While it may appear to be ready to plug in a guitar, the Marshall Stanmore II Voice’s internals are far more sophisticated. This is a Bluetooth (5.0 and aptX) speaker with Wi-Fi and the dulcet tones of Google Assistant built into the wood and vinyl exterior. To complete the Marshall look, there’s some brass plating, nice LED lighting, and twiddly knobs made of rubber and metal, as opposed to the brass ones used on the original Stanmore. When turned up, the Marshall Stanmore II Voice has a bold, brazen sound that fills the room, but not at the expense of audio quality. When a song allows it, the bass can be thunderous, hitting with a thud, but there is still enough room in the mids and trebles for a song to breathe. For obvious reasons, the majority of the tracks we tried on the speaker were guitar-based. The cowboy jangle of Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive was far from dead. Johnny B Goode by Chuck Berry was, well, better than good. The song’s iconic guitar riff sounded immediate and surprisingly fresh when played on a Gibson guitar and (whisper it) through a Fender amp, then when the band kicked in, the amp served the bigger sound well.
