Marshall Amplification

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This article contains content that is written like an advertisement. (June 2018)

Marshall Amplification is a British company that designs and manufactures music amplifiers and speaker
cabinets. It was founded in London by drum shop owner and drummer, Jim Marshall, and is based in
Bletchley, Milton Keynes, England.[3] Since March 2023, Marshall Amplification is a division of the
Marshall Group, a Swedish company based in Stockholm.[2] The group has other divisions that use the
Marshall brand.

Marshall Amplification

Company type

Public limited company

Industry

Amplification

Musical instrument manufacturing

Founded

London, England (1962; 62 years ago)[1]

Founder

Jim Marshall
Headquarters

Milton Keynes, Stockholm

, England, Sweden

Area served

United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Europe, Asia, United States

Owner

Marshall Amplification PLC (1962-2013)

The Marshall Group (2023-present)[2]

Website

[Link]

A 3 × 6 stack of Marshall ModeFour guitar cabinets on the main stage of Tuska Open Air Metal Festival in
2008. This setup belonged to Jeff Hanneman of Slayer.

Marshall first designed its amplifiers in response to a complaint made in a visit to the company's drum
shop by Pete Townshend, guitarist for The Who, that the guitar amps then on the market did not have
the right sound or enough volume.[4] Many of the current and reissue Marshall guitar amplifiers
continue to use valves (tubes) rather than transistors, as is common in this market sector.[5] Marshall
Amplification also manufactures solid-state, hybrid (vacuum tube and solid state) and modelling
amplifiers.

History edit

Origins edit

Site of Jim Marshall's first shop, now a men's barber

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, 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.[6] 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.
First amplifiers: birth of the JTM45 edit

Main article: Marshall JTM45

Jim Marshall wanted someone to produce a cheaper alternative to American-made guitar amplifiers, but
as he had limited electrical-engineering experience he enlisted the help of his shop repairman, Ken Bran,
a Pan American Airways technician and Dudley Craven, an EMI apprentice. They most liked the sound of
the 4×10-inch Fender Bassman and made several prototypes using the Fender Bassman amplifier as a
model. The sixth prototype produced, in Marshall's words, the "Marshall Sound", although at this time
the only involvement Marshall had was to sell the amplifiers on a commission basis in his shop. As
business increased, Marshall asked the three to work for him in his shop, as he had more space and
capital to expand.[6]

The original idea was talked about late one Friday night in early 1963 in a Wimpy bar in Ealing in West
London by three amateur radio enthusiasts after they had been to their weekly Greenford radio club
meeting, Dudley Craven's call sign was G3PUN, Ken Bran's was G3UDC, and Ken Underwood's was
G3SDW. As of Dudley's death in 1998 and Bran's death in 2018, the only original individual is Ken
Underwood. The first six production units were assembled in the garden sheds of Bran, Craven, and
Underwood in the same year, in Heston, Hanwell and Hayes, all in West London. They were almost
copies of the Bassman circuit, with American military-surplus 5881 power valves, a relative of the 6L6.
Few speakers then were able to handle more than 15 watts,[citation needed] which meant that an
amplifier approaching 50 watts had to use multiple speakers to handle the power. For their Bassman,
Fender used four ten-inch Jensen speakers in the same cabinet as the amplifier, but Marshall chose to
separate the amplifier from the speakers, and placed four 12-inch Celestion speakers in a separate
closed-back cabinet instead of Fender's four 10-inch Jensens in an open-back combo. Other crucial
differences included the use of higher-gain ECC83 valves throughout the preamplifier, and the
introduction of a capacitor/resistor filter after the volume control. These circuit changes gave the amp
more gain so that it broke into overdrive sooner on the volume control than the Bassman, and boosted
the treble frequencies. This new amplifier, tentatively called the "Mark II", was eventually named the
"JTM 45", after Jim and his son Terry Marshall and the maximum wattage of the amplifier. Jimi Hendrix,
Eric Clapton, and other blues rock-based bands from the late 1960s such as Free used Marshall stacks
both in the studio and live on stage making them among the most sought after and most popular
amplifiers in the industry.

Distribution deal edit

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."[7]

Park amplification edit

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.
[8] 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.[9]

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.[8] 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.[9]

In 1982, Park came to an end, though Marshall later revived the brand for some transistor amplifiers
made in Asia.[8] The Parks made from the mid-1960s to around 1974 (the "golden years"), 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.[9]

Other Marshall brand names edit

Wall of Marshall Fridge: refrigerator products using Marshall brand.[10]

Other brand names Marshall Amplification had used for various business reasons included Big M (for the
then-West German market), Kitchen/Marshall (for the Kitchen Music retail chain in North London), Narb
(Ken Bran's surname spelled backwards) and CMI (Cleartone Musical Instruments). Amplifiers sold under
these brand names are quite rare, and sell to collectors at high prices.[11]

Blackstar edit
In 2007, a group of Marshall employees broke away to start Blackstar Amplification.