Jim went away to build his original idea and thus the Marshall stack was born. Pete’s suggestion was to simply cut the cab in half however due to the structure this was an impossible task. It only took a couple of weeks for Pete to return to the shop with his tail between his legs, stating that his roadies had found it very difficult to move the 8x12” cabinet and when he tried to help them out, he too found it almost impossible to move. This fell on deaf ears and Pete was insistent on having his big cab. Instead he suggested a straight-fronted 4x12” cabinet that the angled 4x12” cabinet could sit atop of. Jim knew that this cabinet would be incredibly heavy and told Pete that his roadies would not be happy having to carry it from stage to stage. Pete came into Jim’s shop shortly after the release of Jim’s first 100W amps and demanded a bigger cabinet to go with it, suggesting an 8x12”. Since Jim had released the JTM45 in 1962 customers were constantly demanding more power, with one of these vocal customers being the legendary guitarist Pete Townshend, a regular of Jim’s shop. That's never been a part of my playing style, interacting with a LOUD tube amp, but for some that's the holy grail of tone.It wasn’t until three years later in 1965 that the first Marshall stack was created. Also, these stacks were developed before the modern PA, as Kevy points out, and there is no reason to haul such oversize gear anymore.except that nothing moves a lot of air behind you except a bigger cabinet. I'd like to hear the other side from you guys that ARE Marshall players. I've always preferred Fender, whose Bassman amp Marshall intended to copy anyway, although the English components sounded different.but lots of great stuff was played on the Marshalls.the Who, Hendrix, Zep, etc.įirst off, is this guy in the video for real or is it a spoof? Hard to tell if he's goofing on the whole macho wall of amps thing.or not.ġ6 seconds in he swigs whiskey while doing repeating one-hand pull-off cliches.a boutique is a place that sells women's underwear, not where a man goes to buy a guitar amp.a "harmonic problem" caused by a well-done mod? As a guy that has been playing since 1972 in pro bands, I've never owned nor gigged with a Marshall.ANY Marshall. Marshall - Big Bob's Marshall Warehouse - YouTube The middle-aged guy in this video is the PERFECT example. In fact, the ONLY reason they still exist is so that people can live out their adolescent-boy fantasies. So the Marshall stack, while still a cool piece of Rock & Roll history, is completely obsolete nowadays. I saw Jeff Beck last year and he was playing through a 5 watt Fender Champ cranked all the way up and mic'ed through the PA system and he sounded HUGE! Tubes need to COOK to sound their best and the best way to do that is to use a low wattage amp and crank it. On top of that, a 5 watt amp turned up all the way has MUCH better tone than a 100 watt amp turned up to 2. ANY place that is big enough to require that kind of volume will have a good PA system to mic your amp through. The fact of the matter is that there is no longer an actually need for giant amps. It didn't take long before Clapton, Hendrix, Page and every other big guitarist of the day caught on and started using Marshall stacks.īut as time progressed and technology got better, so did PA systems which means that today, a tiny little practice amp mic'ed through the sound system will sound just as loud as a 6 foot tall stack. The Marshall "stack" was invented when Pete Townshend and John Entwistle of The Who went to Jim Marshall and asked him to make them custom 100 watt amps with 8 12" speakers because in those days, guitar amps were not mic'ed and they were starting to play bigger venues that required bigger amps to be heard.
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