VOX TRANSONIC

[davefontana]

For all you amp freaks....... have you ever heard of, let alone seen, a Vox Transonic? No mention of it on the Vox website, yet it did exist. Finally a picture of it in VOX: THe JMI Years (price £53 !!!) with Peter Jay & The Jaywalkers. And our lead guitarist had one, in our band The Fontanas, in Wakefield. Apparently, only a couple were made, as pre:production models, one given to The Jaywalkers to use on TV, and the other was sent up to Kitchens in Leeds, where our guy John Welsby, bought it. It was a very futuristic looking amp, but not very good. He eventually broke it up to make something more efficient! (Now worth about £6k !!) He's as sick as a parrot!!

He is about to post a piccy on rollbackltheyears which shows part of the speaker cabinet, and the transistorised pre-amp.................

[JimN]

I can certainly remember seeing one of those weird amps for sale in the window of Rushworth & Dreaper in Whitechapel, Liverpool, in the later part of 1963. It disappeared after a few months and I assumed it had been sold. A few years later, the Rushworths guitar dept manager, Bob Hobbs (the man who sold those Gibson jumbos to The Beatles) told me that the Transonic had been supplied SOR by Jennings and that it was sent back to Dartford because unsurprisingly, no-one expressed any interest in it.

The Transonic was essentially a T60 in wolf's clothing. The Vox "Transistor Lightweight 30" combo (no, I've never actually seen one of those) had the same electronic innards; the three amps were all 30w RMS, even if the Transonic and the T60 look as though they ought to be more.

They're all detailed in the "Vox Amps - The JMI Years" book by Jim Elyea (of which, more UK news soon).

JN

PS: If you got the book for £53, that was a bargain. Was it in the USA? I can't get copies at cost for less than $65 each (and that's in quantity). I have one boxed copy at the moment, but it's pre-sold (for more than £53).

[keithmantle]

I can certainly remember seeing one of those weird amps for sale in the window of Rushworth & Dreaper in Whitechapel, Liverpool, in the later part of 1963. It disappeared after a few months and I assumed it had been sold. A few years later, the Rushworths guitar dept manager, Bob Hobbs (the man who sold those Gibson jumbos to The Beatles) told me that the Transonic had been supplied SOR by Jennings and that it was sent back to Dartford because unsurprisingly, no-one expressed any interest in it.

The Transonic was essentially a T60 in wolf's clothing. The Vox "Transistor Lightweight 30" combo (no, I've never actually seen one of those) had the same electronic innards; the three amps were all 30w RMS, even if the Transonic and the T60 look as though they ought to be more.

They're all detailed in the "Vox Amps - The JMI Years" book by Jim Elyea (of which, more UK news soon).

JN

PS: If you got the book for £53, that was a bargain. Was it in the USA? I can't get copies at cost for less than $65 each (and that's in quantity). I have one boxed copy at the moment, but it's pre-sold (for more than £53).

Hi Jim , they are on ebay for $84.95 (£53.01) plus £27.72 p/p