As Clapton and Hendrix clearly demonstrated, an electric guitar plugged into a wall of dimed Plexis is the definitive sound of classic rock.
Posted on 04/05/2012 7:02:18 AM PDT by Drew68
The man who gave rock one of its key visual and sonic props has died. Jim Marshall, known as "The Father of Loud" for inventing the Marshall amplifier, was 88 years old.
Marshall was a drummer and drum teacher who used his earnings to set up a music shop in west London in 1960. Among his customers were the likes of Ritchie Blackmore and Pete Townshend, and it was through talking to them that Marshall realised there was a gap in the market for a guitar amplifier cheaper than the American-made models popular at the time. When, at Townshend's request, a Marshall 1959 amplifier head was teamed with a cabinet, the "Marshall stack" was born, becoming the defining feature in rock bands' backlines for generations to come.
Virtually every major guitarist has used Marshall amps at one time or another, and giant arrays of Marshall cabs – often suggested to be empty boxes, with no actual amplification purposes – have become key stage props for generations of metal bands, especially.
Among the musicians paying their respects to the late innovator was former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash, who tweeted: "The news of Jim Marshall passing is deeply saddening. R & R will never be the same w/out him. But, his amps will live on FOREVER!"
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
As Clapton and Hendrix clearly demonstrated, an electric guitar plugged into a wall of dimed Plexis is the definitive sound of classic rock.
I have worn several out in another life.
LLS
The accostic set in heaven has just ended!
"I said, REST IN PEACE AND THANKS FOR ALL THE MEMORIES!!!"
"What? I can't hear you... Let me turn this down a bit..."
"It goes to 11."
The accostic set in heaven has just ended!
Did you turn them up to 11? I knew this electronics guy who got his start soldering wires for Apollo rockets and NASA. His name (I think he’s still around) was/is John “Dawk” Stillwell of Freeville NY. He had his own business called Dawk Sound Limited. He specialized in amp mods. Ritchie Blackmore, Keith Emerson, and Chris Squires were among his clientele. Back in the ‘70’s Jim Marshall even came stateside to see what Dawk was doing to his amplifiers. Many of the mods became production items.
Ping to you for the FR headbangers’ ping list.
Dammit that was my line!
So, why not just make 10 the highest number.......
I'm proud to own a British-made Dual Super Lead 50 watt.
One day I'll convince my wife that I really need a 100 watt plexi full stack in the bedroom. That's my dream anyways!
A number of years ago a young woman told me she had gone to a rock concert over the weekend. “Was it good?” I asked. “Oh yeah,” she replied, “We had blood coming out of our ears!”
Isn’t he the guy who ran 70 yards the wrong way for the Minnesota Vikings?
The inventor of Marshall Law??
RIP Mr. Marshall, you created a well designed product albeit with the known limitations an amp/speaker for audio generation.
A pipe organ can run at full volume all day long with ZERO distortion which cannot be said of ANY amp/speaker combination as there is always some inter-modulation distortion.
Unfortunately there are a few instruments a Theater Organ cannot play/emulate and one of those very few is a guitar.
With a 10HP blower I have the potential of well over 7000 watts of distortion free sound.
Loved Rock before the electronic guitar and the DELIBERATE distortion introduced by the Fuzz Box.
Also, the beloved “Wall Of Sound” is only wonderful for hiding the voices of humans and individual instruments be they good or bad voices.
But as anyone who has seen a McDonalds/Burger King/Microsoft bottom line, mediocrity can be very profitable.
“So, why not just make 10 the highest number.......”
But.... these go to 11!
The hearing aid industry owes this man an enormous debt.
RIP Mr. Marshall.
He died and went to 11...
“A pipe organ can run at full volume all day long with ZERO distortion which cannot be said of ANY amp/speaker combination as there is always some inter-modulation distortion.”
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the buildings housing the organ. I swear I saw St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NY shake when they hit the low notes. :)
R.I.P. Jim Marshll.
Marshall was no doubt the definitive guitar amp. Sunn made the first bass guitar amp that couldn’t be drowned out by the Marshalls and Fenders. Now Sunn is just part of the Fender empire.
http://jarod-rhoades.suite101.com/the-legendary-sunn-amplifier-and-its-origins-a350306
Ladies and Gents, we have a winnah!!!
“Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the buildings housing the organ. I swear I saw St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NY shake when they hit the low notes. :)”
I remember hearing about them... they changed the preamp system and had a few more mods that could be performed. Seems like one of their mods was a built in attenuator to get the overdrive sound at lower levels for small clubs. Man... that was a long time ago!
LLS
Nice collection! Mine lost that look after a few months... the harder we beat them the better that they sounded!
LLS
RIP.
Prayers up... RIP Mr. Marshall
Marshall ping
It's a 3203 Artist 30 head. 2 EL84 power tubes and a solid state preamp section. IIRC the cabinet is was paired with was a small 4x10 instead of the more traditional 4x12 cabinet. I think at the time in 1987/1988 it was under $400.
But what makes Marshall amplifiers great is their distortion sound. And all but the very earliest Marshall amps were designed very intentionally to distort. It wasn't just the result of technical limitations.
The hybrid Artist series heads have a good reputation these days. They were mostly overlooked until the JCM800s started becoming collectible and people started looking for less expensive alternatives.
They had a great cranked sound at lower volumes, and ironically they pulled this off pretty handily with the technology back in the mid 80s than the hybrids of today.
"My name's Bob Fliber!"
"Bob, what do you do?"
"I'm in artillery!"
"Thank you, Bob. Can we play anything for you?"
"Anything! Just play it loud! Okay?"
Yeah, a Marshall stack is a far cry from a clean powered sound reinforcement rack with four-way electronic crossover, four stereo amps and subwoofers, 15's, upper mid cabs and horns...
and a tech with half a brain watching the clip lights.
“But what makes Marshall amplifiers great is their distortion sound. “
I grew up with Hi-Fi and Stereo systems where you did everything possible to eliminate distortion to reproduce the sound of the original instruments.
There were a bunch of dope smokin hippys who equated distortion with very high decibels as that is what you got when you ran the gain up higher than the amp/speaker could handle.
A lot of money was and continues to be spent on questionable music with almost unlimited distortion and the sound of real instruments is completely lost.
Fortunately in our society we can choose what we spend our money on, (at least until Odumbo tells us what music to buy) and there is enough choices for all of us.
Distortion??? No thanks it is like pencils in my ears. I like the occasional very loud music, which the pipe organ or orchestra, or band can deliver in almost unlimited db Levels with no distortion whatsoever.
“But what makes Marshall amplifiers great is their distortion sound. “
I grew up with Hi-Fi and Stereo systems where you did everything possible to eliminate distortion to reproduce the sound of the original instruments.
There were a bunch of dope smokin hippys who equated distortion with very high decibels as that is what you got when you ran the gain up higher than the amp/speaker could handle.
A lot of money was and continues to be spent on questionable music with almost unlimited distortion and the sound of real instruments is completely lost.
Fortunately in our society we can choose what we spend our money on, (at least until Odumbo tells us what music to buy) and there is enough choices for all of us.
Distortion??? No thanks it is like pencils in my ears. I like the occasional very loud music, which the pipe organ or orchestra, or band can deliver in almost unlimited db Levels with no distortion whatsoever.
“But what makes Marshall amplifiers great is their distortion sound. “
I grew up with Hi-Fi and Stereo systems where you did everything possible to eliminate distortion to reproduce the sound of the original instruments.
There were a bunch of dope smokin hippys who equated distortion with very high decibels as that is what you got when you ran the gain up higher than the amp/speaker could handle.
A lot of money was and continues to be spent on questionable music with almost unlimited distortion and the sound of real instruments is completely lost. For example, remember you cannot spell crap without rap.
Fortunately in our society we can choose what we spend our money on, (at least until Odumbo tells us what music to buy) and there is enough choices for all of us.
Distortion??? No thanks it is like pencils in my ears. I like the occasional very loud music, which the pipe organ or orchestra, or band can deliver in almost unlimited db Levels with no distortion whatsoever.
Sorry for the double post but the laptop crashed just as I was posting this.
Anyway, regarding amps/speakers and distortion. The only way you can amplify and reproduce an audio signal without distortion is to have a perfectly linear system. Any non-linear component will create distortion and the more non-linear the greater the distortion.
As of this date, there are no amps/speaker systems on the market that are completely linear although they have come damned close and more than likely the distortion is below what a real human can detect. Some who believe in gas filled cables or gold escutcheon screws will claim they can hear it but it is highly unlikely.
Even in the high end systems, when you push up the volume level you start clipping (a very bad non-linear condition) and yuck starts to happen.
Distortion just changes the roughly sinusoidal output of a guitar to a square or triangle wave. These are the same waveforms created by reed instruments and bowed strings. The original fuzzboxes were incredibly harsh and primitive sounding but modern distortion devices are extremely musical and give the guitar a nice sustaining quality, allowing the player to play the same lines that a horn or strings player can play. You mentioned that a pipe organ can replicate the sounds of some other instruments. In principle this seems to be same thing that guitarists are doing with distortion.
You seem to have enjoyed using this thread as a forum to bash rock and roll music as well as the people who listen to it. Your opinion notwithstanding, rock music was for fifty years the dominant genre of music in popular culture taking off in the early 1950s and only recently being replaced by rap/hip-hop in terms of popularity.
An overdriven electric guitar was the primary instrument in this genre. Rock is not rock unless the guitar is distorted and this is where Jim Marshall was such an important force. You see, the electric guitar is actually a system of two components, each useless without the other. There is the instrument itself and there is the amplifier. To say the amplifier masks the "real" sound of the guitar makes absolutely no sense. The amplifier is as much a part of the "real" sound of an electric guitar as the pieces of wood and strings slung over the player's shoulder.
Distortion??? No thanks it is like pencils in my ears.
Thanks for sharing. Me? I like the sound of Gibson Les Pauls plugged into dimed Marshall Plexis. There is nothing else like it.
Make no mistake like that other pompous guy on this thread, I know my taste in music is no longer main stream.
Funny you should mention reeds and their waveform as they are my least favorite pipes in the organ. They can (not all) have a buzz to them. A free reed clarinet is as smooth as velvet.
You are correct in that my ears prefer a rounded sinusoidal wave form so typical of many acoustic instruments.
Regarding Rock & Roll, it did exist before the electric guitar and I loved it. It lost me with heavy metal and the wailing of something akin to a tuned dentist drill and the obnoxious Wall of Sound.
Mediocrity has succeeded big time in so many fields of endeavor.
Popularity does not always equal high quality. EG: McDonalds, Microsoft, RAP...
Anyway enough thread drift. Cheers.
It's kinda funny how everything is cyclical. In the 1980-90s, you couldn't give non-master volume Plexis away. Everyone wanted JCM800s. Now I'm seeing 50 watt JCM800 single-channel heads going used for $700 (and knock a couple hundred more off dual channel JCM800 heads) while original '67-'69 Plexis are commanding $3-$4k if not more.
Lots of good deals to be had on those mid-70s JMP models as well --except that so many of them have been modded. Some for the better, others not so much. It's kinda a crapshoot.
You chime in repeatedly on a thread discussing the passing of Jim Marshall to compare the sound of overdriven guitars to dentist drills and that you prefer pipe organs. Yet I'm the one who's pompous?
Thanks for sharing.
Sad news to the Metal ping list.
Wow as a proud owner of much Marshall gear I give my heart felt condolences to the Marshall Family.
He was a true visionary of the sonic tapestry of Rock-N-Roll. Thank you Jim for your great contributions to the musical world of heavy metal, blues, etc.
Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels refused to go on after they heard us. So, they rented our speakers for the night.
Nobody could hold a candle to us for loudness. Best part, we could sing.
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