Jim Marshall, creator of famed rock 'n' roll amplifiers, dies at 88 [link]

[eye2i2hear]

latimes.com Wrote:
Jim Marshall, creator of famed rock 'n' roll amplifiers, dies at 88

Marshall died Thursday in an English hospice after suffering from cancer and several severe strokes, his son Terry Marshall told the Associated Press.

http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/scimedemail/la-me-jim-marshall-20120406,0,1105011.story

Quote:Jim Marshall is shown with a selection of his amplifiers. Although some bands used empty cabinets on stage to give the illusion of more musical firepower, he said: “It would be stupid to use more than three 100-watt amps, wherever and whoever you are.” (Robert Knight Archive / Redferns / January 1, 2000)
...
From the Who, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix in the 1960s on through Peter Frampton, Van Halen, AC/DC, Motley Crue, Guns N' Roses and Nirvana in succeeding decades, the cursive "Marshall" emblazoned on the speakers has served as an inescapable backdrop signature.

The Marshall stack was so much larger than life that it lent itself to excess as well. The famous amp in the mockumentary "Spinal Tap" with a unique setting of 11 on the dial was a Marshall, and no rock image was more over-the-top than that of KISS' four members performing in front of some 40 Marshall cabinets.

Of course, they didn't need that many.

"Hendrix used three 100-watt amps and three stacks," their inventor Jim Marshall once said. "KISS go a lot further, but most of the cabinets and amps you see on stage are dummies. We once built 80 dummy cabinets for Bon Jovi. They all do it — it's just backdrop."

[Bruce Sloane]

I still have my 1971 SL 100, in White ....

dam, it's LOUD

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too bad I didn't buy a used Plexi at the time

[eye2i2hear]

[anecdotal]

My younger brother attended the NAMM Show (National Association of Music Merchants) in 1997. These of course are the who's who events in the music equipment Industry. He commented about seeing guys like, for an example he mentioned specifically, Peter Frampton being amongst the participants, with significant lines of autograph seekers in most areas. But he said the longest line of all, and it was a noticeably, comparatively, long one, was at the Marshall area, where Jim Marshall himself was signing autographs.


[sidebar: white Marshalls?! blasphemy! haha, j/k. actually,dummy me! I had never noticed over all these years that Marshalls came in colors (and mine, a black one bought used and long since sold, was a circa '70s as well) and was surprised when I saw the subsequently posted pix of Mr Marshall with all those colors; can I blame it on the drugs? (Mr Marshall, along with the likes of Van Halen still get the rap for the tinnitus... well, along with my subsequent Twin & Mesa Boogie)]