MARSHALL BY NUMBERS
1 A DO-IT-ALL VALVE PREAMP FOR THE 90S
The JMP-1 valve preamp, launched in 1992, was a child of the rackmount era. It featured four channels, two clean and two dirty, and was (natch) MIDI programmable. A pair of 12AX7 valves provided the tonal authority, but the JMP-1 also featured OD1 and OD2 modes – which offered vintage and tight, modern drive voices respectively – plus a stereo effects loop, speaker emulation and a Bass Shift function that altered the low-end voicing. It was a bestseller, and stadium giants Def Leppard and Billy Gibbons, who routed one or more JMP-1s into a Marshall 120/120 Valvestate power amp, were among the well-known players who racked up hits with the JMP-1, which could be combined with Marshall’s EL84-based 20/20 single-rack unit power amp (which provided 20+20 watts of stereo output) for an ultra-compact, all-valve rack rig.
3 THE NUMBER OF MARSHALL STACKS HENDRIX FIRST BOUGHT
Jimi Hendrix was only just finding his feet as the rising star of the London scene in 1966. Author Rich Maloof notes in his excellent reference book that Hendrix was chagrined to discover he couldn’t bring the Fender amp he ordinarily used because the space was already taken up by multiple Marshall head-and-cab rigs used by other guitarists on the bill. So Mitch Mitchell duly brought Jimi down to Jim Marshall’s shop where he bought “three stacks”, according to Jim’s recollections, which were intended to be shipped to different continents so Jimi had one on hand at all times when
