Author: chris

What greater visual icon for the mythic virility and power of the circa-1970 Rock-Star than the “Marshall Stack?”

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Jim Marshall was a drum-shop keeper in London in the mid-60’s who began cloning the 1959 Fender Bassman amplifier in order to give British Musicians the popular American-Amplifer sound they wanted at a lower price made possible by domestic UK manufacture.

By around 1968 he had arrived at the classic Marshall formula of a simple Fender-derived circuit using 4x EL34 output tubes, Drake transformers, and a head unit sitting atop 2 large sealed cabinets each holding four 12-inch speakers.  It is the use of the EL34 tubes (rather than Fender’s 6L6s) , with their greater power and gain, along with the ‘tight’ bass response afforded by the large speakers in the sealed boxes, that are most responsible for the ‘Marshall’ sound.

It is said that Pete Townsend was the impetus for the large human-height ‘stack’ aspect of the amplifier.  The form of these things certainly suggests the huge volumes of sound/noise that they can produce.    A great many bands used the ‘Marshall Stack’ in the 1970’s.

Nowadays, the ‘Marshall Stack’ is generally only used by true hard-rock and Metal bands, as well as the occasional ironic user.  Well, maybe ironic.  Who knows.

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Today we will look at some early 70’s Marshall promotional material from the PS pile/archive.

Click on the link to download the entire 20-page 1971 full-line catalog: Marshall_1971_cat

Some circa 1970 Marshall oddities.  I have never come across any of these for sale anywhere.  Anyone?

20-channel Marshall ‘festival’ mixer.

400-watt Marshall PA rig circa 1971.  The Mixer unit actually had some pretty intelligent features for the day, like a 2-watt headphone amp with a simple single  knob to cue any individual channel or the mix buss.

And who used this stuff?  Joe Cocker, apparently.

Marshall even marketed a Microphone at the time. The Model 3700.  Looks shitty. It is nearly impossible to research this unit due to the fact that an entire line of Marshall (no relation) Mics is currently being made.  Killer mic box, tho.

….And don’t forget the Marshal Super-Sound T-shirt.  Wow.  What can you say about this ad.  Note that only small and medium are on offer.

The Marshall Artist does turn up from time to time.  I could get into one of these.  Seems to be like a BluesBreaker plus reverb.

We’ll close this out with a couple of original pricelists:  USA 1972 and Germany 1974.   A reality check:  the ‘stack’ of a 100-watt head plus 2 4×12 cabs was listed at $1600 in 1972. This equals $8629.69 in current US currency.  Even allowing for usual 40% retail price deduction, that was still a $5000 amp.  Good lord.

MXR Innovations began making their first product, the Phase 90 phase-shift pedal, in the early 1970s.

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Phase-shift is an audio effect which adds a gentle ‘swirl-y’ motion to a sound.   The sound of a clean electric guitar picking through a chord progression with a phase-shift effect is one of the truly definitive sounds of 70’s rock music.  Listen to the rhythm guitar part in this long-haired chestnut and you will hear what I am talking about.

MXR did not invent the phase-shift effect, but their Phase-90 did more to popularize it than any of its predecessors.  MXR’s real ‘innovation’ was the high-quality, small physical size and indestructible nature of the device.  In contrast, previous phase-shift pedals tended to be bulky, noisy, and not especially durable.

BTW, the MXR phase 90 is still made today, 40 years later; and it is still in wide use.  MXR Innovations no longer exists as a corporate entity; the brand-name and trademark were sold in the 1980s to the Jim Dunlop Corp, who now manufacture Phase 90 pedals in various subtle varieties.

A book could be written on the history of MXR, and it is not my intent here to share that long and fascinating story.  If you are interested in the details, I highly recommend Tom Hughes’ excellent book “Analogman’s Guide to Vintage Effects,” which features candid long-form interviews with a few of MXR’s founders.  This book is a must-read for anyone who uses audio-effect processors in their work.  Thorough and essential.

Anyhow, let’s just take a moment to celebrate the incredible and powerful industrial design and graphic design of the iconic MXR brand.  In a previous post, I included a scan of one of the early MXR ads.  It still looks beautiful and evocative today, 35 years later.  Everything that these guys did in the 70’s was done with care and attention to detail. Consider these c.1980 MXR dealer-support materials, including a full scan of the circa 1980 full-line catalog (16pp).

DOWNLOAD THE FULL CATALOG: MXR_c1980_catalog

From the Hughes book, in the words of MXR founder and Phase 90 creator Keith Barr (later, founder of Alesis (!)):

“I mean, to me, MXR was an art project.  Yeah, it was a business, and yeah there was the little game to see how cheap we could make a unit, but still make it reliable…Richard was the guy who was really into the sound, I was the guy who was into clever design, Tony was the guy who was into digital circuitry, and all of us were into…that’s why they ended up calling there company ART, A-R-T.  We had this idea collectively that what we were doing was an artistic expression; it was the way this thing was packaged, the way it looked, the way it felt- all these little things made up what it is” (Hughes, 234).

Oh yeah… in case you were wondering… not only did Barr go on to create Alesis (the company that literally changed the world of home-recording forever with it’s ADAT digital 8-track),  the other MXR designers Richard Neatour and Tony Gambacurta created ART, arguably the most innovative guitar effects company of the 1980s and 1990s; and Mike Laiacona, MXR’s first salesman, created Whirlwind, which is still one of the major forces in meat-and-potatoes basic pro-audio hardware.  Incredible.