Question for British steelers about BBC One programs

Walter Bowden · Post by **Walter Bowden** » 28 Jan 2012 7:31 pm

Cheers y'all.
I wanted to ask some British steelers about programs on BBC One. A specific show I'm not able to stream in the USA is about the development and history of Vox amps called "Vox Pop: How Dartford Powered the British Beat Boom".

I don't want to take up a lot of forum space for this request because it's not really steel related, but if anyone can email me about the program (if they have seen it) I would be grateful.

Best wishes and Rule Britannia. Walter

Russ Wever · Post by **Russ Wever** » 28 Jan 2012 8:16 pm

Looks like they got for
ya right ~> H E R E
~Russ

Joachim Kettner · Post by **Joachim Kettner** » 28 Jan 2012 11:43 pm

Selmer was another company that built amplifiers at the same time, but they couldn't compete with Vox.
http://www.vintagehofner.co.uk/gallery/ ... /selm.html

Ken Byng · Post by **Ken Byng** » 29 Jan 2012 3:22 am

Walter
Rather strangely, I remember that our band in the 60's used to lust after the US Fender amps rather than the home grown Vox and Marshall. The AC30 had this extraordinary glassy and clean tone, with beautiful inherent midrange. I used an AC30 when I first started to play Hawaiian style steel guitar in the late 60's, and it gave a beautifully clean end product. The BBC program has great historic value, and Dick Denny is somewhat of a legend to many of us over here.

Roger Rettig · Post by **Roger Rettig** » 29 Jan 2012 7:51 am

They talked us into using the latest Selmer amps in 1963 and gave us a whole back-line (of course, it wasn't called a 'back-line' in those days!) and put our picture in the Melody Maker a couple of times.

It wasn't all beer-and-skittles, because it meant we couldn't use our beloved Fender amps! here's the photo - Eden Kane & The Downbeats, and we're one floor up from the Selmer retail shop in Charing Cross Road.

I have to say that the amps weren't an unqualified success; the 'Treble'n'Bass' model we had was soon dubbed the 'Trouble'n'Bass', and I was delighted once our obligations to this shoddy product were discharged!

Joachim Kettner · Post by **Joachim Kettner** » 29 Jan 2012 10:07 am

A few years ago I saw the Pretty Things. Dick Taylor still used his old Selmer from the sixties. Pretty amazing! Sorry for the topic drift.

Walter Bowden · Post by **Walter Bowden** » 29 Jan 2012 6:26 pm

Thanks for the response fellows and that's a great picture of the band Roger.
I don't recognize you but I can't recognize myself from old pics anymore!

Can you remember if any of the Selmer amps had the pulsating tremolo neon type light bar on the front of them?

I play my steel through a Nashville 112 but I have a Korg reissue VOX AC 30TB I play with guitar and have learned a channel jumping trick that gets some great clean tones with the interaction between the different channels/controls and I've always liked the unique Vibe/Trem sound.

I would really like to see the BBC One story about Vox if it could be available in the States. The Vox amps "imprinted" on me early when I saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan (showing my age) and other British Invasion first wave bands.

It's really sad such a good amp was transformend by Thomas Organ Co. into a transistor wanna be as well as the other amps from the marque, but that's another story.

Best wishes and cheers!
Walter

BTW, sorry my own drift. The moderator may want to move this thread in a more appropriate category and that's OK by me

Roger Rettig · Post by **Roger Rettig** » 29 Jan 2012 6:50 pm

I'm the one with the glasses on - but it was forty-nine years ago, so....

Yes: I do recall the wobbly green neon light - I don't remember its function, but it could have been activated by the tremelo. The combo amps (on the floor behind me and Ben Steed, the other guitar-player) were either 'Thunderbirds' or 'Zodiacs'. The 'Treble'n'Bass', I think, was the bass-player's separate head.

Mind you, unlike Ken who liked his AC-30, I was never fond of Vox amps, either. My first-ever amp was an early Selmer effort, the Truvoice TV-19 (I think); better, I thought, than these fussy and far-too-complicated newer models that were very unreliable and they didn't enjoy being bounced around in Ford Transit gig-wagons.

Ken Byng · Post by **Ken Byng** » 30 Jan 2012 9:02 am

Funnily enough Roger, my first amp was a Selmer too, a Little Giant. My Dad, bless him, couldn't afford an AC30 when I first started seriously playing guitar at 12. Compared to his weekly wage, they were just completely prohibitive. I think I went from the Little Giant to a Watkins Dominator. I should have kept both amps as they are fetching absolutely silly money in the UK by collectors. I traded the Dominator for an AC30.

My first really good amp was a silverface Fender Twin, bought on HP by me along with a Binson Echo that I later sold to Johnny Edmed. The Twin (w/JBL's) was a hernia job.

I bought another blonde Vox AC30 from a friend for £250 about 4 years ago. I put it on eBay a year later, and it made £800 (or $1000)!! Ridiculous.

Roger Rettig · Post by **Roger Rettig** » 30 Jan 2012 11:53 am

That's interesting, Ken. I'd forgotten the Little Giant!

I'd forgotten, too, my very first amp bought for me by my maternal grandmother - it was an Antoria, and this will prompt me to search on Google for any trace of them. I know it cost her £14 which was a princely sum indeed in 1957!

About the time the photo above was taken I was in the middle of a massive spending binge! I was on very good money and I though it would go on for ever (we live and learn!) I had the Super 400, of course, but added a Binson Echorec to my arsenal as well as a new Gibson SJ-200; on top of that I got Jim Marshall (the founder of Marshall Amps) to make me two speaker cabinets so I could split my sound between the two sides of the stage (a 12" speaker in each, and one of the very first amp-related jobs he ever undertook).

It sounds like I had delusions of grandeur now when I look back. They're all long-gone now (the delusions, I mean)!

Ken Byng · Post by **Ken Byng** » 30 Jan 2012 1:50 pm

Back on topic, the Vox AC30 has a very hi-fidelity sound especially the blue speakers model. The blonde reissue that I bought from my friend sounded wonderful for country with a Tele through it, but it just has no headroom in a backline that isn't miked up.

A Fender Stringmaster into an AC30 would sound great I would guess. The lower output pickups would not overdrive the front end.

Incidentally, Brad Paisley has an AC30 and loves it.

Walter Bowden · Post by **Walter Bowden** » 30 Jan 2012 5:53 pm

If I can point out an additional feature AC 30's have (the British made ones anyway) is a tube rectifier, GZ34 I think, in the power stage section.

A tube rectifier gives a discernible effect to the sound of any amp with them. Think of Fender Vibrolux and early Bassmans.

The tube rectifier acts as a kind of compressor (some call it "sag") but many pickers claim you can hear the difference between a tube rectifier amp and one that has a solid state rectifier.

Just a totally subjective comment mind you. Walter

basilh · Post by **basilh** » 10 Feb 2012 8:59 pm

I used THIS Vox AC-15 amp until I got a Selmer Thunderbird, then a Burns 'Orbit'

The 'repro model of my Vox amp is now also a collectors item..
See here..

On the right standing on its end is my Thunderbird with a Telefunken Mixer/Reverb sitting on top of it..

Walter Bowden · Post by **Walter Bowden** » 11 Feb 2012 4:07 pm

I wonder if BJ Cole cut any of his classic stuff using British amps?
Anyone have any knowledge?
Cheers! Walter

Michael Lee Allen · Post by **Michael Lee Allen** » 11 Feb 2012 4:44 pm

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Michael Lee Allen · Post by **Michael Lee Allen** » 11 Feb 2012 4:48 pm

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Roger Rettig · Post by **Roger Rettig** » 11 Feb 2012 5:01 pm

I wouldn't say 'No' to that Jazzmaster!

Chris Reesor · Post by **Chris Reesor** » 11 Feb 2012 5:18 pm

What year was your Super 400, Roger ? ( Insert Drooling emoticon here)
Do you remember what the guitar your partner in crime is hugging so possessively was?

Chris

Michael Lee Allen · Post by **Michael Lee Allen** » 11 Feb 2012 5:26 pm

Deleted

Roger Rettig · Post by **Roger Rettig** » 11 Feb 2012 5:27 pm

My Super 400 was a '58 (s/n A-28256) and it's now on display at the Hard Rock in Nashville.

Ben Steed's guitar was a '59 Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster; I owned this, too, in later years but I no longer have either of them!

Selling that 400 for mere money was the most stupid thing I ever did! I can't for the life of me remember what I did with the $15,000 but I'll never forget the guitar. Here it is on the HRC's web-site...

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Question for British steelers about BBC One programs

Question for British steelers about BBC One programs

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