Marshall has unveiled a special commemorative collection to celebrate Jimi Hendrix plugging into its guitar amps and changing the course of music history – and the fortunes of the brand itself.
The Hendrix 60th Anniversary Collection comprises a hand-wired 1969 JMH Super Lead-style tube amp head, partnered with a matching hand-wired 4x12, featuring a commemorative badge and a black-and-purple cosmic swirl finish, to which you can put a matching limited run Dunlop Fuzz Face fuzz pedal in front of and have at it.
The collection also includes a special cosmic purple swirl Hendrix signature edition Acton III Bluetooth speaker.
“We built the amps, Hendrix made them scream,” says Marshall. “From the moment Hendrix plugged into a Marshall guitar amplifier in ’66, they became an unstoppable creative force.”
Look at any archive footage of Hendrix – at Woodstock, Maui, Monterey, Atlanta – and behind him would be a this black tower, the Marshall Super Lead head sitting on a pair of 4x12 speaker cabinets.
It is an indelible image, and it helped put Marshall on the map.
“Jimi was a formidable musician, a real force of nature,” says Terry Marshall, co-founder, Marshall Amplification. “He took everything to a new level and carried everybody with him. When he played, it was an emotional time for everybody because everyone was thinking, if he can do it, I could maybe do it.”
Seeing Hendrix inspired new players to pick up the electric guitar. Seeing Hendrix with banks of Marshall stacks behind him, well, that made players want a Marshall, and Terry Marshall believes there can be no questioning how important Hendrix was to the Marshall story.
“It was a really special time for us all and there’s no doubt that we grew with him and his fame, it was a natural tie-up,” he says. “The rest is history as they say.”
The tones (and the volume) coming out of the 1959 JMH and its matching speaker will be familiar. It is built in the same spirit as the original Super Leads that Hendrix et al played back in the day. But it looks very different.
The black-and-purple swirl on the control panel and matching grill cloth speak to Hendrix’s psychedelic sound (and his love of psychedelics). The LED even illuminates purple.
“From his fashion to his lyrics and of course, his music, there are so many different stories we could tell when it comes to Hendrix,” says Emma Rydahl, senior industrial designer, Marshall Group. “We started with materials and pattern exploration, looking at different fabrics and running test prints with a psychedelic track in mind. We spent a lot of time adjusting the final design to get it just right across the whole collection.”
The Acton III speaker, which is officially available to order from 14 May, priced $299, even has a plush crushed velvet covering – it's like they made it out of an old jacket from Jimi Hendrix's wardrobe.
The rest of the Hendrix 60th Anniversary Collection is available to now, with the half-stack and Fuzz Face bundle priced $4,999. See Marshall for more details.
