I've always been a British guitar / bass amp guy, so this is a big loss to the music world. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...ication-dies/2012/04/05/gIQAzUJGxS_story.html LONDON — Jim Marshall, who helped shape the sound of rock and roll with his groundbreaking amplifier designs, has died. He was 88. His son Terry Marshall said he died in a hospice in England on Thursday morning after suffering from cancer and several severe strokes. Jim Marshall was known throughout the music world for founding Marshall Amplification, which produced the amplifiers that rocked music halls and arenas after their introduction in 1960. Photographs from the era show many of rock’s most illustrious guitarists performing in front of stacks of Marshall amplifiers. Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page and others were drawn to the rough, loud sound produced by the English-made amps.
I met him once. As deaf as could be - for obvious reasons. Always took his wife around with him to translate. You would say something and then she would scream the same thing into his ear. Classic...
Amy Winehouse dies: Hundreds of posts, tons of pages on the thread for a drug-abusing self-destroying person that wasn't even relevant anymore. People here defend her drug abuse and everything, saying how beautiful and important she was. Jim Marshall dies: Under five responses in one day for one of the biggest icons in rock 'n' roll that changed the sound of the genre for all time. Shame on this world.
My first guitar amp was a 100 watt 1979 Marshall non-master volume Super Lead that had 6550 power tubes in it and had an extra preamp tube added (badly, I might say). I got it used for $350 from some guy in Katy during Christmas Break 1994. I could barely make the drive home to Kingwood - I was that excited. I was listening to a lot of Minor Threat at that time, and they used the same vintage of Marshalls as the one I had just picked up. Of course, like most Marshalls, it basically sounded best when it was turned up all the way. Because I lived in the dorms at UH at the time, that wasn't an option most of the time. But during Spring Break 1995, and friend and I dragged the amp up to the ballroom above Oberholtzer Hall at UH, put it in the supply closet, cranked it to 10 and then used it oto record some terrible punk songs on a cassette 4-track. I could barely play guitar at the time, but that amp made me (and my friend) sound huge. Later that year, I ran my roommates stereo through the amp and cranked it during "noise hour" (the one hour prior to the 24 hour quiet rules that accompanied exam time - during noise hour, you could make as much noise and turn up your stereo as loud as you wanted). It was so loud, it actually made the RA break down and cry because she was worried she'd be disciplined for letting noise hour "get out of control." She didn't, BTW. Ultimately, it was too much amp for my needs and I traded it for an old Fender Deluxe Reverb. That's no reflection on how much I loved that amp (or validation of CaseyH's ill-timed comparison of Marshall and Leo Fender). Hopefully, some dumb kid who knew "most" of the power chords picked it up and used it to give himself tinnitus. Just like I did. I try not to be too materialistic, but there are things whose ownership spawns experiences on which I can't put a value. That Marshall amp was one of those things. So I'm raising my beer and toasting Jim Marshall for making rock and roll that much more fun. One more funny story - the summer after I got the amp, I joined a band whose guitarist had a jubilee Marshall that he had tricked out and modified. He went on and on about how his amp was the best Marshall he had ever heard. So the next practice, I brought my Marshall and asked if I could play a little guitar too. We were the kind of band that always played with the amps cranked, and that's what we did. Now Marshall Jubilees are damn good amps (that's what Slash used, after all), but even with all the mods, the other guitarist's Jubilee couldn't even remotely compete volume-wise with my Marshall. It was kind of like the rock equivalent of that scene in Never Back Down where the Capoeira guy gets hammered. After that practice, the other guitarist asked if he could use my Marshall at our first gig. Of course, I said yes - you just can't keep a Marshall like that all to yourself.
