It is 60 years since the late Jimi Hendrix first plugged into a Marshall, turned it up and sent guitar spinning on a different axis, and the British guitar amp company is continuing its anniversary celebrations with a custom half-stack, headphones and a Bluetooth speaker.
All come in purple-and-black cosmic swirl, with silver details and commemorative badging, and for players who thought the hand-wired 1969 JMH Super Lead tube amp head launched in May was maybe too much of a fire-breather in this day and age, the more moderately powered 20-watt Hendrix 60th Anniversary JMH Studio Edition is a more portable – and more house-trainable – proposition.
A word of caution, though: 20-watts of tube power (a pair of EL34s do the grunt work under the hood) is still l-o-u-d, but this amp is switchable down to 5-watts.
This amp is all made at Marshall’s Bletchley factory, in the UK, and comes bundled with a matching 2x12 cab loaded with Celestion V12s, with both featuring a third eye badge. Another cool detail is the purple LED.
Elsewhere, it’s very much the Studio Vintage Plexi vibe we know and love – a downsized 1959SLP with two bridgeable channels, controls for Presence, Bass, Middle, Treble, High Treble and Normal.
Around the back you will find a series effects loop – hey, the originals did not have that – plus 16, 8 and 4-ohms speaker connections and a DI output, too.
You can check out how all this sounds in the demo video featuring Texan rock and blues guitar phenom Ally Venable above.
Janie Hendrix says it is incumbent on today’s generation of players to take the torch from her brother and reinvent the electric guitar their own way.
“Jimi was always searching for a sound that did not yet exist, pushing beyond what anyone thought an electric guitar could do,” she says. “Marshall gave him the power and freedom to turn those bold ideas into a sound the world had never heard before. Sixty years later, that connection between Jimi and Marshall still speaks to new generations of musicians who are pushing creative boundaries and searching for their own sound”
Also included in this release is a special edition Emberton III Bluetooth speaker and a set of foldable Royal V headphones.
These are available now direct from Marshall, priced £149 and £129 respectively, and from other retailers from September 9. The JMH Studio Bundle ships from September 9 and is priced £1,749. US prices TBC.
For more details head over to Marshall.
