Vox Instruments

Post war UK was a pretty grim place and in the early 1950s and music seemed pretty irrelevant to the national interest. However the Rock n Roll explosion that captured the US soon caught on in Britain and the face of youth and music would be changed for ever and Vox instruments were born.

Tom Jennings of Jennings Musical Industries had already been successful with his organ manufacturing and now in 1957 saw the opportunities that the electric guitar would create. At that time US imports were banned leaving frustrated musicians very little chance of getting hold of suitable equipment so a hungry market was in need of immediate sustinence.

The Continental Organ

This famous portable organ, one of the first vox instruments, quickly became a standard amongst bands of the 60s and it’s cheesy but distinctive sound is at its best on the Animals “House of the Rising Sun” and “Light my Fire” by the Doors.

The basic models were the single manual Continental, and the dual manual, which was known as the Vox Continental II. The Continental was a very stylish keyboard, bright red with a unique reverse keyboard feature, i.e. black natural keys and white sharp keys, and a chrome Z shaped stand. It also used drawbars instead of the normal tabs that were common to organs of that era.

There was none of the bells and whistles that modern day keyboards have but its simplicity was its great strength and made it the classic that it is today. Modern software emulators such as Native Instruments go to great pains to recreate the continental sound and it has been recognised as a classic in such distinguished company as the Hammond B3 and Fender Rhodes.

The AC Guitar Amps

Vox instruments most famous models were the AC15 and AC30 amps. Musician and electronics whizz kid Dick Denny was tasked by Vox owner Tom Jennings to, produce a dedicated guitar amp to rival their American counterparts Fender and Gibson. Denny’s approach to this was quite unlike the two US giants who had used existing gramophone, Public Address amplification to base their products on. Having great understanding of the guitar and its rich tones , Denny built an amp from the ground up using valves and circuitry that would complement the instrument. The result was the AC 15 a mere 15watt amp that still packed a real punch for such a small powered unit.

Top UK instrumental band “The Shadows” endorsed the AC 15 and soon this was superceeded by the classic AC30 (AC stands for Amplifier Combined with speaker). The amps really took off however when a certain band called the Beatles decided to use them exclusively and soon this was followed by lots of other UK “beat groups”. When the UK invasion of the states occurred the Vox equipment went with them and the amp was assured its place in musical history.

Lots of variations and modifications have come along since but the Vox amps are still as highly desirable today as they were in the 60s.

The Vox Guitar

The Teardrop

The first Vox guitars were copies of the famous US guitars, cheaper but far inferior and not really a credit to vox instruments, a company with such a high reputation for quality. The manufacture of guitars was wisely outsourced to an Italian company called EKO who produced fine quality instruments in unusual designs that became much sort after and enhanced the Vox brand even further.

The coffin shaped Phantom appeared in 1962, the first unusual shaped guitar on the market and the marker for all others. Soon, the Vox teardrop appeared and was endorsed by the Stones Brian Jones and can be seen by many of their early band shots. Various other shapes were made and Vox soon became known as the most innovative musical company in the world.

In 1966 Dick Denny was responsible for producing the Phantom X11 a strange combination of guitar and organ which never quite caught on. They also produced a 9 string guitar called the scorpion which was X shaped and also never saw much daylight.

The Strange Guitar Organ

Today Vox UK is defunct, Tom Jennings having sold out to US distributors way back in 1967 but Vox instruments are still highly sort after, just look at the amount of Ebay auctions for them and also the search count in Google which averages around 22000 a month!