Marshall Amplification
Marshall Amplification is a British company that designs and manufactures music amplifiers, speaker cabinets, and effects pedals. Founded in London in 1962 by shop owner and drummer Jim Marshall, the company is based in Bletchley, Milton Keynes, England.
The company first began making amplifiers to provide an alternative to expensive, American-made Fender amps, releasing their first model, the Bassman-inspired JTM45, in 1963. Following complaints over limitations in amp volume and tone from visitors to Jim Marshall's drum shop, notably Pete Townshend, guitarist for The Who, Marshall began developing louder, 100-watt amplifiers. These early amps were characterized in part by their Plexiglass control plates, leading to models such as the 1959 Super Lead being popularly known as "Plexis." Their adoption by guitarists like Townshend, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Jimmy Page helped establish the brand's legacy. Further development led to the JCM800 series in 1981, which was widely adopted by the hard rock and metal community, while the brand celebrated its 25 years of making amps by releasing the Silver Jubiliee in 1987. Marshall updated the JCM lineup in the 1990s and 2000s and developed new amp lines, like the DSL and JVM models.
Many of the current and reissue Marshall amps continue to use valves rather than transistors, as is common in this market sector. Marshall Amplification also manufactures solid-state, hybrid and modelling amplifiers.
Since 2023, Marshall Amplification has been a division of a Swedish conglomerate, the Marshall Group, a majority stake of which is owned by China-based HongShan Capital Group.
History
Origins
After a successful career as a drummer and teacher of drum technique, Jim Marshall first went into business in 1962 with a small shop in Hanwell, west London, selling drums, cymbals and drum-related accessories; Marshall himself also gave drum lessons. According to Jim, Ritchie Blackmore, Big Jim Sullivan and Pete Townshend were the three main guitarists who often came into the shop. They pushed Marshall to make guitar amplifiers and told him the sound and design they wanted. Marshall Limited then expanded, hired designers and started making guitar amplifiers to compete with existing amplifiers, the most notable of which at the time were the Fender amplifiers imported from the United States.Production
The company first began making amplifiers to provide an alternative to expensive, Fender amps, releasing their first model, the Bassman-inspired JTM45, in 1963. Following complaints over limitations in amp volume and tone from visitors to Jim Marshall's drum shop, notably Pete Townshend, guitarist for The Who, Marshall began developing louder, 100-watt amplifiers. These early amps were characterised in part by their Plexiglass control plates, leading to models such as the 1959 Super Lead being popularly known as "Plexis." Their adoption by guitarists like Townshend, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Jimmy Page helped establish the brand's legacy.Further development led to the JCM800 series in 1981, which was widely adopted by the hard rock and metal community, while the brand celebrated its 25 years of making amps by releasing the Silver Jubiliee in 1987. Marshall updated the JCM lineup in the 1990s and 2000s and developed new amp lines, like the DSL and JVM models.
Many of the current and reissue Marshall amps continue to use valves rather than transistors, as is common in this market sector. Marshall Amplification also manufactures solid-state, hybrid and modelling amplifiers.
Distribution deal
Marshall entered into a 15-year distribution deal with British company Rose-Morris during 1965, which gave him the capital to expand his manufacturing operations, though it would prove to be costly. In retrospect, Marshall admitted the Rose-Morris deal was "the biggest mistake I ever made. Rose-Morris hadn't a clue, really. For export, they added 55% onto my price, which pretty much priced us out of the world market for a long time."Park amplification
The new contract had disenfranchised several of Marshall's former distributors, among them his old friend Johnny Jones. Marshall's contract did not prevent him from building amplifiers outside the company, and so Marshall launched the Park brand name, inspired by the maiden name of Jones's wife. To comply with his contract stipulations, these amplifiers had minor circuit changes compared to the regular Marshalls, and minor changes to the appearance. For instance, often the Parks had silver or black front panels instead of the Marshall's gold ones, some of the enclosures were taller or shaped differently, and controls were laid out and labelled differently.Starting in early 1965, Park produced a number of amplifiers including a 45-watt head. Most of these had Marshall layout and components, though some unusual amplifiers were made, such as a 75 watt keyboard amplifier with KT88 tubes. A 2×12-inch combo had the option of sending the first channel into the second, probably inspired by Marshall users doing the same trick with a jumper cable. The 1972 Park 75 put out about 100 watts by way of two KT88s, whereas the comparable 50-watt Model 1987 of that time used 2 EL34 tubes.
In 1982, Park came to an end, though Marshall later revived the brand for some transistor amplifiers made in Asia. The Parks made from the mid-1960s to around 1974, with point-to-point wiring – rumoured to be "a little hotter" than regular Marshalls – fetch higher prices than comparable "real" Marshalls from the same period.
Competition from American amplifier companies
Marshall began to see more competition from American amplifier companies such as Mesa Boogie and Soldano. Marshall then updated the JCM800 range with additional models and new features such as "channel switching", which meant that players could switch between clean and distorted tones with the push of a foot-operated switch. This feature debuted in the 2205 and 2210 series and these amplifiers contained more preamplifier gain than ever thanks to a new innovation; diode clipping. This meant a solid-state diode added additional distortion to the signal path, akin to adding a distortion pedal. As such the split channel JCM800s were the highest gain Marshalls yet built – "When they were first released, many players were shocked by its bright, intense distortion – far more than any other amp of the day." While hotly criticised today among valve purists, these amps were more popular than ever, finding mass acceptance within the hard rock community and still in use today by many. The split-channel JCM800s are still used by Tom Morello and were played exclusively by Michael Schenker for many years.Marshall around this time began further experiments with solid-state amplifiers, which were increasingly improving in quality due to technological innovations but were still considered beginner level equipment. Regardless, solid-state product lines with the Marshall name on them were and still are a wild success for the company, allowing entry level guitarists to play the same brand of amplifier as their heroes. One particularly successful entry-level solid-state Marshall was the Lead 12/Reverb 12 combo series, which featured a preamplifier section very similar to a JCM800, and a particularly sweet-sounding output section. These amps were actually used on record by Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, and are now in some demand.
Solid-state amplifiers
Marshall's "Valvestate" amplifiers contained a hybrid of valve and solid-state technology. Currently named the "AVT series", there are a number of different models, all of which are less expensive than their all-valve counterparts. It is Marshall's current line of "hybrid" amplifier, featuring a 12AX7 preamplifier valve employed in the preamplifier as well as solid-state components, with a solid-state power amplifier. These are considered and marketed as intermediate-level equipment to bridge the gap between the higher valve range and lower range MG series.In January 2009, Marshall released their latest variant of the MG line of practice amplifiers. Replacing the MG3 line, the MG4 has been designed to offer the guitarist a whole host of features whilst keeping the control of the amplifier simple.
Other Marshall brand names
Other brand names Marshall Amplification had used for various business reasons included Big M, Kitchen/Marshall, Narb and CMI. Amplifiers sold under these brand names are quite rare, and sell to collectors at high prices.Model number confusion
Occasionally confusion has arisen due to Marshall's method of naming each amplifier model, especially during its first few decades, when it was distributed under Rose-Morris. Early amplifier models were simply named after their catalogue number, so for example the 1962 Bluesbreaker was item one thousand, nine hundred and sixty-two in the Rose-Morris catalogue. Later amplifiers were given range designations as well as model numbers, which often indicated information about the amplifier itself, for example the JCM2000 range of amplifiers had models such as the TSL100 and combo amplifiers like the TSL122 other product ranges use similar descriptive model numbers. Often, speaker cabinets designed to suit a particular range will give a prefix before the speaker description such as JVMC212 or a suffix C to denote a combo variant of an amplifier such as the Vintage Modern 2266C.Blackstar
In 2007, a group of Marshall employees broke away to start Blackstar Amplification.The Marshall legacy
The classic Marshall Stack consists of one head containing the actual amplifier, on top of two stacked 4×12s, which are loudspeaker cabinets each containing four loudspeakers arranged in a square layout. The top cabinet has the top two loudspeakers angled slightly upwards, giving the Marshall stack a distinctive appearance. When a single cabinet is used, the complete unit is called a half stack.In the early-to-mid-1960s, Pete Townshend and John Entwistle of The Who were responsible for the creation and widespread use of stacked Marshall cabinets. Townshend later remarked that Entwistle started using Marshall Stacks to hear himself over Keith Moon's drums and Townshend himself also had to use them just to be heard over Entwistle. In fact, the very first 100-watt Marshall amplifiers were created specifically for Entwistle and Townshend when they were looking to replace some equipment that had been stolen from them. They approached Jim Marshall asking, if it would be possible for him to make their new rigs more powerful than those they had lost, to which they were told that the cabinets would have to double in size. They agreed and six rigs of this prototype were manufactured, of which two each were given to Townshend and Entwistle and one each to Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriott of The Small Faces. These new "double" cabinets proved too heavy and awkward to be transported practically, so The Who returned to Marshall asking if they could be cut in half and stacked, and although the double cabinets were left intact, the existing single cabinet models were modified for stacking, which has become the norm for years to follow.
Entwistle and Townshend both continued expanding and experimenting with their rigs, until they were both using twin stacks, with each stack powered by new experimental prototype 200 W amplifiers, each connected to the guitar via a Y-splitter. This, in turn, also had a strong influence on the band's contemporaries at the time, with Cream, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Led Zeppelin following suit. However, due to the cost of transport, The Who could not afford to take their full rigs with them for their earliest overseas tours, thus Cream and Hendrix were the first to be seen to use this setup on a wide scale, particularly in the United States. Ironically, although The Who pioneered and directly contributed to the development of the "classic" Marshall sound and setup with their equipment being built and tweaked to their personal specifications, they would only use Marshalls for a couple of years before moving on to using Hiwatt equipment. Cream, and particularly Hendrix, would be widely credited with the invention of Marshall Stacks.
The search for volume was taken on its next logical step with the advent of "daisy chaining" two or more amplifiers together. As most amplifier channels have two inputs, the guitar signal being present on both sockets, the cunning musician hooked the spare input of one channel to an input on another amplifier. By 1969, Hendrix was daisy-chaining four stacks, incorporating both Marshall and Sound City amplifiers, as recommended to him by Townshend.
This competition for greater volume and greater extremes was taken even further in the early 1970s by the band Blue Öyster Cult, which used an entire wall of full-stack Marshall amplifiers as their backdrop.. Artists such as Slayer and Yngwie Malmsteen also use walls of Marshalls; both Kerry King and Jeff Hanneman of Slayer would often be seen playing in front of a total of 24 cabinets. Malmsteen toured with 30 heads and 28 cabinets, and in 2011 said he would use 60 full stacks on his next tour. Many of those cabinets used by rock bands, however, are dummies, and many artists who do not even use Marshall amplifiers have the dummy stacks on stage.
According to Luke Mitchell of SlashGear, "What makes Marshall so admired is its consistency in tonal quality and build quality across its extensive range."