It all started when a drum shop owner couldn’t get rid of three pesky guitarists. If it weren’t for those meddling kids and their gosh-darned guitars, Jim Marshall might have made a name for himself selling drums. The pesky guitarists in question—Ritchie Blackmore, Big Jim Sullivan [the subject of PG’s February 2013 Forgotten Heroes feature], and Pete Townshend—were dissatisfied with their rigs. They yearned for more volume, more distortion, and the right sound. Marshall’s success in addressing those needs sealed the Lord of Loud’s legacy and forever changed the world of guitars and music.

In the early 1960s, after deciding to build handwired amps that rivaled Fender’s current stock, Marshall and his two closest cohorts—Ken Bran, a shop repairman, and Dudley Craven, an 18-year-old apprentice—began building Fender amp clones that used 5881 power tubes. Other small changes included Celestion 15-watt speakers compared to Fender’s preference for Jensen 15-watt models. After working with higher-gain preamp tubes—like the ECC83—and learning how different filters and capacitors had a transformative impact on the tone, Marshall heard a sound he knew guitarists would crave. Thus was born the iconic JTM45—which got its initials from Marshall’s son Jim Terry Marshall. A few years later, Marshall switched to KT66 tubes to create the even louder 100-watt Super Lead 1959. In 1968, the company dialed back the decibels with the unveiling of a 50-watt, small-box head that would be called the JMP—an acronym for “Jim Marshall Products.”