FEATURE EDEN
Guardian of Eden
Marshall’s sudden announcement that it had acquired US bass amp brand, Eden, back in January, came as a surprise to many, not least because of its low profile in the UK market. But Marshall has big plans for the brand as product manager, Luke Green, tells Gary Cooper…
guitarists to share brands. While it’s true that Fender invented the bass guitar and still commands good share of the market, for the most part it’s pretty much specialist territory, with its own bass guitar and, in particular, bass amp brands. Which may have been what lay behind Marshall’s surprise announcement, back in January this year, that it had purchased the Eden brand from US Music. Marshall wanted a brand it could make exclusive to bassists. The man in charge of re-establishing Eden in the UK is Luke Green, who has been with Marshall for over seven years working on the parent brand as product manager/product co-ordinator. He is now charged with making Eden a major force in bass once again. I say once again, because Eden has had its ups and downs. Founded in 1976, it was one of that handful of pioneering companies that transformed what were, in effect, slightly breathed-on guitar amps into specialist devices designed to do the low frequency job properly. It achieved considerable success with
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pro players early on and later spawned several product lines aimed at spreading the quality image down the price range. Distribution outside the USA wasn’t always the most successful, however – Eden never really made much of an impact in the UK, for example – and Luke Green is the first to admit he and Marshall have some work to do to get the name back in the forefront of players’
22 July 2012
ne of many strange things about the MI industry is the reluctance of bass players and
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and retailers’ minds. That said, there has been much activity since the start of this year to get Eden into fighting shape, working with a Chicago-based team of marketing and product management staff, backed by specialists working on Eden at Marshall, in the UK. “Eden has always been well respected, if
not always easily available outside America, which has made it a kind of home brand for the USA”, Luke Green says. “So what has been the big plus has been the amount of energy and resources that Marshall has allowed Eden to have. That’s always been something that has been lacking to drive the brand forward in the past – the product has always been respected, but it didn’t have the resources
behind it. Professional musicians understand what Eden is, but those who don’t need some introduction to it, particularly outside the USA. It’s something we need to work on but the story is there, the products and the quality are there, so it’s really just down to letting people know about it.” For those still wondering why the
world’s greatest name in guitar amplification felt it needed to buy a bass brand when it was, clearly, more than capable of making anything the market wanted, Green agrees that there was, at least to an extent, a perceptual problem with Marshall for bassists. “Marshall’s offerings haven’t really been tailored to bass players specifically and
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