Marshall marks 60 years with Jimi Hendrix through cosmic-inspired amps, speakers and a limited-edition fuzz pedal

Marshall is revisiting one of its defining relationships with a new run of Jimi Hendrix-themed gear, marking 60 years of the musician’s connection to the brand with what it calls “cosmic-inspired” amps and speakers. It is a fitting way to frame a history that helped harden Marshall’s identity in the first place: Hendrix’s overdriven sound was built through its amplifiers, and the company is now packaging that legacy as a limited-edition collection.

“We built the amps, Hendrix made them scream,” Marshall said in announcing the line. “From the moment Hendrix plugged into a Marshall guitar amplifier in ’66, they became an unstoppable creative force.” The wording is grand, but the basic fact underneath it is hard to argue with. Hendrix’s association with Marshall has become one of rock’s most enduring equipment myths, and this collection leans directly into that mythology rather than trying to modernise it.

At the centre of the release is a hand-wired 1969 JMH Super Lead-style tube amp head paired with a matching hand-wired 4×12 cabinet. The setup comes with a commemorative badge and a black-and-purple cosmic swirl finish, a visual treatment that makes the whole thing look less like standard catalogue gear and more like a collectible object. Marshall is also bundling in a limited-edition Dunlop Fuzz Face fuzz pedal, giving buyers the option to build out a Hendrix-minded rig around the amp.

There is also a more consumer-friendly object in the range: a cosmic purple swirl Hendrix signature edition Acton III Bluetooth speaker. It is the sort of product that shows how deeply legacy branding has moved beyond stage hardware and into lifestyle territory. The speaker will sell for $299, while the half-stack and fuzz pedal bundle is priced at $4,999.

Marshall co-founder Terry Marshall framed the collaboration in personal terms, describing Hendrix as “a formidable musician, a real force of nature.” He added: “He took everything to a new level and carried everybody with him. When he played, it was an emotional time for everybody because everyone was thinking, if he can do it, I could maybe do it.” That memory of Hendrix as both innovator and catalyst still underpins how the brand talks about him, not just as a client but as a force that helped shape its cultural reach.

“It was a really special time for us all and there’s no doubt that we grew with him and his fame, it was a natural tie-up,” Marshall said. “The rest is history as they say.” It is a neatly old-school way of describing a partnership that has long outlived the era in which it began.

The release arrives as the legal and business afterlife of the Hendrix catalogue continues to generate conflict elsewhere. Recently, the estates of Jimi Hendrix’s bandmates lost their copyright case against Sony Music. Details of the dispute surfaced last December, when the estate of Noel Redding, who died in 2003 aged 57, and that of drummer Mitch Mitchell, who died aged 62 in 2008, argued they had been “excluded early on in their lifetimes” and “died in relative poverty”.

Sony Music Entertainment UK rejected those claims, with lawyer Robert Howe arguing that the original recording copyright belonged to the albums’ producers rather than the musicians. In April, the ruling went against the estates after the court found the recording agreement terms were “clear and unequivocal.” “The producers and the band members agreed that the producers would have the copyright throughout the world in the recordings … There was no temporal or territorial limitation to this agreement,” he said in the judgment, as reported by The Guardian.

Elsewhere, Marshall has also been involved in a different kind of music-world intervention, teaming up with the Music Venue Trust to support more than 60 local artists performing in grassroots venues.