Initially very aware that The Beatles’ groundbreaking sound was driving its market, Thomas Organ made a sincere effort to reproduce the glories of “the Vox sound,” but in a more-efficient and bottom-line-friendly solid-state format. By and large, though, Thomas Organ went its own way more and more to the point where, by ’67, loud, brash, and relatively poorly-made Californian solid-state amps had a greater claim to the Vox brand than did the seminal British tube combos.īut not all early solid-state Vox amps from Thomas Organ were entirely awful, and this V-14 Super Beatle is a case in point. Some cooperation between manufacturers east and west continued for a couple of years, sharing some designs and talent. distribution in 1964, they still failed to keep up with demand, and in less than a year the agreement became more-convoluted, allowing the Californians to manufacture Vox-branded gear on the West Coast, with JMI retaining very little control over product or profit. It was Vox and JMI’s figurative soul that stood to be lost, in the form of depleted quality and decimated reputation, and the eventual folding of the company.Īfter Thomas Organ started U.S. We’ve told the story before in these pages, most recently in the feature on the ’65 Berkeley (July ’22), which told how JMI penned a Faustian bargain with California-based manufacturer Thomas Organ in an effort to boost the bottom line and meet demand for Vox product. Even with such massive exposure, however, parent company Jennings Musical Instruments (JMI) made choices that, in just two years, took the brand from the highest of highs to the lowest low. Still, some of the solid-state creations of that transitional period are classics, like this ’66 Super Beatle.Īs the cliché goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall – and in the mid ’60s there was arguably no bigger amplifier name riding high on the back of the British invasion and boosted by visibility onstage with The Beatles and others, Vox was the amp to have. Output: approximately 120 watts RMS After producing some of the most-iconic guitar amplifiers of the early 1960s, Vox leaned unwittingly into a failing technology – and unknowingly accelerated its own implosion.Tremolo Speed and Depth, three-way MRB switch, Reverb channel-assign switch and Blend. ![]() ![]() Controls: Volume, Treble, Bass on Normal and Brilliant channels with Top Boost switch on the former, MRB on the latter Volume and Tone-X on the Bass channel.Effects: Tremolo, Reverb, MRB (Middle-Range-Boost).Three channels: Normal, Brilliant, Bass.This early rendition carries the Super Reverb Twin badge in the lower-right corner. The Super Beatle inherited its trapezoidal cabinet from earlier tube amps.
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