With "Birch plywood cabinet" and made in England, how can this amp be only $399??? Take note Fender for selling the Champ Reissue for $999

the class 5 looks and sounds like it is a great little amp...but is it handwired?

According to Randall Smith maker and founder of Mesa Boogie amps, he states that there is no difference in tone between point to point handwired and printed circuit board amplifiers. In a blind test, humans cannot tell the difference. Boutique amp makers favor handwire as it is a very good selling point to jack up the price

again i think the marshall 5 looks and sounds like a great little amp and who am i to argue with randall smith...but if an amp is hand wired instead of a printed circuit board the labor cost alone would obviously increase the price of the amp. i am sure if the marshall 5 was handwired the price would be at least several hundred dollars more and likely similar to the price of the 57 champ reissue.

Lots of complaints about buzzes and rattles from the early buyers. Still, it looks like an interesting little amp.

I just received the new Guitarist magazine from the UK and they had a bit on the new Marshall MA line of all tube amps. There's the 100 watt MA100 and the 50 watt MA50--both available in heads and combos (212 for the MA100 and 112 for the MA50 combos). ECC83s and EL34s with spring reverb...no other effects, this time. Made in Vietnam.

Sweeteater has em.

That's somewhat old actually. Its a throwback to the 1970s "cheaped out" syndrome so many manufacturers suffered from, guitars and amps alike.

The first printed board amps showed up in the '70s and there were some troubles. It was a new technology, after all. There are always bugs. But the industry standards have improved, technology progressed and new circuit board amps are very very high quality.

Im not an electrical engineer, but my father-n-law is. In fact, he is the chief design engineer at a computer network company. He is an expert in printed circuit board design and development. He also happens to be an expert in sound vibration, including sound amplification and projection technologies. He loves tube amps, BTW.

Anyway...I've asked him about "solid state vs. tube" and "printed board vs. hand wired", etc. He insists that tubes do, in fact, change the sound dynamic of the amplifier. However, he also insists that printed circuit boards have improved so much over the last 20 years that there is no reason not to rely on them instinctively. From his perspective and from a physics/engineering perspective, there is no reason that hand wired amps necessarily sound different, much less better, than circuit board amps.

I suspect the amp-techs that maintain there is a material difference may be somewhat biased by their personal experiences with early circuitboard amps, or their teachers experiences with those early amps.

Many amp techs seem to feel that printed circuit boards and high voltages don't mix that well. Certainly if something goes wrong with a PCB it's more of a pain to repair than its hand-wired equivalent.

...They have no sense of theory why it works and cannot explain. Those are the ones usually argue the loudest.