V Festival 2010

Last weekend we packed our bags and attended one of the last few festivals remaining of the season, V Festival. It was very different to some of the metal festivals we have done over the past year, with the likes of Pixie Lott dropping in, Paulo Nutini and Dizzee Rascal to name a few. We took some of our brand new Marshall Evoke-1S digital radios with us that we got various visitors to our tent to sign! We were kept very busy talking to artists in our warm up tent backstage, showing off the various products and loaning a selection out. Apologies to those who wanted to try out the VBA400 head and VBC810 cab, Temper Trap borrowed it for their set and loved it so much they bought it! Faithless and Kasabian, who played Sunday night, were seen on stage in front of the VBA as well as our recently acquired percussion products Natal. We took a selection of bongos with us too and received a number of artists requesting to know more and looking to get some, so keep your eyes out for Natal on stage!

The amp of the weekend had to be the Class5 combo. We had plenty of interest in this little 5W and ended up taking a number of orders for it before the weekend was over. Our old friend Paul Weller came over to say hi with his guitarist, Steve Cradock, whose ordered two Class5 combos, one cream and one green and even Pink popped by to check the C5 out and is looking to get one as well! The Class5 is proving to be one of our most popular products and has outsold its expected target a few times over and is still going from strength to strength!

At festivals such as V the 1962 and 1974X are always very popular with such bands as Kasabian, who are already using the Bluesbreaker on stage. We helped out number of bands over the course of the weekend loaning out various stock, we were even asked to lend out a JCM800 2203 head that was used for an organ!

All in all we had a very productive and enjoyable time at V Festival, meeting up with old friends as well as introducing ourselves to some of the newer groups. Now it's time for a well earned rest before we start all over again for festival season next year!

Check out pictures from the weekend on either our Myspace or Facebook page.

Worlds Youngest Professional Guitarist

Yuto Miyazawa is definitely a name to look out for. At just the tender age of 10 this pint sized guitarist is reaching the giddy heights that most of us only dream of. Yuto was invited back to share the mainstage with the great Ozzy Osbourne during this years Ozzfest 2010 festivals, after debuting there last year. You would think that playing on stage with Ozzy in front of thousands of people would terrify most 10 year olds. Not Yuto, who on 4th August 2008 was registered in The Guinness Book of Records as the youngest professional guitar player after starting his tremendous career in the US at just 8 years old.

He originally became interested in the guitar when he was 1 and started taking lessons in earnest at 3 before going on to appear regularly on national Japanese television when he was 5. His favourite artists range from Randy Rhoads to Brian May to Jimi Hendrix but when he's not practising guitar (or gigging with Ozzy!) he enjoys oil painting, Japanese history and swimming. Check out more pictures of Yuto here.

BLS Order of the Black debuts at #4!

Zakk Wylde and his Black Label Society have nabbed their highest album debut ever, with the stunning new album Order of the Black coming in at #4 on the Billboard Top 200 Album and #1 on the Billboard Hard Music Album charts this week, respectively. At a time when record sales are down across the board (and have been for years), this bow is all the more impressive since it significantly surpasses the debut of the last Black Label Society album Shot To Hell in both units and chart position.

Order of the Black has been winning rave reviews from both fans and critics alike. Of Black Label Society frontman/lead guitarist Zakk Wylde, Guitar Edge declared, “The reinvigorated guitarist shreds with precision and articulation. With this effort, he shows once again why he’s one of the true guitar heroes of the past 20 plus years”, while The New York Post stated, “On the hard rock band’s eighth studio album, frontman Zakk Wylde is clean, sober and living up to his name with a monument to metal music and shredder guitar.”

Black Label Society is currently on tour headlining the second stage at this year’s Ozzfest and will soon head out on the road to headline Zakk Wylde’s own The Black Label Berzerkus in September. Check out our gig guide for a list of tour dates.

NEW Pure EVOKE-1S Marshall DAB Radio

Marshall have teamed up once again with digital radio giants Pure to create the second generation EVOKE-1S Marshall branded DAB radio.

Incorporating the classic Marshall style, the EVOKE-1S Marshall features a black vinyl wrap, brass effect front and authentic Marshall logo badge. It also includes both digital and FM radio, an input for your iPod/MP3 player, a clear autodimming OLED display, Intellitext and textSCAN and lots of station presets for quick access to your favourite stations. Additional options include an in-unit rechargeable ChargePAK and matching S-1 speaker for stereo sound.

EVOKE-1S Marshall can be pre-ordered from HMV.com and will be on the shelf exclusively at HMV from early August and at independent retailers from September.

For more information go to www.pure.com

Sonisphere Round Up

Last week saw Europe's only touring festival, Sonisphere hit the UK at Knebworth House. Last year Sonisphere was maxing six show, this year it's almost doubled to eleven awesome festivals, the largest Poland and Turkey have ever hosted. Now a 3 day fest it completely sold out, which is no wonder what with it being Iron Maiden's only British show this year, Rammstein's first ever outdoor appearance in the UK and Alice Cooper's first festival for nearly 30 years! With such treats like that it's no surprise that more than 55,000 hard rock and metal fans attended each day!

Our Marshall Rock Cabin backstage saw plenty of action as there was a steady stream of artists coming and going for most of the weekend. As always at these gigs, we take plenty of equipment with us for guitarists to try out and this year was no exception. The new all-valve digital JMD:1 proved a winner with Madina Lake guitarist Mateo Camargo who wouldn't even let us take it back with us! More accustomed to using rack gear, Mateo has fallen in love with the JMD:1, especially liking the idea of having everything you need in a head and is now planning to use it straight away for the rest of their tour!

We met up with so many Marshall users throughout the weekend including the likes of Terrorvison, The Gallows, Skunk Anansie, Papa Roach, Placebo, The Cult, Skindred and Motley Crue. German industrial metal band Rammstein were the talk of the Saturday and asked us to supply a P.A system for their VIP party later that evening which we willing obliged! Slipknot / Stone Sour front man Corey Taylor packed out the Bohemia stage for the second year with an acoustic set backed up by a couple of Marshall AS100D acoustic combos. Right now though there is no other band out there that has a bigger backline than American heavies Slayer. With an impressive 18 cabs each for Jeff Hanneman and band mate Kerry King, that made a total of 36 Marshall cabinets! That doesn't even include bassist Tom Araya who was using two Marshall VBA 8x10" bass rigs.

There's only one way to end a sold out festival and that's having one of the UK's biggest bands (and Marshall's greatest friends) perform, the mighty Iron Maiden. Formed in 1975 and still going strong with 30 albums to dates selling over 100 million records worldwide, you can see why after all this time they can still pull the crowds wherever they go.

Check out our photos from Sonisphere on either our Myspace or Facebook page.

Black Label Society Visit Marshall HQ

We were very pleased to welcome Zakk and the rest of the boys from Black Label Society to Marshall HQ the other week, who used our on-site theatre as a rehearsal room for their gig at the High Voltage Festival in Victoria Park, London . It was also an opportunity for Zakk to check out his brand new stage amps we built for him. For those of you who attended High Voltage, you would have seen the formidable sight first hand, based on his signature 2203ZW, his new units had black panels, with controls that went up to 11! Silver diamond cut kick grilles and visible glowing valves. Zakk was so pleased with his new backline that he and the rest of the band very kindly offered to give the staff at Marshall a private gig! The whole of the company crowded over to the theatre and were lucky enough to watch almost their entire set! This made for a fantastic pre-cursor to their amazing performance at High Voltage.

Check out our photos from the day in our latest album on either Myspace or Facebook.