Marshall Major

bazxkr

Don't see many of these knocking around.....lost part of my hearing I reckon to one of these in the early 70s at the Rainbow theatre LOL

Nice lot of pics for those that enjoy looking under the hood

https://reverb.com/item/272641-marshall-major-1968-200-watts-plexi-front-and-back

robinbowes

<sigh> I had one of these in the 80s. I was working on an apprentice scheme at a recording studio at the time and not earning much money. One day I reversed into the bosses car - only a shitty Fiesta, minor damage to his front end - minor bumper dent, broken indicator. Like an idiot I offered him the amp to cover the damage. Like a twat, he took it. Grrrrr.

R.

ecc83

Is this the amp that Townsend asked Marshall to make him but had serious overheating problems?

I notice, no shots of the works!

Dave.

ICBM

ecc83 said:

Is this the amp that Townsend asked Marshall to make him but had serious overheating problems?

I notice, no shots of the works!

No. It's the one that started life as the 'Pig' with active EQ - just called the Marshall 200 - and was then simplified to go with the musicians , fitted with a standard TMB tone setup, called the Major and associated most with Ritchie Blackmore.

It's a great amp, I owned one back in the 80s/early 90s that may have been ex-Blackmore, although I didn't realise it until after I had sold it. Doh.

Reliable enough, certainly no worse than any other 200W 4-KT88 job.

jpfamps

ICBM said:

ecc83 said:

Is this the amp that Townsend asked Marshall to make him but had serious overheating problems?

I notice, no shots of the works!

No. It's the one that started life as the 'Pig' with active EQ - just called the Marshall 200 - and was then simplified to go with the musicians , fitted with a standard TMB tone setup, called the Major and associated most with Ritchie Blackmore.

It's a great amp, I owned one back in the 80s/early 90s that may have been ex-Blackmore, although I didn't realise it until after I had sold it. Doh.

Reliable enough, certainly no worse than any other 200W 4-KT88 job.

The Pig only had 3 controls (volume, treble & bass), so Marshall didn't really simplify it.

From the schematic I've got for a Pig (and I can't really comment on the circuit's authenticity), the treble and bass are parallel gain paths, but are passive (I've seen Gretsch amps that employ this strategy).

I suspect Marshall went to the classic 4 input format so that it looked more like their other amps.

The 4 input Major returns the negative feedback from the speakers to the bottom of the gain stage before the tone stack, so the tone controls are in the feedback loop, and so it could be argued that these controls are active.

Regardless, they are great sounding amps.

ICBM

jpfamps said:

The Pig only had 3 controls (volume, treble & bass), so Marshall didn't really simplify it.

From the schematic I've got for a Pig (and I can't really comment on the circuit's authenticity), the treble and bass are parallel gain paths, but are passive (I've seen Gretsch amps that employ this strategy).

I suspect Marshall went to the classic 4 input format so that it looked more like their other amps.

Supposedly it was because musicians found them too difficult to set up for a good sound. I've never played one so I don't know if it's because the controls are too powerful, or just because they're unfamiliar… but I don't really have a problem dialing in most "difficult" amps anyway, so it may be they were just unconventional.

I haven't seen the schematic either. The only supposed Pig I've seen at all was photos of that lash-up "our friends in the North" sold a few years ago, and that was clearly a fake based on old bits of something else. And incredibly poorly-disguised, too! Almost as if the tech who did it *wanted* them to get caught…

jpfamps said:

The 4 input Major returns the negative feedback from the speakers to the bottom of the gain stage before the tone stack, so the tone controls are in the feedback loop, and so it could be argued that these controls are active.

Ah yes, I forgot that!

jpfamps

ICBM said:

jpfamps said:

The Pig only had 3 controls (volume, treble & bass), so Marshall didn't really simplify it.

From the schematic I've got for a Pig (and I can't really comment on the circuit's authenticity), the treble and bass are parallel gain paths, but are passive (I've seen Gretsch amps that employ this strategy).

I suspect Marshall went to the classic 4 input format so that it looked more like their other amps.

Supposedly it was because musicians found them too difficult to set up for a good sound. I've never played one so I don't know if it's because the controls are too powerful, or just because they're unfamiliar… but I don't really have a problem dialing in most "difficult" amps anyway, so it may be they were just unconventional.

I haven't seen the schematic either. The only supposed Pig I've seen at all was photos of that lash-up "our friends in the North" sold a few years ago, and that was clearly a fake based on old bits of something else. And incredibly poorly-disguised, too! Almost as if the tech who did it *wanted* them to get caught…

jpfamps said:

The 4 input Major returns the negative feedback from the speakers to the bottom of the gain stage before the tone stack, so the tone controls are in the feedback loop, and so it could be argued that these controls are active.

Ah yes, I forgot that!

I've got a drawing of a Pig schematic, that I can't of course verify, but looks plausible.

I got it from the Metro Amps forum.

http://forum.metroamp.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=32597&start=30

cosmiccarrot

I think the Pig was the only marshall to use Partridge transformers?

There's an old black and white pic somewhere of a pig sandwiched between two 4x12's in a chrome stacking frame!!! I guess marshall gave up with the frame when someone tried to move it and squashed by a falling pig and it's two fat sisters!

ICBM

jpfamps said:

I've got a drawing of a Pig schematic, that I can't of course verify, but looks plausible.

I got it from the Metro Amps forum.

http://forum.metroamp.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=32597&start=30

Thanks! That's actually a lot simpler and more primitive - not to say a very odd concept - than I expected, and the tone controls are certainly not active… interesting how these myths come about.

I also wonder if the sound of it was simply not what people were expecting - the only player I've ever heard of using one 'for real' was Mick Ronson in Bowie's band during the Ziggy era, and that's quite an unusual sound, not the traditional crunchy Marshall tone at all.

I often have the suspicion that Marshall just didn't really have a clue what they were doing - which goes right back to not realising they would need to change the NFB value when copying the Bassman with a totally different OT (and accidentally creating quite a different sound) - since the Pig was the first original circuit design they did as far as I know - the standard models were copied from Fender and the 18-watters from Watkins...

jpfamps

The only amps I've seen with a similar tone arrangement are some Gretsch amps, eg the 6163

http://www.6v6power.ru/inf/Amplifier/Gretsch/Gretsch G6163 Preamp.jpg

I would agree, I don't think Marshall really new what they were doing!

The first real original design they had was the channel switching JCM800 (the 2 input MV JMP is just a modified 4 input amp; indeed I suspect that people were doing this type of mod before Marshall started making the 2 input models).