Marshall recently unveiled the 1959HW, a handwired reissue of a circa 1969, 100 Watt, all-valve Super Lead ‘Plexi’ head, plus the angled-front 1960AHW and straight-fronted 1960BHW 120 Watt 4×12-inch cabinets. These are the latest additions to its line of handwired amplifiers and matching speaker cabinets , which features a range of vintage, all-valve Marshalls.
The so-called ‘Plexi’ era (late 1965 to July 1969) was named because of the Plexiglas material used on the model 1959’s front panel. It ended when the company changed its front panel material from Plexiglas to brushed aluminum. During this relatively short period, many small but often significant circuit changes were made and the majority of them were in response to artists continually asking for the amps to be more aggressive sounding. After exhaustive research tracking the exact timeline of these changes and also finding many untouched examples of them, a pre-July 1969 SL/A head was chosen as being ‘the one’ to duplicate.
As with every amp in Marshall’s Handwired series, all of the original components and materials were used or reproduced in the 1959HW, and the methods of construction employed in the late 1960s were revisited. Both transformers—output and power—have been recreated by Dagnall Electronics to duplicate the electrical performance and characteristics of the originals while satisfying modern safety legislations.
The handwired, all-valve (3 x ECC83* in the preamp, 4 x EL34s in power amp) 1959HW Head features two channels, I and II (labeled ‘High Treble’ and ‘Normal,’ respectively, in later renditions of the original 1959 model due to the differences in their voicing), each with two inputs—high sensitivity and low sensitivity. Both channels share tone-shaping controls for Bass, Middle, Treble and Presence.
1960AHW Cabinet is an angled-front, 120 Watt, 16 Ohm mono 4×12″ cabinet featuring salt ‘n’ pepper grille cloth, metal handles and is loaded with the bass version of Celestion’s reissue of the G12H30 speaker. 1960BHW Cabinet offers the same features, but with a straight front.
The 1959HW and 1960AHW/BHW will be available in March/April 2005 with pricing TBA.
For more details, please visit www.marshallamps.com.
