Jared James Nichols has announced that he as officially joined the likes of Slash, Billie Joe Armstrong and Yngwie Malmsteen on the Marshall artist roster.
There had been rumours that the burly manger of electric guitar strings, the resurrector of vintage Gibson Les Pauls, had made the switch. When photos emerged of Nichols with the unmistakable sight of the gold-panelled tube amps behind him, video footage on social media too, the affable blues guitar maestro, took to his Instagram to confirm the news was true.
“Over the past 24 hours I’ve received hundreds of messages about my current amplifier situation,” wrote Nichols. “So yes, it’s official: I’ve made the move to Marshall amps.”
Article continues belowNichols had hitherto been a long-time endorsee of Blackstar Amplification, developing a range of signature guitar amps with the British amp company, including the JJN-20RH MkII tube head and matching cabinet in racing green, and a combo amp version, then a signature JJN 3 practice amp, and the daddy of them all, the St James JJN50H, a 5o-watt head complete with Blues Power boost circuit.
Blackstar, which was launched in March 2007 at Musikmesse Frankfurt by alumni of Marshall amps, had been providing Nichols’ backline for over 14 years. And Nichols has always relied on the amp to be doing a lot of work. He’d close mic a Blackstar Artist 100, stick a Klon in front of it, add a little tape delay from an Echoplex and have at it.
Clearly, he felt the need for a change – or was it all that vintage gear he has been playing through lately that has turned his head
“Simply put, my heart beats for the roar of a cranked Plexi and a Gibson guitar,” he explained. “It just had to be.”
Time will tell whether Marshall is spec’ing him up a signature amp – but could there be a new signature guitar on the way from Gibson? A teaser video on Instagram suggests we might know the answer to that question on the 16th June. If it's not a guitar, it's going to be something coming soon to GibsonTV.
What we can say for sure is that Nichols’ new album, Louder Than Fate, will be out 5 June via Frontiers, and there are some smoking tones on it.
We’ll soon find out what he was playing through in the studio for, but judging by the video for Running Out, he’s got some sweet vintage Gibson electric guitars on the album. That three-humbucker Les Paul Custom with the Bigsby is a beaut.
And still, he’s ripping on them with no guitar picks. Nichols describes his fingerstyle approach – his brawny, ursine style – as akin to being a boxer.
“I came from that school of Leslie West, Stevie Ray Vaughan, early Clapton, all of that where it was very grab-you-by-the-throat guitar playing,” he said, speaking to MusicRadar in 2021.
In other words, it's going to get physical. Little wonder he took the Klon Centaur off his pedalboard.
