I love the sound of some of those shadows recordings. I understand that even the late Jet Harris used to play his bass through an AC30 on some of the recordings?

He who dies with the most tubes... wins

Surf Daddies

We rely heavily on the Vox Continental. We'd sound much different with any other organ.

We've used Farfisa's, Yamaha's, Elka's, and several others. None come close to the continental

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Great post, thanks!

METEOR IV on reverbnation

dboomer wrote:

It also became the rage for American Garage bands in
the mid-sixties

Hey Norm

You may not know this (but since it is a bit of our
shared past) that the Seeds were the first American
band that Vox sponsored.

Big Seeds fan here! I never knew they were the first but that's cool. The Seeds had an endorsement, so did The Electric Prunes, and The Standells used them as did The Chocolate Watchbnad and many others.

The most notable American garage band to have an endorsement was likely Paul Revere and The Raiders simply because they were on TV every week as the hosts and house band for WHERE THE ACTION IS.

Vox wanted to conquer the American Rock & Roll market in the mid-sixties and they did being that they were the weapon of choice by the British Invasion.

Check out The Raiders and there Vox ad and the wall of Vox amps. KIller!

The Seeds!

Electric Prunes...

The Standells Larry Tamblyn...

Vox goes for the teen garage craze bigtime in this ad...

I love this radio spot for the Vox Wah-Wah. Makes your guitar sound like a sitar! I heard this first on a garage comp. Super cool stuff...

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Last edited: Feb 10, 2012 11:09:42

Indeed!!!

BOSS FINK "R.P.M." available now from DOUBLE CROWN RECORDS!
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Here's an interesting interview with Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and The Raiders from www.caughtinthecarousel.com

Cyril Jordan from Magic Christian (ex-Flamin' Groovies) told me he saw you guys at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium and he was amazed when Drake and Fang (guitarist and bass player) actually stood on top of their Vox Super Beatle amps. I mean these things were like five feet high.

ML - Yeah it's true. They had to balance pretty carefully on those babies. But they weren't standard Super Beatles. They each had two Fender D-130F speakers in them and you know how heavy those things are. And then a Mac 175 amplifier sitting in the bottom of it. So it was a Macintosh power amp and Fender speakers.

So you really weren't using Vox amps.

ML - Well Vox sponsored us. And when they were made in England -- the tube stuff -- they were great. But when Thomas Organ bought them out and sent us the new amps, I said, "This is crap, we can't use this shit." It was so brittle. Early transistors --solid state. It didn't sound like crap if that's all you ever heard but after tubes it was totally different and we said, "We can't use these." So they said, "What would it take to get you to use them?" Well we had Macs in our PA so I said, "Stick a Mac in each amp and a Bogen pre-amp on top." And the Bogen was also tubes. And then for bass there were I guess, D-140's. But those amps were easier to balance on then regular Vox amps cause they weighed about three times as much.

..................

I think an important thing to note is when he says, "It didn't sound like crap if that's all you ever heard but after tubes it was totally different"

I've know a couple of people that have the solid state versions and they sound pretty cool. I don't have a problem with cheap instruments from the sixties. Danelectro, Kay, Teisco, Silvertone were all cheap instruments but all are pretty cool.

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But when Thomas Organ bought them out and sent us the new amps, I said, "This is crap, we can't use this shit." It was so brittle. Early transistors --solid state.

Yep, that's pretty much it. But they looked so cool! We used Super Beatles for guitar and piano but we had to use a Dual Showman for bass because the Vox amps just couldn't cut it. I think you have to remember that back in those days the backline was never run through the PA (which pretty well sucked too), so being loud was way more important than sounding good.

They gave me this cool looking set of drums but I never used them because they were about the worst sounding drums I even heard. The top heads were different sized than the bottom heads. But they looked sooo cool. Some day I'm gonna find a set again.

http://www.trixondrums.de/trixon/t_mm20.jpg

Back in the early 1980s myself and a few friends "borrowed" a very old large house which belonged to the local council. Great days.. 18 months rent free! It had two empty rooms which were large enough to stage a 400 capacity gig each! My mate Martin bought his Vox AC30/Les Paul copy and each night after work i'd spend an hour playing his guitar in this vast room. The acoustics were incredible, the sound was glorious! The best amp i've ever played loud. I'd guess Martin had been in possession of the Vox for quite a few years already and very likely bought second hand. Time moved on, he got married and moved to the west country and we lost contact. I saw him about eight years ago and asked about the Vox... He said, Oh that old thing, it's in the garden shed ~ Think leaky roof, dirt, spiders etc. I asked if he wanted to sell it, he said: it doesn't work, why do you want it? ... Er well er.. and then we lost contact. haha.

Dalibor. Would it be fair to describe your normal guitar sound as warm & brassy? What is it that attracts you to the Vox?

Last edited: Feb 15, 2012 07:27:20

Nice one, thanks.