Marshall, the legendary amplifier manufacturer, is acquired by Marshall speaker manufacturer Zound

Marshall Amplification, the 60-year-old company that produced legendary guitar amps used by Jimi Hendrix, Slash and Kurt Cobain, is being acquired by Zound Industries, the Swedish company that previously licensed the Marshall brand for its headphones and speakers. The exact financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but the resulting company will be the privately held Marshall Group. The Marshall family will be the largest shareholder with a stake of 24 percent.

Jeremy de Maillard, who currently serves as CEO of Zound and will be CEO of Marshall Group in the future, said in an interview with The edge that the deal is about acquiring Marshall’s technical know-how as well as acquiring the brand name. “I like to think that Zound made products for listening to music and Marshall made products for making music or playing music,” says de Maillard, calling them “very complementary companies.”

For the immediate future, the CEO does not expect any major changes for either company. All of Marshall Amplification’s brands and subsidiaries – including Natal Drums, Marshall Records and Marshall Live Agency – are part of the deal, and the CEO says they are “100 per cent” committed to the company’s existing premium UK amplifier manufacturing facility and theirs Factory in Vietnam.

Victoria Marshall, who was CEO of Marshall from 2002 to 2008, and Terry Marshall, who built the first Marshall amplifier with his father Jim Marshall in 1962, will sit on the Marshall Group board of directors to lead the company’s strategy at the highest level.

There will also be no immediate changes to Zound’s development of headphones and Bluetooth speakers. “We’ve been working closely together for 12 years,” de Maillard tells me. “We haven’t created a single Zound product that hasn’t been approved by the acoustic engineer at Marshall Amps… It’s a complete continuation of what we do, only now we’re one and the same.”

“Ever since my father and I created the original Marshall amplifier in 1962, we’ve always looked for ways to bring the groundbreaking Marshall sound to music lovers of all backgrounds and musical tastes around the world – and I’m confident that the Marshall Group will deliver.” will do elevate that mission and inspire love for the Marshall brand,” Terry Marshall said in a statement.

“Having worked with my father in his later years, I know he would be excited by this direction and the potential to reach a larger global audience,” added Victoria Marshall.

Although the Zound name is dying out in favor of Marshall, the Swedish company has no plans to abandon its other product lines like Urbanears. But de Maillard tells me that Marshall-branded items account for over 90 percent of Zound’s existing sales, so doubling the brand makes sense.

Over the long term, de Maillard hopes the merger will help accelerate development, help them take a more “holistic” approach to their product lineup, and ultimately share manufacturing and product development knowledge gained from working in two very different industries . “Basically, what we’re buying is the ability to make an entity greater than the sum of its parts,” says de Maillard. But he adds that “nothing has been decided yet” about the long-term goals of the newly formed company.

When Zound first began licensing the Marshall name in 2010, it was an unknown startup that had only started shipping products the previous year. It was the legendary Marshall brand that helped put it on the map. But now, over a decade later, de Maillard suspects that Zound’s Marshall-branded speakers and headphones may be the ones helping to promote Marshall’s guitar amps.

“We have taken the Marshall brand to over 90 countries through headphones and speakers. So it became a much better known brand to the masses than before,” claims de Maillard. “Before, it was the insiders, the musicians, people who really cared about music and knew about the brand. But through this partnership, we managed to touch many more people.”

“I don’t have the number, but I’m pretty sure it got a lot of people into playing guitar, too,” he says.