While things like shipping and possible longer EU warranties do factor in as extra costs, we don't know what the retailer cost for these amps looks like. US retail price + VAT in euro is not necessarily a good translation.
Having to pay US wages and building on a comparatively smaller scale to Fender/Marshall/Mesa will be a bigger factor than a handful of relatively inexpensive parts. Ceriatone can pay way less to staff, no middlemen to deal with, and they use much cheaper components (especially on transformers and caps which can shave a good bit off the cost). Friedman are catering largely to an old boomer crowd who probably scoff at the complexity of MIDI or computers being in THEIR PURE ANALOG VALVE AMP.
Yeah, I totally disagree. Marshall and Ceriatone use cheaper spec parts all round. Runt PCB is thicker and more durable/reliable than Marshall. Marshall use a machine to solder the PCB’s, and haven’t really had the best history of well designed long lasting PCB’s (DSL, JTM60, 2210). Even the classic amps PCB’s are pretty crap and prone to traces lifting etc. Ceriatone are nicely built, look stunning but the caps/resistors/transformers are all off brand/in house stuff to get the cost down. I live 10 minutes from Marshalls factory and own way too many of their amps, I’m a huge Marshall guy. But their build quality is nothing special, they’re all about mass production and getting costs down.
We all want cheaper ways to make our sounds. IMO, almost all amps are on the high side and should not be playing these pricing games just because they can. Marshall, Mesa, Fender, Friedman, etc. should be priced the same everywhere in the world and the only difference should be Import/Export taxes & shipping costs.
