New from Marshall Introducing The Astoria Series

(PRESS RELEASE): The Astoria Series by Marshall Amps is about pure, unfettered, authentic vintage tone, from loud, unbroken clean to sublime saturation, built for the connoisseur who craves hand-wired, point to point, all-valve tone, excellent build quality and attention to detail, but who also wants features like footswitchable Channels, gain Boost and series FX Loop, with push/pull tonal switching and modern power reduction.

To achieve this innovative marriage of authentic tonal character and switching features the Astoria Series uses turrets mounted on the PCB – allowing the hand-wiring and more complex switching circuitry to elegantly coexist on a single board.

The Astoria Series is expertly crafted and is designed, engineered and constructed to the highest possible standards at the Marshall factory in Bletchley, England. Astoria’s all-valve heart comprises of an ECC83 (12AX7) preamp, GZ34 rectification, and a KT66 output stage, which is cathode biased and has no negative feedback – a characteristic of many classic, vintage amplifiers.

The Astoria Series consists of three models, each available as a 30 Watt combo or head and a matching 1 x 12” speaker cabinet. The combos and the speaker cabinet are loaded with a custom-voiced 30 Watt Celestion Creamback speaker.

The Astoria Series look is unique, with a quirky ‘boutique’ flavour. The Astoria combos have their control panel on top of the cabinet, like vintage Marshall combos. The Astoria heads are a ‘small box’ design with a vintage-style ‘letterbox’ front panel.  

The Astoria Series front panels have a stylish contemporary aesthetic: brushed aluminium, with quality switches and indicators.  Both combos, heads and speaker cabinets have a leather strap carry handle and colour-coded, vintage-style ‘Plexiglas’ Marshall logo badge inspired by the rare ‘oxblood’ logo badge used for a very short time in the mid ‘60s.

The three models are covered in coloured tolex: Blue for Dual, Red for Custom and Green for Classic. The Astoria 1 x 12” cab is available in each colour to match.

The Astoria Classic (See above image) is a single channel amplifier that will appeal to purists who want loud, clean valve tone, and to boutique pedal enthusiasts who will find it the perfect pure-valve foundation for their sound.

The Astoria Custom isa single channel amplifierfor tone seekers who want it vintage but with the convenience of contemporary features and switching: footswitchable valve driven FX Loop, tone shaping pull switches and footswitchable gain boost.

The Astoria Dual, with two footswitchable channels, goes from vintage pure-valve cleans, to dirty-sweet overdrive, to higher gain harmonic distortion. Combine this with footswitchable FX Loop and extended tonal shaping for added performance flexibility.  

The Astoria Series will be available this summer from Marshall Amps.