We are the first company to demo the elusive BluesBreaker REISSUE, read on to hear about this bizarre story...
For a bit of context, at the time of writing this blog, the reissue is STILL not technically released to the public.
The Marshall BluesBreaker guitar pedal is well-known for its use by the renowned guitarist John Mayer. I talk in the video below about a reissue of the pedal that was accidentally made available for pre-order by Thomann, a European retailer, around a year ago. Despite Marshall denying the existence of a reissue, we decided to purchase it anyway. We were confused about whether it was a scam or not, but later received an update from Thomann that the product was on back order and would ship once they were in stock.
The original pedals were initially inexpensive and could be bought for around £50 or £60. However, when pictures of John Mayer's pedalboard featuring the pedal started circulating, the price skyrocketed to an all-time high of around £600 on the resale market.
I wonder whether the reissue's launch will affect the price of the original. Overall, I am very impressed with the reissue and suggest that guitar enthusiasts might want to get their hands on it once released, especially given its presumed lower price compared to the original.
Check out the tones here:
Shootout!
In the following video, we do the ultimate shootout between the original MK1 Bluesbreaker from the 90s, and the brand new, still technically unreleased Marshall Bluesbreaker reissue. I use the exact same settings and go back and forth to do the truest A/B test possible.
The original Bluesbreaker had two different types of circuits over a period of time, the MK1 1.1 and the MK1 1.2 circuit, and the reissue circuit is a part-for-part reissue of the 1.1 circuit.
I start off the shootout with the settings at noon just to get used to the feel of the pedal and see how it operates. As expected, there's not much output or juice going on with these settings (as per the original). But as the volume gets cranked up, the pedal starts to get more into that Blues Breaker territory that everyone knows and loves the sound of.
In my opinion, the reissue delivers pretty much identically to the old one. I can't hear a difference in this demo.
I am blown away by these reissues, and for the 130 pounds we paid for it, it's an incredible score, especially for the construction of a pedal that is as well-made as the original. The only difference between these two pedals is the boxes, which are aesthetically completely different.
What do you think to the sound here? Can you hear a difference?