50's/60's amps

[John]

I am soon to be on the look out for another amp and was wondering what amps would have been around in the late 50's or early 60,s I know vox ac 15's / 30's were avaliable but what other makes and models would have been around ?

Cheers John

[Mike Honey]

Fender, Fenton-Weill, futurama, Watkins becoming WEM, Ampeg, Danelectro, Selmer (Thunderbird, bril amp), blimey senior moment coming on!!

Mike

[des mcneill]

I also seem to remember a Burns amp,can anyone confirm ?
Des.

[terryjan]

Yep, a BURNS ORBIT, transistor amp, very raw and LOUD. Richard Hawley uses one.
Cheers All

[Bluesnote]

Fender, Fenton-Weill, futurama, Watkins becoming WEM, Ampeg, Danelectro, Selmer (Thunderbird, bril amp), blimey senior moment coming on!!

Mike

I remember these big Selmers Mike. We had a rhyme player who was also the singer in one of bands I was in. He was from an earlier era than me. I had the AC 30 at the time and I was amazed at the fact that his Selmer had reverb and my Vox did'nt
Sometimes I would play through his on certain numbers just for that sound

[Mike Honey]

Off topic I know but when I was about 13 I used to 'play the hop' from school (not advocated!)and go up the west end to gaze in all the guitar shops. One day i went into Selmers in Charing Cross road and Tony Hicks was there trying out a Selmer Thunderbird. I'd never heard a sound like it!. A few years later I bought a secondhand one. Wish I still had it!!

Mike

[terryjan]

Talking of Selmer reminds me of the amp I used in the 60s, after the usual Wem Dominator period, a bus trip to Kitchens at Leeds saw us the proud owners of a Selmer Selectotone Twin, a beast of an amp. It was so heavy it came with castors pre fitted. Imagine getting on a bus from Leeds to Barnsley with that under the stairs. Happy days.
Terry

[JimN]

I remember these big Selmers ... We had a rhyme player ... in one of bands I was in. He was from an earlier era than me. I had the AC 30 at the time and I was amazed at the fact that his Selmer had reverb and my Vox did'nt Sometimes I would play through his on certain numbers just for that sound

Selmer amps were based on Fender and Gibson amplifiers, and as soon as Fenders started sporting tremolo and reverb, Selmer followed suit (also making the change from top-mounted control panels to front-mounted, though they achieved that in a different way from Fender).

I'd say that the tremolo as fitted to Fender and Selmer (and even Marshall) amps was better than the version used on Vox AC30s - more controllable and more versatile. More like the tremolo fitted to current production Chinese-built Vox amps, in fact.

JN

[Martyn]

That's me on the right in about 1964 (born 1948), playing rhythm on my red/white Vox Soloist guitar, the left handed lead guitarist playing his Watkins Rapier (nice sound and a good looking guitar back then, in a darker cherry red with black plate) and our drummer using an old vest to quieten the snare drum as it was a bit louder than the amp! He got by with the two drums and three cymbals. He used the Reslo mike and the one in front of me was a cheap and cheerful mike of unknown origin (may have been an early Shure) that occasionally gave me a nasty shock if I got too close.
No bass player and our sound was pretty thin, to say the least, but both guitars were plugged into the Bird 25 watt Golden Eagle amp you see in the photo. It had tremelo (see the round button pedal sat on top of the amp) and reverb on both channels, which was quite unique back then. I believe these amps were only made for a few years in the mid-sixties and the company, which was based in Poole, Dorset, reverted to their traditional organs/keyboards thereafter, which was a shame as it gave out a really nice sound.
We're seen playing our one and only appearance at the Ford factory's staff canteen in Southampton - if I remember, this doubled up as their social club. Note the total power supply coming from the socket up high on the wall. Those were the days . . .
Regards,
Martyn

[John]

Great picture, Its great to see how things were, I think this could be the start of another thread,