Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Don't recall ever seeing the question asked: why is it the Beatles never used or experimented with Marshall Amps?

I mean John went through the trouble to overdrive the board to get distortion for Revolution. Marshalls were also made in the UK and most of the contemporaries such as Clapton & Hendrix were using them. Weren't they ever a little bit curious?

Kinda off topic, but i've got this book called "The Walrus Was Ringo: 101 Beatles Myths Debunked". For the most part, the facts are accurate, but there's one point where, in passing, it mentions George's rig - A Rickenbacker into a Marshall amp, I believe it said. I'll find what it actually was at some point and post it here.

I think It may have been because alot of the amps they used were given to them free to use as an endorsment for the product, Vox first of all then I know Paul was using a Selmer amp often during the pepper sessions, then a switch to Fender. I think they just stuck to whatever was laying around or availiable at the time or given to them freely to use. Maybe Marshall never offered them anything? Its most likely they were approached all the time by people wanting them to use their products, and I think they just stuck to what they knew worked best for them soundwise and what they were used too, Personally I use Vox amps for bass and Fender for guitars and wouldnt dream of switching to anything else as I like the sound compared to other amps, Maybe they felt the same?
Interesting topic! glad you brought it up

Also, by the time John was overdriving the board to record Revolution, they had basically stopped playing live...so, no need for a Marshall if you're never going to play the tune (or any others like it) in public.

I tend to agree that they just used what was given to them and that everything got tweaked to the way they wanted it to sound either using stomp boxes or board effects.

But with all the guitar experimentation George was going though and the fact they did use a bunch of different amps in the studio it surprising that a Marshall was never caught on film or ever used.

A Marshall sure would have sounded nice on Helter Skelter!

It was actually in a studio that I had my first chance to dime my 100W non-MV Marshall so even though they weren't playing live it could have been a useful amp for them in the studio. A Bluesbreakers combo would have done the trick to.

Since they've all admitted at various times that they weren't really gear freaks too, maybe it didn't matter all that much to them?

It does sound like Clapton dragged his Marshall into the studio when they tracked WMGGW, but I suppose it could be a Fender too. Anyone know for sure?

The fact that the Beatles didn't use Marshalls was a blessing. Voxes and Fenders set their sound apart as Marshalls continued to grow in popularity until by the mid 70s when it was cliche. Don't deny Marshalls sound great, but like a friend of mine says, when you play one guitar through Fender, it doesn't sound the same as the next guitar you play through a Fender. I think the sound they got on Helter Skelter could not be improved upon.

Don't forget that The Beatles were a band of the late 50s and 1960s, AKA: When Fender Ruled the Earth. Fender was THE amp to have back then. When I saw CSN&Y on their first tour in 1969 they had a wall of Tweed Fender Bassman amps that they used for guitars. Why? Because they distorted so easily. Sixteen Fender Bassman amps driven to the max produce a very different distortion than a Marshall does. If the Fenders or whatever amps they had produced the sound they wanted, I can see why they didn't experiment.

There is a lot of truth in that and Fender Tweeds certainly are cool. But as was said by UK bands back then, if you had anything decent and American in the gear dept, you were in the minority. (Which may have been why Lennon jumped at the first Rick he saw.) Voxes were an endorsement deal, of course, and maybe they weren't enamored with Marshalls because that was English rig and they loved the U.S. Just a guess. Also, their deal was not amps, but compressors. The Stones loved Fenders because the guys at Chess used them. Interesting about CSNY. I know Robbie Robertson was playing fifties era fenders in the late 60s and through the mid 70s, as was Springsteen. Those guys were definitely swimming upstream when just about everyone else was playing les pauls through marshalls. I know Neil Young had huge, old looking Fender amp sets on stage (as in artwork...big drawings) during the Live Rust era, but I don't know what actual amps his band was using. I imagine they were Fenders. He and CSN probably could get all the distortion they wanted out of anything, though, when they were playing Gretschs at least. I don't think Neil ever got a better sound than that.

I could be wrong, but I thought the Tweed Fender Bassman was what Marshall originally tried to mimick with their first combo's.

The '59 Fender Bassman, circuit revision 5F6A is what Marshall copied, and then tweaked slightly when they made their first amp, the JTM 45 and the Bluesbreaker combo. Jim Marshall operated a music shop where he sold guitars and amps, and he sold the Fenders of the day. The demand was so high for them, and the prices so high, because of import duties, that he decided to copy it and make his own, and sell it domestically, and he could make more profit on it than he could selling the Fenders.

There are a couple differences. The Fender uses a 12AY7 as the first stage in the amp. The Marshall uses a 12AX7. The theoretical difference in gain is 44 and 100, with the 12AX7 being higher, so the Marshall has more preamp gain.

The Marshall also has higher filtering on the preamp and power amp, which leads to a power supply section that is better able to supply the current demands, and a preamp with more bass response. So a Marshall will have a stiffer and tighter feel, especially on bass notes.

The Marshall has more negative feedback, which tends to give it a more even frequency response, and again, a tighter feel.

The other differences would be in the speaker brand and type used, and the tubes used. The Fender Bassman used Jensen 10 inch speakers, and the Marshall used 12 inch Celestions. This changes the sound too, with the Celestions being much more efficient, so they will be louder. A 12 inch speaker also has more bass response than a 10 inch, but a slightly looser feel. The Fender used Tung-Sol 5881 tubes, and the Marshall initially impoted the 5881's, but soon switched to the Genelex KT66, which was much cheaper since it was a UK made tube. The KT66 has a lot more mids and an overall much more harmonically rich sound than the 5881.

Both amps sound good, and the Beatles would have got a good sound with either I'm sure. Funny that George said later that he hated the sound he got with his Gretsches and Voxes. I always thought they sounded good myself. Like anything else though, a Vox, Fender, or Marshall is a tool and has advantages and disadvantages. I like using them all myself.

These days I find big amps kind of funny. The Twin, the 4 x 12 cab, the original Bassman, they were all invented when PAs were 100 watts. Now you could play Shea Stadium with a single Princeton and quash the roar of Beatlemania with your volume on 5.

Forgive me if I've told this story already...a friend of mine works setting up and tearing down big shows here in town...one night it's Gwar, the next night it's some giant Christian rock show (what's the difference...too much blood for my tastes either way). He has a thousand hilarious stories as a result...Last year, he worked on the Kiss show; he had seen them before, so he knew exactly what the giant plexiglas octagon covered in dried fake blood splatterings was for as soon as it came off the truck...

But here's the funny part: the crew spent quite a bit of time setting up the giant wall of Marshall stacks...but all the speaker bins were empty, and all the heads were as well, apart from a little circuit that supplied juice to the little red lights on the front. The guitars were run instead into little Mesa Boogies kept well out of the sight of the audience.

"Pay no attention to that little amp behind the curtain..."

That is funny! Great story!

Image is everything. Amazing.