NAMM:The Plexi is back

US Marshall Expands The Handwired Series with 100W Classic 22/01/05

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At Winter NAMM Marshall 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 4x12" cabinets. These are the latest additions to its line of handwired amplifiers and matching speaker cabinets — a series that features some of the world’s most sought after, vintage, all-valve Marshalls. The 100 Watt ‘Plexi’ head is considered by many to be the definitive rock amp and is the main reason artists started dubbing Marshall as ‘the sound of rock’ back in the late ‘60s. It was named because of the Plexiglas material used on the model 1959’s front panel from late 1965 to July 1969. 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.

An Inside View

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 too. Both transformers — output and power — have been meticulously recreated by Dagnall Electronics to duplicate the electrical performance and characteristics of the originals while satisfying stringent modern safety legislations. As a result of this attention to detail, the 1959HW’s handwired tag-board lives up to the slogan, ‘Point-to-Point Perfection’.” Product Details: 1959HW Head. This handwired reissue, all-valve head (3 x ECC83* in the preamp, 4 x EL34s in power amp) 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. An angled-front, 120 Watt, 16 Ohm mono 4x12" cabinet featuring salt ‘n’ pepper grille cloth, metal handles, and loaded with the bass version of Celestion’s reissue of the G12H30 speaker. 1960BHW Cabinet. Same as 1960AHW but with a straight-front. More info:

marshallamps.com The 1959HW and 1960AHW/BHW will be available in March/April 2005 with pricing TBA.

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