Now here's something for those looking for the ultimate in vintage British valve amp tone, and not a show pony! This amp has been built as a 'special' by Melbourne amp guru (and Grouse Guitars' tech of choice) Ross Giles, after he saw the potential offered by many of the amp's components, shared with the Plexi and early JMP Marshalls.

Here's Ross' description in his own words;

This amplifier started life in1971 as a Marshall Artiste, which was a two channel reverb combo.

The Artiste’s were in production from 1971-78

It used a very different preamp and tone control to the other Marshalls of the day and was a pretty average sounding amplifier.

This amp has the same transformers and parts that are in some Plexi’s and early JMP’s so I thought I would rebuild it.

I decided to keep the two channels and to keep the function of being able to cross patch the two channels.

The first channel was changed to the classic Marshall Preamp and tone circuit except that it doesn’t have a mid range control.

The second channel is the same as that found in the JTM 45 “Blues Breaker” using the lower value mix resistors as found in the very early models.

This amp differs from the classic early Marshall layout in that instead of having two separate inputs and a common tone control section, my version has two separate tone control sections.

The two channels have different tones so that it has a greater range of sounds you can get from the amp and the inputs of the two channels can be patched together for even more sound variations.

It has a matched pair of Russian EL34 Mullards and has the two original Marshall labeled Celestion Green Backs.

Should you have any further queries about the amp, you may as well email Ross directly (click here), but if you want to ask me what I think about the amp, I'll tell you. It's GROUSE! I very rarely warm to Marshalls I admit, but this thing is just glorious. You just want to keep on playing and playing and playing and...

$3495AUD (plus shipping)