Marshall history has changed....

[Littlewyan]

Not sure how many of you are familiar with Marshall's history, but a guy named Dudley Craven was heavily involved at the beginning of Marshall amps, however they appear to have written him out of their history.....

https://marshall.com/about/marshall-history

[ChopSauce]

Did you meant: http://www.dudleycraven.com/

Well, how many engineer names never appeared to the public - according to the terms of their contracts?

Too many, I guess. So care what you sign and read the terms!

[Littlewyan]

That's the guy and what bothers me is that Marshall used to openly state that Dudley was the one who built the first JTM45. I even have one of Jim Marshall's books where he states this. It just seems odd to me that they would suddenly remove him from their 'history' and add in Terry, who, as far as I know, had nothing to do with the amps?!

[ChopSauce]

Of course, and I can imagine several reasons for this (such as Terry childs being more involved in the business, Jim being less and less, one marketing engineer having decided what should be done, etc) but I also know about several stories like that, including one of mine, so...

I'm glad you pointed me at that, though.

[martin manning]

Jim Nairn does mention "Dudley" (in the video at the bottom of the Marshall history page) as one of the principals along with JM and KB at the start. ChopSauce's link seems to suggest the first JTM produced was more of a collaborative effort between Bran and Craven. I'm no authority, most of what I know is from Michael Doyles book. I still think they pretty much copied Fender's Bassman, for which Leo had the good sense to try a circuit from Western Electric. Bran is quoted in Doyle's book saying: "Obviously we looked at the Fender amps, because they were my favourite amplifier, and the Bassman seemed to be nearer to the sound that people were talking about, rather than their lead amplifier. So we were influenced by it, but after all there is nothing new in valve technology; it's all been done before." In other words, yeah, we copied it.

[chief mushroom cloud]

It just seems odd to me that they would suddenly remove him from their 'history' and add in Terry, who, as far as I know, had nothing to do with the amps?!

Yes...he did...
https://ampgarage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22545
https://reverb.com/item/32721242-terry- ... like-jtm45
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Group-300-Thor ... 2772875204
https://reverb.com/item/15739422-vintag ... ifier-head

[chief mushroom cloud]

When I did schematics, I had Snuffy's Thors to work from...
https://www.facebook.com/snuffywaldenmu ... 244020672/

[Littlewyan]

That's pretty cool! I didn't know he built amps outside of Marshall!

As for the history of Marshall, I don't know if we'll ever know the full story unfortunately, but Dudley was definitely one of the main guys with Bran. He should be in writing on Marshall's website.

[chief mushroom cloud]

Him and prob several un-named others, as well.

[Roe]

their history writing is not exactly up to scholarly standards. And I have contributed to their 50th anniv book and happen to be an academic