Depends heavily on the brand. Mesas used to be insanely expensive until they did the same thing as Marshall have done now - changed distributors.
But there's still a lot of crazyness in pricing. There's no way to justify why a Suhr SL67 is 3999 € (incl 24% VAT) for a Superlead clone with a PPIMV and a few switches on it. That's 500 € more than a freakin' Diezel VHX!
A Friedman BE-100 Deluxe at 4699 € is also pretty hard to swallow despite its 3 channels and other bells and whistles. They of course have other amps that are a lot more acceptably priced.
Don't even get me started on anything Dumble-based. Those live in another price echelon with IMO no justification for the cost other than "people who want a Dumble tone will pay". Which is good business.
In general though, it's not worth buying US made amps in Europe and vice versa.
What I meant was that it's not overpriced in the sense of compared to their US price. The BE100 DLX is a good example of this. As someone replied to you, it's $4000 in the US. Add 24% VAT to it and you're at almost $5k. Translate that to euro and you end up with €4692 with today's exchange rate. Hence, it's not overpriced.
If it's WORTH it though, that's a whole different question and in general I'd say hell no.
I don't disagree really, but I think being made in USA, on a smaller scale and using higher spec parts really does add up.
Talking used prices here, but I paid about £2k used for my BE100, the 20W amps and Runts go for about £1000 used. If I were to source my own parts for one of those circuits it wouldn’t come out much less, and it would still take someone to built it. 20W Marshalls are maybe £500-600 used, the 100W vary depending on model and year (DSL/JVM can be dirt cheap, Jubilee reissues are £750-800, 1959SLP/1987/£900-1000, 2203x £1500, vintage ones a little more). I think the used Friedman prices are in line with that at least.
The fact Marshall and Ceriatone can build them cheaper doesn’t mean the boutique brands are necessarily a ripoff - they just have different margins to work in and certain compromises may have no bearing on how the user feels about them.
The Ecstasy below costs nearly £5000z
Buy the Bogner Ecstasy 20th Anniversary Head 100W 6L6 Comet/Salt and Pepper Valve Amp Head
The Bogner Ecstasy 20th Anniversary Head lives up to it's name providing pure tonal bliss from it's 3 channel all tube design.www.guitarguitar.co.uk
SLO100 is £4000, JP2C and Mark VII are over £4000 too. Two Rock and Magnatone are on another level beyond that.
Sure, that's true. I just think that in general, most people in Europe don't really care about "Made in the USA".
It's not something we associate with "quality".