A Review By Helena Alexandria (Marketing Manager at My Guitar Lessons)
My Guitar Lessons along with a selection of our tutors and their students were invited to a tour of the famous headquarters of Marshall Amps in Bletchley, Milton Keynes.
Now I must admit that I know very little about amplifiers. I know what they generally look like, you plug a guitar in them and now everyone can hear your guitar playing through them. That is pretty much the extent of my knowledge of amplifiers.
When I was invited to take the tour at Marshall’s factory, I knew I would be out of my depth with any technical talk and I presumed that the tour would just be a way to pass a few hours seeing something that was slightly to moderately interesting to someone like myself. After I finished the tour I could not have been more wrong about my assumptions.
It was an amazing insight into the production of their famous amplifiers from the first cutting of metal and wood to the final finished product and its testing.
Our tour guides Danny Thomas (Marshall Signature Series Development Manager) and Phil Wells (Marshall Service Manager) provided a delightful and fulfilling tour of the entire factory. Their knowledge and experience was second to none and answered all our questions with ease.
Now as I said before I virtually know nothing about amplifiers but this did not really make the slightest bit of difference to the tour. I was completely amazed at the quality and craftsmanship that goes into building Marshall Amplifiers. The first thing I noticed when stepping out onto the factory floor, was the lack of machinery. Yes there are machines that cut wood and metal and so on but still these machines are operated by a human being. I was stunned to see so many people in the factory using their skills to build these amplifiers, from the covering of the body work to building and wiring the circuit boards. Even once the wooden body work is assembled it is still sanded down to a smooth finish by hand.
Once the tour had finished I stepped off that factory floor in complete amazement and feeling as though I was very lucky and privileged to have been invited to see this wonderful factory. The people that work at Marshall were very accommodating and you felt a real sense of not a workforce that you typical find in factories but instead a large family.
I would sincerely like to thank our tour guides Danny Thomas and Phil Wells, and thank Jon Ellery (Marshall Managing Director) for a wonderful visit and also the rest of the team behind the Marshall company.
If there is just one thing that I have taken away with me from this tour is that I will never look at a Marshall amplifier in the same way again.