The bizarre Marshall story continues... as we recently got our hands on something very exciting - four unreleased Marshall Vintage Reissue pedals that have not even been confirmed by Marshall yet! You might have seen a video we did recently of the brand new unreleased Marshall Bluesbreaker Vintage Reissue, which has been picked up by guitar articles such as Music Radar. But the story doesn't end there - we were then contacted by a mysterious figure claiming to have gotten their hands on the much-speculated reissues of not only the Bluesbreaker, but also the Drive Master, Shred Master, and the Marshall Guv'nor, which would complete the Marshall Black Box series of reissues.
At first, we were skeptical about these three other reissues, as we hadn't heard anything online about them, and there was no confirmation from Marshall, and no pictures of them on Instagram. However, it turned out that the mysterious figure was telling the truth, and had bought them in the exact same way we bought the Marshall Bluesbreaker last year - through the accidental pre-order link leaked by Thomann.
We were excited to hear what these pedals sounded like for the very first time, and decided to unbox them for you here:
The product boxes are beautiful and look identical to the original Marshall boxes. I actually prefer them to the originals! We started with the Marshall Guv'nor, and the pedal is housed in a casing that is accurately modeled on the design of the original, from the unique shape right down to the individually colored control knobs. The reissue manual tells us that the original Guv'nor pedal was released in 1988 and set the bar for generations of distortion pedals that have followed since. This 60th anniversary reissue (from the original formation date of Marshall) faithfully recreates the classic sound of the Guv'nor, providing a smooth overdrive sound with a touch of compression.
Next, we unboxed the Marshall Shred Master, which is also housed in a beautiful box. The Shred Master was originally released in 1992, & the reissue manual tells us that the Shred Master reissue features the original tone that helped shaped many bands over the last 3 decades!
The third pedal we unboxed was the Marshall Drive Master, which again was originally released in 1992. The Drive Master is essentially an aesthetically updated Guv'nor! Same great sound, though visually in keeping with the other 90's bad boys!
Last but not least, we unboxed the Marshall Bluesbreaker Vintage Reissue, which we have already covered in a previous video here:
In conclusion, it was an absolute pleasure to unbox these four amazing pedals, and we can't wait to demo them in even more depth soon. It's still a mystery as to when these pedals will be officially released by Marshall, but we will keep you updated on any news we hear.