The Who's musical equipment

[2] In 1965, Pete Townshend and John Entwistle were directly responsible for the creation and widespread use of Marshall amplifiers powering stacked speaker cabinets.

In fact, the first 100 watt Marshall amps (called "Superleads") were created specifically for Entwistle and Townshend when they wanted an amplifier that sounded like a Fender head but with much more power.

[7][8] They agreed and six rigs of this 8x12 prototype were manufactured, of which two each were sold to Townshend and Entwistle and one each to Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriott of The Small Faces.

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

The Jimi Hendrix Experience subsequently started using Sound City rigs, but set them up together with their Marshall Stacks instead of replacing them.

Entwistle spent the afternoon there, trying various strings made for him by the on-site technicians in different gauges with different cores and types of wire until they found a set that he was happy with.