Built to Perform
Right now, the all-valve Origin series is giving a new generation of road warriors reliable tone under the toughest of conditions. Here’s how Marshall became a byword for indestructible…
Indestructible is not the first word you’d traditionally associate with valve amps. As any hard-gigging young band will tell you, the demanding slog of the modern circuit – with its knocks, prangs, spills and intense studio sessions – can leave lessermade valve models in pieces. But not if you’re plugging into a Marshall.
It’s like Lemmy said,” reflects Product Director Luke Green. “Old Marshalls never die, they just blow your head off. And it’s true. One of Marshall’s biggest competitors globally is ourselves, and that’s because our products just go on and on. That’s part of our reputation. We’re always thinking of the bands in vans, doing it for real.”
From the start, when Pete Townshend demanded an amp that could survive The Who’s auto-destruction, Jim Marshall lived by the twin values of tone and muscle. And it’s an ethos that runs right the way through to the all-valve Origin series, launched in 2018 and now riding shotgun with upcoming acts including The Big Moon, Mallory Knox, Keywest and James Bay’s sideman Andy Cortes.
“We were getting ready to go out on tour with Slaves,” recalls Alex Deadman of hot-tip post-punk trio Lady Bird, “and I needed something bigger, with some real power, because we were playing
2,000-capacity venues, which we’d never done before. I plugged into the Origin 50 head and literally within 30 seconds, I was like, ‘This is the amp I’ve been waiting for.’
“All the jacks feel great, all the knobs feel great. It just feels like a quality product, like nothing been skimped on. It’s been on stages, off stages, thrown in the back of vans – and not a single issue.”
It might have the build quality of a tank, but don’t dismiss the Origin as a blunt instrument. This sleek new generation of vintage/modern heads and combos offer all the features that a post-millennial band demands, while tipping a hat to the founding principles of Marshall construction. “The Origin series goes back to the roots of the firm,” explains Green. “It’s a straightforward, classic-functioning amp, like the 1959. Because people want those simpler products that are workhorse amps. You plug them in, you play them, you dial in your sound – and very often, that’s it, forever.”
When it comes to the idiot-proof Origin series, the biggest conundrum is choosing your weapon. Perhaps you’ll pick out the Origin5 combo, which punches above its weight with a useful 5-watt output and Celestion Eight 15 8-inch speaker. You might power up with the Origin20C, whose 20-watt grunt roars through a Celestion V-Type speaker; or take the roof off with the Origin50C, which delivers 50 watts of valve-flavoured muscle via a room-shaking Celestion Midnight 60 12-inch speaker.
Combos aren’t the only option. Come out to play with the Origin20H or Origin50H – two all-powerful valve heads that stack direct onto the dedicated Origin series 212 or 412 cabinets, for tones that pin your crowd to the back wall.
With the tonal thumbprint supplied by the classic pairing of ECC83 and EL34 valves, the Origin has the signature Marshall roar in spades. (“That valve combination is a big part of the sound,” says Green, “and an ingredient that had to be in there.”) But on the flipside, this series is proving a big hit with stompbox fans. “The Origin is what we call a pedal product,” says Jon Ellery. “A lot of guitarists will go out and buy an amp and 15 pedals to go with it. So we decided, ‘Why don’t we design an amp that’s made for that purpose, using today’s technology and modern design – but still using valves?’
“That’s why it’s called Origin: it’s going back to the original. The look of it, the feel of it, it’s got a bit of a vintage vibe – but it’s contemporary as well. We’ve developed a product that modern musicians can use.”
It’s a concept that has leapt from the drawing board to the stage, with the Origin’s blank-canvas possibilities being explored by countless upcoming bands. “With my Origin50 head,” says Deadman, “I run it with a clean sound and then all my effects are put on with my pedals. What I’m really looking for is just a nice, bitey clean sound – and the Origin does that really well.
“I’ve got a three-amp setup. So I’ve got my Origin 50 head as my main channel – and then I’ve got a bass channel and a delay channel that just does the slap-back delay. That gives it the thickness, because we’ve got no bass player, so I’m trying to fill up those sorts of spaces, being a guitar player and a bass player at the same time. So the Origin50 is sort of like the staple of the sound, really. It’s the main guitar sound. I used it on the Slaves tour, and I did twoand-a-half weeks with that amp, playing it every night.”
The Origin has plenty of aces up its sleeve. Take the groundbreaking Marshalltrademarked Powerstem feature, which lets players find the tonal sweet-spot in every scenario. “Powerstem is designed to provide the same tone and feel, regardless of what volume you’re playing at,” explains Green. “There are various other ways that you can achieve power reduction.
“Traditionally, one way of doing it is to switch out a stage of the valve to reduce the power. This does work – but then it adjusts the sound of the amp, and you lose some of the tone. Or you had to get an attenuator box that you’d plug the head into before it goes to the cabinet, to reduce the power. But then you’d have to redial, you’d have to adjust. You’d see people with marker pens, marking on the front panels of their amps, saying, ‘Well, I need these settings when I’m playing in a club-sized room…’
“Our Powerstem technology adjusts the power to the valves, rather than dropping the stage of the valve out. So it keeps the tone the same – and, more importantly for guitarists, it keeps the feel the same when you’re playing. With the Origin, you could be practising in your bedroom or a small studio space at low power, then you can go onto the stage, turn the power to the higher wattage – and you know it’s going to feel and sound the same.”
Then there’s the seamless tone-shaping of the Tilt control. “On the old 1959,” explains Green, “you’d have the high and low inputs, and you were able to jump the two channels together to get a mix of two sounds. Essentially, the Tilt control on the Origin lets you physically control that blend using the pot.
“That was something we felt was important – to have all those possibilities, but simplify it so you’re not using patch leads and jumping things over. It’s just an easy control that’s totally intuitive.”
“Those features are so useful,” nods Deadman, “because if you’re rehearsing in small spaces, you can limit the output. But you’ve just got so much headroom in that high setting to put any effects in, and the amp just deals with it. It’s got the room to manoeuvre within that. That’s why I’m on that high setting – I just love being loud!”
All those brainwaves would be nothing, however, if the Origin misfired in the heat of the gig. Like every other amp in Marshall’s catalogue, the bombproofing starts with a stringent design process in Milton Keynes, where innovation meets practicality. “We obviously have a set of principles when we design our amps,” says Green. “We know what does and doesn’t work in terms of materials. We know how long screws should be, how resilient materials have to be. We’ve learnt things
“If you’re rehearsing in small spaces, you can limit the output. But you’ve just got so much headroom in that High setting to put any effects in, and the amp just deals with it”
over time and implement them as we go forward. For example, on the valve heads, the valve base is on the opposite side of the board to the components. That’s simply because the heat from the valves would degrade the components. We have to hand-wire and hand-solder every single one of those bases onto the product to do that – but it makes the amp more robust. It’s a conscious decision.”
So it begins. An evolving stream of prototypes will be road-tested by critical pro musicians. A dizzying array of tests will assess the mechanics and electrics under heavy fire. A forest of international safety regulations will be addressed. “Every country that Marshall ships amps to has their own standards we have to meet,” points out Ellery.
Only then does a Marshall amp enter production – an equally strict process whether the amp is built on home turf or at the dedicated Marshall-owned factory in Vietnam. “The layout, the tools, the machinery we use in Vietnam – everything is a carbon copy of the UK,” says Green of the satellite facility, whose sky-high standards are evidenced by the Origin series. “Even down to things like assembly drawing and how materials are sourced – everything is done the same way. It’s an extension of us.
“We own the factory,” he continues, “and the people who work there are our employees, so we have full control. Not many brands can actually say that. When we’re designing products, we’ll go out with a team of people. We’ll make stuff here, they’ll make stuff there, we’ll bring it all into the same factory, compare it, look at the issues, work together as a team to get the products out. And if we have a project, we’ll go over there and our engineers will physically sit on the production line.”
Back in the UK, Marshall’s reputation for consistency is rooted in the shop floor’s astonishing shared experience, with 56 staff working across six departments, turning out approximately 460 units each week. “In the woodmill alone,” says Head
“We have to hand-wire and hand-solder every single one of those bases onto the product to do that – but it makes the amp more robust. It’s a conscious decision”
Of Manufacturing Mick Goodyear, “we’ve probably got collectively 100 years of experience. And the skill set throughout the company is very high too. Hand-wiring is a classic example. It can take someone up to two years to learn every model. We’ve got people who have been on the shop floor 29 years, and we’ve recently taken on 20 new people, which brings the average age down.”
This is a team in the truest sense of the word, stresses Goodyear. “They’re all quality-assuring each other’s work at every stage. So when an amp comes from the wood shop into the covering department, then onto finishing, every aspect is being checked – and that includes the major tests in electronics and visual checks. There’s passion in what they do, and if they see something that’s not right, they won’t let it go anywhere. They’ll say, ‘That’s not good enough.’ They all put a sticker on the unit at every stage, so they know who’s done what. And that’s because they’re proud of their work – like, ‘I’ve done that. That’s me.’ ”
Take a walk across the shop floor at Milton Keynes and you can literally follow a Marshall amp from raw materials to boxed product. “A lot of people visit us,” says Head Of Facilities Tommy Russett, “and they’re amazed at what they see, because they have a preconception that these amps are not hand-built somewhere along the line. They’ll say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you did the metalwork here’. But it’s a onestop shop.”
“A sheet of wood will come in,” picks up Goodyear. “From there, it’s machined into one of our cabinets. Just in the woodmill alone, there’s probably 30 processes for each cabinet. It’s exactly the same with our chassis work: the sheet metal comes in and it’s formed into a chassis. Then there’s all the other processes: wiring, electronics, printed circuit boards. We pretty much make everything from scratch. A lot of firms will buy in sub-assemblies, where a cabinet or chassis comes in complete. But we do that ourselves, all under one roof, which makes it easy to change things if something’s wrong. The amp will go into finishing, where they’ll put in the Celestion speakers that give us that unique sound. Then it goes to the end-of-line test, before it gets packed for the customer.”
At a time when some firms build in obsolescence, the proof of the Marshall process is in the service department, where battle-scarred vintage amps are given a little TLC before returning to the road. “There’s amps in there,” says Russett, “that are 40 years old. They’ve stood the test of time. If you have a broken washing machine, you don’t repair it anymore. It’s a throwaway world, but Marshall is here to stay. It’s testament to Jim’s original designs that they’re so robust.”
Likewise, don’t bet against seeing today’s Origin amps still taking it on the chin a half-century from now. “My Origin looks classic, feels classic, it’s light and easy to carry around,” says Deadman. “But I’m not afraid of it getting knocked. We used it in the studio on our recent single. And we use it on stage too. It’s reliable in every sense and in every place…”