Founded in London in 1962 by shop owner and drummer Jim Marshall, the company is based in Bletchley, Milton Keynes, England.

[3] The company first began making amplifiers to provide an alternative to expensive, American-made Fender amps, releasing their first model, the Bassman-inspired JTM45, in 1963.

Further development led to the JCM800 series in 1981, which was widely adopted by the hard rock and metal community, while the brand celebrated its 25 years of making amps by releasing the Silver Jubiliee in 1987.

The company first began making amplifiers to provide an alternative to expensive, American-made Fender amps, releasing their first model, the Bassman-inspired JTM45, in 1963.

Further development led to the JCM800 series in 1981, which was widely adopted by the hard rock and metal community, while the brand celebrated its 25 years of making amps by releasing the Silver Jubiliee in 1987.

Marshall entered into a 15-year distribution deal with British company Rose-Morris during 1965, which gave him the capital to expand his manufacturing operations, though it would prove to be costly.

As such the split channel JCM800s were the highest gain Marshalls yet built – "When they were first released, many players were shocked (some were even put off) by its bright, intense distortion – far more than any other amp of the day.

Marshall around this time began further experiments with solid-state amplifiers, which were increasingly improving in quality due to technological innovations but were still considered beginner level equipment.

Regardless, solid-state product lines with the Marshall name on them were and still are a wild (if critically discounted) success for the company, allowing entry level guitarists to play the same brand of amplifier as their heroes.

This, in turn, also had a strong influence on the band's contemporaries at the time, with Cream, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Led Zeppelin following suit.

However, due to the cost of transport, The Who could not afford to take their full rigs with them for their earliest overseas tours, thus Cream and Hendrix were the first to be seen to use this setup on a wide scale, particularly in the United States.

Jim Marshall wanted someone to produce a cheaper alternative to American-made guitar amplifiers, but as he had limited electrical-engineering experience he enlisted the help of his shop repairman, Ken Bran, a Pan American Airways technician and Dudley Craven, an EMI apprentice.

The first six production units were assembled in the garden sheds of Bran, Craven, and Underwood in the same year, in Heston, Hanwell and Hayes, all in West London.

These circuit changes gave the amp more gain so that it broke into overdrive sooner on the volume control than the Bassman, and boosted the treble frequencies.

Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and other blues rock-based bands from the late 1960s such as Free used Marshall stacks both in the studio and live on stage making them among the most sought after and most popular amplifiers in the industry.

The changes gave Marshall amplifiers a more aggressive voice, which quickly found favour with players such as Eric Clapton, who would sit in Jim's shop practising.

Other early customers included Pete Townshend and John Entwistle of The Who, whose search for extra volume led Marshall to design the classic 100-watt valve amplifier.

[19][20] The size of the wall of Marshall stacks "soon became an indicator of the band's status", even when rendered obsolete by improved PA systems; indeed, many of the "ridiculously huge arrays of heads and cabs" included dummies.

Soon after the Rose-Morris deal had ended in late 1980, Marshall repackaged two MV models, the 2203 and the 2204 (at 100 and 50 watts, respectively), along with the 1959 and 1987 non-master volume Super Lead in a new box with a new panel, and called it the "JCM800" series (named after his initials and the registration plate of his car).

The Jubilee also featured a "semi-split channel" design, in which two different input gain levels could be set, running through the same tone stack and master volume control.

The Jubilee amplifiers also featured a "pull out" knob that activated a diode clipping circuit (similar to boosting the amp's input with an overdrive pedal).

Reviewed by Guitarist magazine in the UK and given the line, "Shredders, here is an amp you won't need to have modified", this move by Marshall was again an outgrowth of musicians' desires, featuring more distortion than ever and retaining popular aspects of the late JCM800 models.

This was actually a re-release of the earlier Silver Jubilee 2555 amplifier, with identical internals, a standard Marshall look, and a Slash logo.

The Anniversary series found prominence with Joe Satriani in particular, who favoured the early EL34 powered versions and used only the clean channel live along with his signature Vox Satchurator distortion pedal which is based on his old modded Boss DS-1.

Despite all this complication, the amps had a pure signal path that did not share preamplifier valves between channels (unlike later Marshall designs like the TSL and JVM).

Other famous 6100 users included Alex Lifeson on Rush's album Test for Echo (1996) and Ocean Colour Scene (OCS) guitarist Steve Cradock.

Around the same time as the release of the JVM, Marshall also released an amplifier called the Vintage Modern, which is designed to be much simpler, with a single channel and designed to be controlled more by the player's style and guitar than by channel switching or multiple settings, reminiscent of the vintage "Plexi" and JCM800 range, but with modern conveniences such as foot-switchable dynamic ranges (distortion levels), effects loop and reverb.

The input accommodates both active and passive bass pick-ups; there is also an XLR DI output for recording complete with Earth (grounding) lift and Pre/Post EQ switches.

[38] Marshall Records signed a North and South American Distribution deal with Better Noise Music (previously known at Eleven Seven Label Group in 2018.

[40] Artist that have had their music release by Marshall Records include:[41] Bad Touch, D_Drive, Grand Slam, Inklings (the solo project of ex FVK member Kier Kemp), Keywest,[42] King Creature, Press to MECO,[43] Rews, Reigning Days, The Bottom Line, Therapy?, The Dirty Youth,[44] Thousand Thoughts.