“One of the secrets that they will deny to this day was that they could not come up with the sound that I wanted”: Why Ritchie Blackmore’s iconic Marshall stacks were actually Vox amps in disguise

Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore from Deep Purple performs live on stage during the band's American tour in November 1974.

Ritchie Blackmore may be forever associated with stacks upon stacks of Marshalls. However, it turns out that, at least at the beginning of his Deep Purple years, his Marshalls were actually Voxes – a fact he says Marshall wanted to keep on the down-low.

“I really loved my Vox sound, but I wanted to change to Marshalls for the look,” he told Guitar World in a 2018 interview.