

The first letter denotes factory of origin:.With amplifiers coming off the production line in four countries, the scheme even specifies factory of origin.


The current dating system is by far the most straightforward and informative. This very convenient method ended around 1965, when all of the white and black sandwich type of panels were used up and Marshall changed over to the cream or gold Plexiglas style. They continued to number them sequentially in this manner until the beginning of 1964, when they started at 2001 and so on, with the "2" indicating the second full year of manufacture. Many of these amplifiers had an offset chassis.Īfter these came the first production amplifiers, starting at number 1001, which was Ken Bran's idea, so that it would look as though they were building thousands more amplifiers than was actually the case! These numbers were scribed or stamped into the back panel of the chassis, and sometimes also included the model type, such as PA, Lead, or Bass. Cosmetics are the most obvious clues here items such as the old block-style Marshall logo, vinyl, grille cloth, output tubes, type of panels and knobs, etc., are the easiest and quickest way of estimating the date. Marshall's first prototypes had no model codes or any official serialization.
