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AS ONE OF THE MOST ICONIC NAMES IN MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS and amplifiers, Vox played a huge role in creating the shimmering guitar sounds that galvanized a generation of young music fans in the 1960s. Vox amplifiers, guitars, organs, effects, and P.A. gear were used by the Shadows, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Yardbirds, the Kinks, and practically every other British Invasion group to score hits on either side of the Atlantic. Vox amps gave the top players in England a definitive sound, and what Brit could resist a product line whose image was as down home as Beefeaters and Buckingham Palace? From the gold trim and diamond-pattern grilles of its classy AC30 amplifiers to the futuristic shapes of its Phantom series guitars and basses, Vox gear evoked a certain élan that couldn't have emerged from muleskinner America.
Before the swinging sounds of the British Invasion captured the world's imagination, Vox was a fairly low-key operation-just one of many trying to survive the economic hardships of postwar Britain. The Vox name actually originated in 1951, with the advent of a primitive keyboard instrument called the Univox (Latin for "single voice"). It was the brain-child of Tom Jennings, who started in the music business in 1946 as a dealer in used instruments, and an importer of accordions and guitars from France and Germany. Acting on pure faith that a small, monophonie keyboard fitted with an amp and speaker would be something that people would want, Jennings hired a technician named Derek Underdown to design the Univox. The instrument became popular with solo musicians who worked the English pub scene, and it carried JMI Qennings Musical Instruments; the name changed to Jennings Musical Industries in 1957) along until the next opportunity for a new product came to Jennings' attention.
With the sudden popularity of skiffle groups around 1955, Jennings realized he needed a guitar amplifier to grow his business. The conditions were especially ripe due to Britian's restrictions on imports from America, and though he had talented people working for him, Jennings felt he needed to look outside JMI for a suitable design. When a guitarist/electronics technician named Dick Denney came to his shop to show him a 15watt 1x12 guitar amp he'd made, Jennings...