My 1975/1979 Marshall JMP50 MkII

Here's when purple became my favorite color. When I was graduating from high school my dad asked me, "Hey, do you need a new amp? Like maybe a Marshall?" I was stunned. A Marshall?!!! That was the pinnacle of my dreams. The only amps I had owned up to that point were shitty little transistor 1x12 combos—Crate, Earth, and Mitchell—they were all horrible haha.

So we went to the music store to see what they had. We walked in and they had all these Marshalls in custom colors—red, fawn, orange, white, and purple. But they didn't have any black ones and that's what I wanted—a black Marshall stack like all my heroes had. I really wasn't into these crazy colors. My dad asked the sales guy to show us what the amp sounded like; I was too shy to play through it in the store. The dude played some crunchy AC/DC riffs and my dad said, "What's wrong with it? It's all distorted." The sales guy winked at me and quickly dialed in a clean sound and played a couple jazzy chords. My dad seemed satisfied that the amp wasn't broken. We left that day without buying anything.

Back home I was debating in my mind of what to do. They didn't have any black ones in stock and that's what I wanted. But after a couple days, I came to the conclusion—if I got one of the purple ones, no one else would have one—I'd be in my own exclusive club. So we went back and bought the purple half-stack, a 1979 2204 Master Model Mk2, with a 1960A 4x12 loaded with 65-watt Celestions. I probably spent hours every day staring at my new amp. It was so glorious—and it had that smell when the tubes were warmed up. It smelled good.

But wait, you, the astute observer notices—the amp in the photo is a 4-input JMP50, what gives? That's right, it is. What happened was, several years later, while I still loved my beloved purple Marshall, I really wanted a 4-input non-master volume amp, but I couldn't afford to buy another amp. One day I was hanging out at my favorite music store and they had just gotten in a 1975 small box 50-watt head. It sounded great. I proposed to the sales guy that we swap the chassis in my amp for the chassis in that amp and luckily for me he went for it. So if you ever see an early-70s small box head with a 1979 master volume chassis in it, that's probably my old amp! And along the way I swapped the speakers out for a set of 1970 black-back 25-watt Celestions. Oh, and the grill cloth was originally solid black but I wanted the checker board style so I swapped that in.

During the years, I had various amp techs mod the amp with whatever stupid notion I had going on at the time. It wasn't until 2010 or so when I learned how to work on amps myself (since I had learned how to read schematics from working at Catalinbread) that I restored and optimized the amp back to its original specs. Now it sounds better than it has ever sounded. The only mod I've retained is a back panel switch that selects triode or pentode operation for the power tubes. Triode mode is a bit quieter and spongier while pentode is louder and punchier.

A few years ago, I replaced the cracked corner protectors, broken Marshall logos and replaced the fuse and impedance selector holders. These days, I don't play the amp every day but it'll always be my number one 💜.

And yes, I have several other purple Marshalls. It became a thing with me.

Thanks for reading this and going down memory lane with me 💛❤️💜.