When was that Jim? And how soon after that did Marshall Amplification start officially manufacturing amplifiers?
JM: That would’ve been September 1962, when we showed amp “number six” in the shop. We started making them straight away but it was slow to begin with because we could only build one or two a week. We grew fairly quickly though. MH: Who was the first major endorser to use Marshall Amplification and when? JM: Well, I don’t know if you can call them endorsers because I didn’t give them anything – I never have and I never will! That said, the players I’ve already mentioned like Pete Townshend, Ritchie Blackmore and Big Jim Sullivan were part of the first order of 23 amps. A lot of other groups who were big at the time, like Brian Poole and the Tremolos, also started using the JTM45 straight away too. Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix were two other very famous Marshall users in the early days but they both came along a little later. Eric used to practice in my shop and he was one of the first guitarists to ask me to build a combo. He wanted one so it would be easy for him to put the whole thi
