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Sixty years after Jimi Hendrix first plugged into a Marshall amplifier, the two names are aligning again — this time to produce a limited-edition collection that commemorates one of the most consequential relationships in rock history.
Announced today, the Marshall x Hendrix 60th Anniversary Collection comprises three special-edition releases: a redesigned Acton III Bluetooth speaker, the 1959 JMH Half Stack and a limited-edition Fuzz Face distortion pedal. Each piece draws from Hendrix’s visual world of crushed velvet, silver jewelry cosmic imagery and the psychedelic palette of the sixties.
“From his fashion to his lyrics and of course, his music, there are so many different stories we could tell when it comes to Hendrix,” Emma Rydahl, senior industrial designer at Marshall Group, who led the design process, said in a statement. “We started with materials and pattern exploration, looking at different fabrics and running test prints with a psychedelic track in mind. We spent a lot of time adjusting the final design to get it just right across the whole collection.”
Marshall x Hendrix 60th Anniversary Collection
The Acton III speaker is perhaps the most intimate of the three pieces. Coated in crushed velvet with a silver control panel, purple knobs and purple LED lighting, it’s stamped with a silver all-seeing eye on its side — a nod to the mystical iconography that ran through Hendrix’s work. Switch the speaker on and instead of a standard chime, a specially commissioned sound plays: a rare instrumental version of “Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)” drawn from The Jimi Hendrix Experience deluxe box set.
The centerpiece of the collection, however, is the 1959 JMH Half Stack — a hand-built amplifier that replicates Hendrix’s exact signature setup. The 1959 Handwired Head and 1960 AJMH 4×12 Handwired Angled Cabinet are constructed at Marshall’s Bletchley factory in the UK from quality plywood wrapped in black Tolex, with the cosmic black-and-purple swirl appearing across the fret and control panel. Silver detailing — on the knobs, handle, logo, grill, and back panel — echoes the jewelry Hendrix wore onstage, and the all-seeing eye badge appears on both the top and bottom of the stack. A new short film follows guitarist Zach Person visiting Seattle, Hendrix’s birthplace, before putting the stack through its paces.
Available exclusively alongside the stack is a limited-edition Fuzz Face Distortion pedal produced by Dunlop, finished in the same oil-on-water swirl design. Together, the two pieces are engineered to recreate Hendrix’s snarling, snappy tones.
Marshall co-founder Terry Marshall reflected on the historic partnership between Hendrix and the audio brand upon the collection’s release. “He took everything to a new level and carried everybody with him,” Marshall said. “When he played, it was an emotional time for everybody because everyone was thinking, if he can do it, I could maybe do it. And he’s using Marshall, therefore we want Marshall. It was a really special time for us all and there’s no doubt that we grew with him and his fame. The rest is history, as they say.”
