Marshall JVM410HJS, Joe Satriani OWNER’S MANUAL
From
The Guv’nor’ Jim Marshall*
I would like to personally congratulate you on choosing the all-valve, 100 Watt, JVM410HJS Joe Satriani Signature amplifier. Joe worked very closely with my top R&D chap, Santiago Alvarez, on this amp for a number of years and the result of this collaboration is fantastic. As is the fact that Joe has quite literally road-tested the prototypes on tour all over the world and also in the recording studio.
I’ve followed Joe’s career ever since his self-financed debut album, Not of This Earth, came out in the mid ‘80s. I’m delighted that he recorded many of his classic instrumentals using Marshall amps. In fact, some of the sounds the JVM410HJS’s modes are capable of pay homage to many of those great old amps he relied on – from JMPs to the 30th Anniversary 6100 that he used for so many years.
Like Joe, I’m extremely proud of the amp that he and Santiago have developed. I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you every success with your new Marshall JVM410HJS. I’m sure it will bring you countless hours of playing pleasure.
Welcome to the Marshall family.
Yours Sincerely,
Jim Marshall
*Footnote: this intro was the final one Jim worked on before making Heaven a much louder place! Here’s what Joe had to say on hearing of Jim’s passing:
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First and foremost, thanks for getting my new Marshall Signature Amp – it’s something I’m very proud of. Having a Signature Marshall is an elite fraternity and I feel honored to be part of it.
When I look across at the names of the guys who’ve got and have had signature models it’s very impressive to say the least. They’re all players I greatly respect and listen to. The amps that bear their names are very cool and I like the fact that they’re specifi c, they do something outrageous and when you plug in to one you get really inspired. So, for all those reasons it’s really an honor to be part of the group.
As you may know I’m not new to Marshall – we have quite a history together. Back in 1988, when I started touring for “Surfi ng With The Alien” I
was taking out the old Marshall heads I’d recorded with and then somewhere along the line the guys at Marshall started lending me gear in different territories which was really nice of them because we were touring with such a shoe-string budget! I wound up playing though a whole lot of different
ones and eventually, by the end of that tour, I’d realized that using a distortion box into a clean channel was really helping me do the show. At the end of the tour I went back into the studio to start recording what would become “The Extremist” album, and Marshall had sent over this new head – the 30th Anniversary 6100. The fi rst thing I did was go in to the clean channel and seeing how my box sounded and it was like: Wow – that’s amazing.. And that was really the beginning of me just depending on that head. I’ve got 5 of them & I even have a full stack with the polished brass chassis and logo that’s very cool.
I played “hooky” from the brand for while but when Chickenfoot formed a few years ago, I came back to Marshall because I was looking for a bigger, more organic, more complete sound. The great thing about a distortion box into a clean channel is that if you’re playing melodies and solos back-to-back, when you put it in-front of everyone else in the band, it creates the illusion that it’s the biggest, loudest thing. But, if you’re playing through a rig like that and you’ve got a very dynamic drummer like Chad Smith, a bassist like Michael Anthony and a vocal powerhouse like Sammy Hagar, you quickly fi nd out that your sound really isn’t that big and dynamic at all – it’s smaller!
So, before the fi rst proper Chickenfoot tour, we did a couple of warm-up runs in small clubs. Sammy (Hagar) was playing through his old rig and
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I was playing through mine and we both realized that our amps weren’t up to it. So we contacted Marshall about helping us out for the subsequent “real” tour as neither of us had confi dence in our rigs. Marshall set us up with some JVM and some Vintage Modern heads and we just loved them. They literally transformed the sound of the band. I was using a JVM and the end of that touring cycle I’d realized exactly what it was I was looking to get out of the amp. Then came the offer to work with Marshall on a signature head…
I was not only fl attered by this gesture but also very excited because I had real, practical experience with the JVM and I had some things I wanted
to change about it – specifi cally, make an already great amp even bigger, bolder, more punchy and more dynamic. To me the JVM410H’s four channels were amazing but what was even more mind-blowing was that it had three switchable modes per channel. So it wasn’t merely a 4 channel amp, it was 4 by 3. It was fascinating just to sit there and play through it. I felt that the designer, Santiago Alvarez, had really made a huge step forward in amplifi er design by being able to pack so much into a head while making it so elegantly designed and functional. This amp gets you in and out of all the different eras of rock music, no questions asked.
So that’s how myself and Santiago started working on the JVM410HJS. I think you can hear a good example of how Chickenfoot’s sound blossomed
as a result of the JVM on the “Get Your Buzz On” live DVD [fi lmed on one night in 2009]. It’s a very fat, rich tone which we’ve since taken several steps further to make it even more of an organic rock and roll sound - which is the hallmark of my signature amp.
Thanks to a really long and fruitful R&D period, I’ve been able to record, rehearse and play live with all the prototypes while Santiago and I fi ne tuned the amp…not just with Chickenfoot but on my solo stuff too. I’ve really put all the prototypes through their paces in “the real world” – well, in “my real world” anyway. To my mind, the original JVM410H has a sizeable chunk of Marshall History encapsulated within its 12 modes. I feel that Santiago and myself have capitalized and expanded upon that fi rm sonic foundation and, as a result, the JVM410HJS contains a lot of classic Marshall tones as well as a few fresh ones that people will regard as new classics.
I sincerely hope JVM410HJS gives you as much playing pleasure as it gives me. I can honestly say that I’ve never had this much fun or derived this much inspiration from an amp before. Enjoy!
Joe Satriani
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