ibenhad said:
This thread created mass hysteria in the buying game and killed the price game for now.
This thread didn't do anything but make a few folks here aware of some of the deals that are out there. Anyone on Amazon or Ebay in the last 3 months had the opportunity to pickup one of these at an awesome price, and you still can. Why shouldn't MTS's core following have the first stab at it? Really, Randall or the dealers should have posted their own thread in the dealer section offering exclusive prices to the members here, back in December, when it was known that they were making changes to the product line and remaining stock would be liquidated. I don't think anyone here is "excited" that the line is gone. Most everyone here has happily paid full asking price for MTS gear over the last few years, and would have continued to do so into the future. The best deals so far (since December) have consistently only been offered for a few days (whether sold or not). The folks here deserve to get those deals more than anyone else, and this helped let them know to keep an eye out for them.
The decision to cancel MTS was a high level decision made by U.S. Music Corporation, a massive international organization. There are a lot of considerations that went into this decision, and a huge factor probably is the other brands they now manage. U.S. Music is now the distributor in the U.S. for Marshall, and Randall MTS opens the possibility of a multitude of Marshall tones at a fraction of the price. There were some missed opportunities to make improvements to MTS design, components, and manufacturing processes, and paying licensing fees to Egnator for the technology also reduces the net profit margin. In cost-to-benefit analysis, they probably found that all of these factors combined make keeping a product that competes with one of their flagship brands is not practical. They will probably be taking Randall in a different direction, like more affordable solid-state amps.
Factors that weren't taken into account, were how this would affect Salvation, Jaded Faith, etc. I am glad that they have enjoyed as much success as they have from customizing MTS modules, and I'm sure that they will still have a market for their skills for at least a few more years. I know I will be stockpiling modules to send off for improvements.
As far as comparing to the real thing, if you can afford 10 Porsches, good for you. 6 $500 gets me plenty close to a Rocker 30/Uberschall/Soldano/JMP/2061x/Voodoo for the price of one of those amps until I have $18,000 lying around to pick up all 6. That's why modded modules don't last a day on this forum.
The awesome thing about these amps (RM100's anyway) is you can have the 2-channel mod done, and slap Egnator modules in aswell, so it's not the end of the road completely.