject and to know which of these reissue you acquired!

Below I will start with the JHS video from a couple of years back - which is a great starting point, then the Pedal Pawn reveals - and them some of the later demos :