I've has three hours' sleep in the past two days combined, so I probably nuked it myself. It wasn't anything earth-shattering.
I just talked about how Loud put that same label language of "designed and assembled in the U.S.A" on the first overseas-made Mackie mixers after they shut down the plant in Woodinville, WA. They say "designed and tested by Mackoids in the U.S.A." I was no fan of SLM, especially from a service angle, but they were light years beyond the example that Loud now sets.
As to answer the question of how long Ampeg has been foreign made, SLM ceased to exist about four years ago when Loud bought them. A few months later, Loud shut down production in St. Louis and moved it to Arkansas, where it stayed for about a year or two before they laid off their entire US production workforce and shut down their service network, despite assurances as late as a month before the change that they never would do so.
Most of the problems with Asian Ampegs have been poor quality control and shoddy parts. I expect the "Heritage Series" to be decently assembled out of cherrypicked parts from the foreign lines, so they ought to at least work. And for all those who think I'm being racist or xenophobic about Asian origins, I'm quite fond of my MTI SVT, which was made in Japan and has far superior assembly to 70's SVT's.
