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 ...
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.
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