Jim Marshall was a remarkable man. He was a great drummer of the big band era in England and, moreover, an entrepreneur of the first rank in a very anti-entrepreneurial place and time-post WWII England. He had a very successful line of drum and general music stores and music education and out of his drum schools came a lot of notable drummers.

But he didn’t know fo’c’sl from futtock plate about electronics. Neither did Ken Bran, they had to hire a tech school kid to successfully build a copy of the Fender amp out of parts available on the British surplus market, because Fender was difficult to deal with for foreign customers. This grew until Marshall rivalled Fender for sales worldwide.

But he knew how to listen to his customer base. He packaged his stuff the way his customers wanted it and he was willing to not cheese out on his build costs. Minor flaws aside, his stuff held up and it gave the customer what he wanted. ou can’t ask for more than that.