This Amp Forever Changed Music...What Is The Plexi Sound?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] in the history of rock music there's a few pieces of gear a few tools that were integral to the sound and the music that was made through the early 1960s 1970s and 1980s chief among them chief among those tools arguably is the marshall plexi this guitar amplifier is synonymous with rock and roll music from the late 60s all the way through the early 70s so today's video we're going to talk about the plexi we're going to look at what makes it tick find out why players like jimi hendrix pete townsend jimmy page relied on this amp and figure out what is the plexi sound [Applause] in the early 1960s in england rock music was exploding it was becoming the number one form of music that was listened to across the entire nation and burgeoning rock bands in england at the time had a major problem which was finding gear at the time fender was not really importing all that many amplifiers and companies like vox and selmer were just getting off the ground so it was really tough if you were a young burgeoning rock band around london england to find amplifiers specifically base amplifiers so this led to a man named jim marshall who was a drummer to open up a music store in london england now initially marshall's shop was a drum shop but he also started supplying local players with vox and selmar amplifiers and it didn't take long for players like pete townsend to push them to start importing american brands like fender and gibson and this is where the problem arose they simply couldn't get enough amps from fender to satisfy the demand of local bands at the time so marshall hired a few engineers and went to work on creating an amplifier of his own that he could sell out of his own shop now after a handful of prototypes and testing by players like pete townsend the jtm 45 marshall's first widely available amplifier was born and it was adopted and hugely successful with bands around london at the time it's worth mentioning that it was originally based off of the fender 59 basement circuit but i do want to point out that the jtm45 is not a clone of the basement this is a bit of a misnomer it's similar but they made some crucial changes to the circuit that make it sound and feel completely different than a basement not long after the jtm-45 was released pete townsend came back to jim marshall and asked for a louder amplifier so jim marshall went back to work and they came out with what would be known as the jtm 45 100. basically it was a jtn-45 with twice the output power they put two output transformers in it made some other changes to the circuit and created a hundred watt amp the first hundred watt marshall and this is when jimi hendrix enters the scene in late 1966 hendrix had been playing a lot around london in early 66 filling in and making a name for himself and it wasn't long until he got sent by mitch mitchell up to jim marshall's shop and he put an order in for three jtm 45 100 full stacks and this was the early hendrix sound now with the success of the jtn 45 marshall then went to work on what we now know as the marshall plexi the 100 watt super lead amplifier now plexi is not an official term for marshall this is something that confused me for a long time plexi simply refers to the type of material that's used on the front panel of marshall amps at the time it's a sheet of plexiglass on the front panel with all the controls and the input jacks mounted so when someone calls an amp a plexi they're referring to a marshall amp that was made pre-1969 when they switched to the metal panel but the true plexi amp the amp that everyone thinks about when you say plexi is the marshall super lead 100. now the super lead hit the market around 1967 and it went through a few changes and in 1968 they hit basically the holy grail of marshall amps this is the amp that hendrix p townsend jimmy page eric clapton in his cream years all used this is the plexi [Music] the popularity of the super lead in its time with primarily rock stars was due in part because of the sound but it was also because of the overall power see in the mid to late 1960s during live shows as these bands got bigger and started playing bigger venues the pas at the time couldn't keep up it wasn't very common for sound engineers front of house engineers to mic up guitar amps on top of vocals and drums and everything else because the systems just simply couldn't handle it so guitar players needed rigs that could get over and fill out the entire venue hence the multiple full stacks that we see from the likes of jimi hendrix and jimmy page and eric clapton of the time but it wasn't just the output that caused people like jimmy page to switch in his anthology he talks about why he switched from his vox at that time to a marshall by the way if you are a zeppelin fan like me i highly recommend picking this up it's incredible i'll have a link in the description box down below but in the book he talks about switching to his full stacks so jimmy says with all the frantic touring the road crew had started to expand through peter grant we acquired a road manager from new zealand called clive coulson he constantly told me that i should get marshall amplifiers but i was happy with what i'd got and didn't want to follow the herd the crew were getting nervous about my vox amplifier it felt vintage even at the time and we wouldn't have been able to get a replacement or spare parts if anything had gone wrong with it as it turned out my vox never did go down but i replaced it all the same first i got a high watt as an interim measure and then i eventually went over to the marshalls the point was that the marshals were reliable you could pick up replacements everywhere they all sounded different to me so i would use this as an excuse to try and stay with the equipment that i knew to be really good but i could see clive's point with all the traveling around if the vox had ever let us down we could have found ourselves without guitar amplification and then where would we have been so in the late 60s marshall became sort of the de facto guitar amp for a lot of the major players at the time because of the sound because of the power and because of the reliability and availability of the plexi they were just built like tanks now when we think about the marshall sound or the plexi sound so often you immediately go to searing lead tones fat punchy overdrive sounds you know les paul into marshall great sustain compression overdrive but the reality is the reason it was so popular with players like jimi hendrix for example was because how much high headroom cleans you could get out of the amp you have to remember with hendrix specifically a lot of what he was playing at the time was clean i mean take win cries mary for example [Applause] if he was playing that at a large venue he needed to be able to get that clean or clean-ish sound at a really loud volume hence the hundred watts it could deliver that sound at a high volume before it started to compress and break up like other amps would now this is a four input marshall we have two inputs for each channel right now i'm going into the low input of channel one which is helping me get that higher headroom clean tone now the amp is set on six and if i was going through a cabinet in the room right now it would be deafening myself and chris behind the camera but that's part of what the plexi was supposed to do [Music] you get really punchy clean tones and if i change my input to the top now we start to get into that traditional plexi territory that we all know and love [Music] now earlier i mentioned the 1968 plexi was sort of the bench markets the holy grail of plexis and that's because the changes that they made to the circuit in 68 are what was most popular with the players of the era it was the right balance between high headroom cleans but it would also break up and give you really punchy loud searing lead tones that players like jimmy page and eric clapton were looking for at the time now all marshalls at the time were actually two channel amps and it didn't take long for players to figure out that you could actually jump the two channels together and run them in parallel what this allows you to do is combine the two tonal characteristics of channel one and channel two to get an even more balanced sound channel one is brighter it's more top end more upper mid range and it cuts more channel 2 is much darker with a lot more low end in my opinion channel 2 on a plexi on its own is not that usable it's too dark and too muddy but it really comes alive when you jump the two channels together with a small patch cable and blend channel two in to give you more low end and more punch so this is just channel one by itself [Music] [Music] now i'm going to jump the two channels together and i'm going to blend in the volume of channel 2 to give me a little bit more low end [Music] [Applause] [Music] now a key part of the plexi sound for me is often referred to as the bite marshalls have this upper top end bite i tend to think of it more as like a chirp it's this kind of brilliant thing that happens right on the transient of the note right when you pick the note off your guitar and you can get more of it by dialing the presence control up but to me this is what makes a plexi unmistakable when you hear it on a record [Music] [Applause] and even with all that gain the plexi still manages to hold together the bottom end is not too loose or too flabby even with jumping the channels and bringing channel two up and you still hear all of the intervals in the chord you can still hear the tonal characteristics of the chord and the guitar you're playing even with a ton of gain dialed in like this [Music] [Applause] [Music] now the amp we've been using today is not a vintage one this is a modern reissue from marshall this is the 1959 hw now 1959 doesn't refer to the year 1959 it's just an internal name that marshall uses for this circuit but in terms of modern reissues they are true to form of the original plexis this is about as close as you can get now this is not my amp i'm borrowing this from my friend rick biato i have one and a 412 cab on order from marshall but with all of the supply chain issues that everyone's having right now i'm still waiting on mine but you'll see one show up here on the channel eventually this video is not sponsored by marshall or anybody else by the way now the reality is a hundred watt amp in today's world is a lot if you're a gigging guitar player you definitely don't need one of these to play gigs 100 watts is way too much for most people the only reason i'm getting away with it here at home is because i'm using it through a load box uh the aux in this case so i can get away with the insane volumes because i'm not actually pushing a cabinet if i were gigging with this amp i would definitely need an attenuator otherwise it would just absolutely blow everyone else on stage out of the water at least for the gigs that i play currently but with that said there's something about 100 watt amp on a 412 that is moving air in the room there's this thing that i call the thud it's this concussive sort of thump that happens when the amp is turned up and it's pushing a cabinet and if you've played these amps and you've played them on gigs or been in the room with one you know what i'm talking about it's this intoxicating sort of thing that happens when you're moving air the other thing that happens is the guitar and the amp become one they become sort of a symbiotic organism the guitar is reacting to the speakers and the air moving in the room which is then causing the amp to react with the guitar it's a beautiful thing if you've never had the opportunity to do it i would try and figure out how to make it happen because it's amazing so the 100 watt plexi is a bit of a relic in that way it was designed to meet a need at the time and nowadays most players needs have changed most players don't need a 100 watt marshall but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have one it's a really special amp they're very cool it's a huge piece of rock and roll and just music history in general and i look forward to getting mine in the mail hopefully soon so that is the plexi sound do you own one of these amps are you into this kind of sound let me know in the comments section down below if you want to see more of these videos let me know what you'd like to see next in this what is the sound series down there you can also find links to my video courses the tone course the nashville number system and the fretboard fundamentals course in the description box down below and if you're interested in getting on the wait list for one of these amps i'll have it linked in the description box down below as well that will be an affiliate link so if you buy something through that link i earn a small commission which helps me continue to make these videos and i thank you that's going to do it for today's video my name is rhett shull thank you so much for watching and remember there is no plan b [Applause] [Laughter]

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 486,158

Keywords: marshall plexi, jimi hendrix, hx stomp, music producer, music gear, gibson les paul, music studio, rhett shull, studio gear, session player, studio musicians, song writing, pro tools, recording techniques, music studio setup at home, music studio setup, guitar amp, marshall, jimmy page, the who

Id: elQ4NLGdHC0

Length: 15min 27sec (927 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 07 2022