Marshall amps (2)

Before Marshall, the guitar sound box had been ignored pieces of equipment; the usage was no more than a microphone. At that time, the speaker boxes were behind the stage, it was better not to let the audience see them. But when vertical Marshall Speaker boxes appeared, speaker boxes became a symbol of gigantism, as tall as men, and on rock concerts stage also gave people with intense visual impact. Speaker boxes also made an indelible contribution for the birth of rock music. Townsend’s new 100 watts monster let him freely use endless feedback and screaming and destruction, such as general terrorist of distortion of the tone, they all made the rebel, crazy ability of the brain with every cell of the 60 s young people crazy.

Nobody else had ever done anything before Pete Townsend. His guitar was hung from his waist; Townsend would back to the audience on the stage, and facing rows of speaker boxes, with his crotch against his guitar, and let the guitar pick-up under the signals to sound again from the loudspeaker linked to the pick-up, repeatedly manufacturing shrill feedback noise. He not only held the guitar with his buttocks, and using two hands holding both sides of the speaker, which gave others an expression that he was having sex with the speakers. During the climax of a performance, he would prick the thin film of the speaker with the guitar head, and then angrily smashed the guitar to pieces!

Jim Marshall recalled that he witnessed such a performance experience with Pete's father together. "When Pete began to 'poke' his guitar, Cliff and I were thinking that the child was completely hopeless. But we soon realized, that was a new form of performance art, in that moment we still hadn't seen performance art."

This new style of acting did not escape from a young man's eyes, who was still an unknown guitarist from the United States, James Marshall Hendrix, Jimi was his stage name. By the end of 1966, Jimi first came to England with the assistance of his manager, the drummer of the former Animals band Chas Chandler. His British experience became the landing gear of Hendrix being famous. But the first thing he did after coming to Britain was to visit Pete Townsend.
"At that time The Who was being made at IBC studio in London," Townsend said, "Chas Chandler took Jimi to see me. Jimi was a particularly shy man. When we met, he quickly became very nervous, and then he couldn’t say a word. Chas said, 'Jimi would like to know now what equipment should be purchased." I said,' you found me just in a strange period, because I just exchanged for Sound City (later The Hiwatt)from Marshall, but now I use both. “Then Chas said," Good! Then we will also use it! '"

Jim Marshall recalled the first time he was introduced to Jimi Hendrix by his student Mitch Mitchell (became a drummer for Jimi Hendrix Experience) introduced to know, "Jimi told Mitch, 'I must meet this person, because he and I have got the same name." so he and Mitch came to our store together, we hit it off, Jimi was really someone. He had a very distinctive sense of humor. He said he wanted to have several vertical speakers. At first I thought, too bad, and another freeloader. Because, many Americans came here, and phoned me, and said,' Can you support us? 'But immediately Jimi' made it clear' I do not want you to give them away to me, and I mean to buy them from you at the original price. But I hope I can have the backup wherever in the world I perform I can trust, any problem can be solved quickly. "I thought, 'oh, I have to offer him an engineer in his side forever.......' but he didn't mean it. His mechanic was in my factory for a few weeks, learned about the equipment and electric circuit principle of work and how to change parts, these things. And the mechanic was also very smart, so we didn't have any problems. Jimi bought four different sets of speaker equipment and put them in different places, so that he didn’t need to carry too much equipment when he went on performance tours.

Hendrix’s wild and innovative playing skills, to the tone control and stage shows made him the brightest star in the history of rock and roll! His rapid fame like a meteor made a very big contribution to the worldwide promotion of Marshall. The speakers he chose were model 1950 100 watts. In his early recordings, generally combined with a 4X12 speaker box. Jimi’s long-term recording engineer as well as good friend Eddie Kramer said: "if I remember right, he used a beveled speaker box-until the 70 s when we were at the Electric Lady recording studio, then what we used were unviable and some stereo speakers."

Until the end of the 60 s, some musicians using strong power Marshall Speakers appeared. There was Eric Clapton besides Hendrix and Townsend, he and his band Cream started to use 100 watts of model 1959 speaker heads and speaker boxes. He had been completely no longer needed to worry about how to tuck his speaker boxes into his pickup truck. In 1967, Jeff Beck, from the beginning changed into Marshall from Vox speaker boxes with Yardbirds. In his solo, he issued the single "Hi Ho Silver Lining" after it was included in his 1968 album "Truth" of the iconic, however, Beck tended to 50 w of Marshall speaker head, such as model 1987 X. He has been using this model, and now he is using Marshall DSL 50." It sounds like you in the vent of a beast of kilowatts, but at the same time it is very quiet, I just love it." Beck said.

Jimmy Page is another former Yardbirds member, also in the 60 s started to use Marshall Speaker boxes, catching up with Led Zeppelin 1969 album of the same name. "I think in the middle of the solo 'Heart Breaker', was the first time I've used Marshall Speaker boxes," Page said. "At that time was a complete figment of inspiration." Bring It On Home 'also used Marshall speakers."
 Page listed some of the reasons he had used Marshall Speakers. "Our drummer John Bonham is the loudest besides the best drummer I've ever seen. He is the season of why we wanted to change to bigger speakers. And, Marshall was absolutely the most reliable products at that time. Marshall Speakers can bear the bumps and collisions on the way to performances. I have always having complains about chattering of a noise or something. I was just using Gibson Les Paul guitar, these two just were the most classical combination."

In the end of 60s, with so many stars starting to use Marshall Speakers, many had been magnified by those dedicated people as "legend" widely. A story said American biker metal band Blue Cheer turned the volume to the loudest, the audio was beyond people could stand, a poor stray dog was shocked to death when it walked too close to the speakers by accident! There was a similar story, during Ted Nugent’s show; a poor dove flying over the speakers became powder because of the vibration!

At the same time, Marshall returned to London, and said, “My shop in Hanwell was so crowed with musicians. A lot of people came to my shop, or waiting in a coffee shop across from the street. The store was quite small ah, only 11 feet wide and 12 feet deep, with the same size of the storeroom on the second floor. There could be 7 or 8 people standing in my shop, so they all went to the coffee shop across the street. In the beginning, the coffee shop was just as big as a store, but later they bought their adjacent three shops, now became such a large coffee shop, and also became a place for all young musicians exchanging ideas every Saturday.”
It was the Golden Age for Plexi from 66 to 69, generally recognized as the most classic Marshall model. The name Plexi comes from the front speaker Plexi sterilizers gold-plated materials Plexiglas, replaced the previous white. In addition, it was originally designed to on one side of the head in the control panel was replaced right below of the head. At the same time, the early font of Marshall logo was formed like what we are now familiar with. About the tone, classic Plexi had EL34 vacuum tube. But the production department manager Nick Bowcott in American Marshall wasn’t willing to take all the credit to EL34.

"EL34 was indeed a very important part of Marshall Sound, but it's definitely not all the reasons," Bowcott said. "There are a number of factors: the size of the speakers, what kind of horns, wattage settings, increased circuits and the arrangement of the position made up the details of the decisive factors. Don't even say that negative remarks about the design, it is just a miracle!"

In later years, Marshall had never stopped innovation and development of new technology. In 1967, Marshall brought the first 200 watts of speakers’ head-Marshall Major to the world. Not just the 100 watts speakers’ louder brothers, the production of Major used a different circuit from the previous models. The first Major was only one channel and adjustable active tone knob, the front three EC83 tube after the class had four KT88s. In 1968, the speakers had to change a little, and replaced with a passive tone control knob and two channels, the program had been accompanied by Major until it was discontinued in 1974 because the required tube was very rare.  David Bowie’s guitarist Mick Ronson was Marshall Major faithful supporter. There also was Ritchie Blackmore, Screaming Lord Sutch band before the guitarist. Blackmore was the old customer at Marshall Store; he became famous with Deep Purple band afterwards.

"The 200 watts of power to get a speaker at that time was a very hard work," Marshall said, "because it's too hot. But we finally fixed the problem, and Ritchie has still been using the damn thing."

Blackmore also helped design the Marshall Marshall Master Volume amp, launched in 1975. At the time, that's a revolutionary innovation-a separate stage gain control, making the guitarist in the volume of small speakers get more distortion. This design to the guitarist before couldn’t get to the control of the tone. Due to Kiss and Black Sabbath these bands’ efforts, 50 w of 2204 and 100 watts of 2203 Master Volume Marshall became the representative of the 70 s metal.
"Almost in 1974 or 1975, at that time, Bad Company was about to start a world tour concert, we intended to use Master Volume Marshalls," guitarist Mick Ralphs recalled, "It was very strong, very noisy. We had Marshall make a batch of black heads and the speaker boxes. We were the first owning the black Marshall. After that, black became the color of the speaker boxes when it came to mass production."

However, not all of the 70 s metal guitarists were with Master Volume of speakers. At the end of 70 s, Eddie Van Halen wrote his name in the history of guitar, he used a 1959 model, the old "Plexi" Marshall, and he installed this speaker the head of a Variac transformer. This combination was the origin of the tone Van Halen band became famous, such as the pieces "Eruption," "Runnin 'with the Devil".

"People thought he installed more votage in the speaker boxes, but in fact he used less than normal." Bowcott explained, "so, that caused a huge change to the tone of the speaker boxes. The former stage and latter would have distortion; speaker sound quality was being changed, which sounded like some boring, in the end, that made a very gliding, more absorb force feeling."

"Ed reduced the wattage of the speakers with the Variac, so that got a satisfactory sound," the Dutch speakers expert Peter Van Wheelden added, was that he did the important repair work for Van Halen in historical significance. "Ed had very good ears, and he knew what he wanted."
Until 1981, Marshall and Rose-Morris’s contract finally expired. Jim Marshall wasted no time, introduced a new JCM800 series, used to seperate from the early Rose-Morris period products, it also indicated the Marshall new future. The beginning, was a shape strim based on the existing 1959, 1987, 2204 and 2203 of these models, on the whole we now are familiar with the modern Marshall appearance. The control panel of the speaker's head before squeezing a small rectangular space in front of the speaker head, and now expanded into speaker head the entire lower half of the metal plate. "I had designed the appearance of the new speaker and the internal things," Marshall said, "After Rose-Morris and I parted, I spent weeks thinking about what name I should give it. It should get a different name from the old models. One day I walked toward my car, saw my license plate-JCM 800 (representativing James Charles Marshall), I started to use the license plate. I slapped in my leg, 'Got it! Call it JCM 800.'"
JCM 800 series became metal musicians’ favorite speaker boxes in the 80 s, especially the 2203 model. The Rage Against Machine’s guitarist Tom Morello was a faithful follower of 2203. In 1982, Marshall launched the 20th anniversary special JiNianBan white JCM800. Business appeared to be getting better and better after Rose-Morris.

"Rose-Morris and I cooperated for so many years, I never reached one million pound in a single year’s sales," Marshall said. "But since we separated, only 3 years time, I reached almost 3.76 million pounds in the annual sales. I got the queen award to encouraged export. You need to have 3 years sales record accumulative total to get the award of the title.  Of course, the queen of the prize winners of course had a chance to meet the great queen Elizabeth II. "A good woman." Marshall recalled the scene in the Buckingham Palace.

In the 80 s, Marshall audio company had become Britain's most respected company, loved by the people even more than the British royal family. In 1986, the company launched JCM 800 limited edition, green black rubber coat and Master Volume and could convert the vocal more design. And at the 25th anniversary in 1987, Marshall launched Silver Jubilee series. These super beautiful silver rubber cover speakers-and Slash and Black Crowes guitarist’s favorite was one of the earliest Marshall provide adjustable output speakers, which could choose to about half of the power or in all the power. After 1987, this series was renamed Custom series and became a member of the JCM 800.

The 80 s also ushered in the new 2000 series sound boxes, this series of speakers could be proud to call themselves the strongest for Marshall sound boxes. Guitar sound box with 300 watts of power, and both speakers also had 350 watts. And it was no surprise, 2000 series became AC/DC band’s good helper, these people were always Marshall amp’s connoisseurs.
"We have a bunch of old Marshall Speakers," AC/DC guitarist Angus Young said. "We have used them for many years.  Once in a while, we would go to the closet taking those old guys out and see if we could use any of them. People give them very professional names-like" Plexi ", etc. To me, they are NB speaker boxes."

Although Marshall is a company which has always been making guitars and speaker boxes, with the time going by, Marshall also determined to improve. Rack-mounted speakers and the effects became more and more popular, Marshall launched 9000 which all had vacuum tubes and the transistor in 1989. A few years later, this series developed the JMP-1 MIDI former level; installation had two ECC83 vacuum tubes and 100 in the article "MIDI. Different styles of musicians, like Billy Gibbons, Blink 182, Filter and Papa Roach used JMP-1.
To the 90 s, people were more interested in modifying old styled Marshall. "That was simply a big disaster." Marshall said, "Those so-called modify masters, what they did was to burn the vacuum tubes. Many bands came with their speakers and said, 'Could you turn these boxes to the original form? It’s easy to burst now like this, and we always have to spend a lot of money to repair them.'"

But at the same time Marshall discovered a real need of the modern musicians, so Marshall also introduced a high gain JCM 900 series. "It can be done, but it is certainly not the modification methods."

JCM 900 series became history because it could "twist to 20". This series of speaker boxes also got very special, even comedy band Spinal Tap band’s endorsement. JCM 900 gain control, from the original 1 to 10, in order to increase the granularity, so the increase was from 11 to 20, allowing the musicians to tune their favorite small fine overload effect.  JCM 900 was also used by many musicians from Dave Navarro to Green Day.

Although Marshall was always considered as the top electron tube speaker manufacturer,   but in 1991, the company introduced a ValveState series that was the combination of vacuum tubes and transistors at more acceptable prices. These speaker boxes set a good foundation for the later transistor MG series and AVT series, MG series has been Static-X's Wayne Static and Rob Zombie guitarist Riggs’s favorite.

Ten years ago, when Marshall audio company entered their 30th year, they hoped to design a Marshall amp set up with all the past classical tones. This was a 30th anniversary special series of design, 3 track, seven ECC83 vacuum tubes, four EL34. The initial design was blue rubber sheet and finally returned to traditional black. This amp was for future TSL series (Triple Super Lead) and its brother DSL series Dual Super Lead paved the way, this series of speakers from tone, had the highest in Marshall Speaker box plasticity.

In the recent years, Marshall also began to focus on the production of setting limits to musicians' signature series speakers. The latest was Zakk Wylde Model, referring to his favorite JCM 800 2203 100 watts. There are only 600 in the whole world, each with a unique autograph authorized by Zakk and Jim Marshall. As for our products of the first batch of setting limits to musicians signature sound boxes, was almost completely a copy of the classic silver Jubilee speaker boxes, the birth would half thank to the former Guns N 'Roses guitarist-Slash, he also agreed that this amp was indispensable in his unique tone.

"Slash’s manager called to me," Marshall said. "He said, 'Slash wants to meet you.' I said, 'no problem," and then we decided a day, he came to our production factory. At lunch, Slash said,' I am always afraid the speakers I use. They always bear a lot of impact. Can you make 10 for me? "Here came the problem, for the last time we did the type of speaker boxes had been 10 years, but we did not do lots of research or analysis about that type of parts, some components might be hard to get. I thought for a moment and then told Slash, 'if we really want to do it, if we only produce ten, then we will have a big loss. But if we launch a limited edition speaker series, we can ensure that we won’t lose. And you will become the first endorsement of the speakers.” Of course Slash was very happy about this idea. So we did this limited edition signature series, Slash was also very satisfied with his new speakers."

But you don't need to be a rock star like Slash to have lunch with Jim. He's been an approachable Mr. Well, he would love to sign for you anytime. "In the factory, I still read all the letters myself every day. If there is any customer dissatisfaction, even we do the cheapest products; I will contact this person who has dissatisfaction, and tell him, 'Look, I'm very sorry. But if you can bring your speakers to my factory, we will see what the problem is, and we also will show you around our factory facilities.' I'll take the man to lunch, and he can bring his family. So I may take 4, 5 people for lunch. Maybe this will loss us the profits from selling a dozen the most cheap products, but I always tell my men, 'Must sure that everyone is 100% satisfied when they leave our factory.'"