Vox Amplifier History Tome Hits 10, Pounds That Is

When Jim Elyea first conceived a book about Vox amplifiers he envisioned it as a field guide – a small handy pamphlet with basic information that could be taken into a music store. Over 12 years, that original concept grew and grew and grew and grew until it became the 682-page tome that will be available in December. “Vox Amplifiers: The JMI Years” ( www.voxguidebook.com )weighs in at 10 pounds, coincidentally the same weight as a student-level Vox amp. While working on the book, Elyea also worked at his day job as owner of North Hollywood prop house History for Hire. Juggling time between his business and writing, he said, could not have been done without the help and support of his employees, some of whom took on extra duties. “The prop house was funding the endeavor,” said Elyea, who opened History for Hire in 1985. “At no time did I let down any duties here; I just did more delegating.” Elyea considers his book to be the last word about Vox amplifiers, a brand in continuous production since 1957 and used by thousands of bands worldwide, both famous and unknown. Divided into seven sections, the book tells the story of how Thomas Jennings founded an organ company in England following World War II and later expanded into electric guitar amplifiers to capitalize on the explosion of rock and roll in the late 1950s. <!– History: A Vox amp. –> History: A Vox amp. Included are an exhaustive overview of the component parts of the amplifiers; a look at manufacturing, sales and maintenance; and profiles of top groups that have used Vox products. Research took Elyea to England eight times where he conducted interviews in a centuries-old pub attached to a hotel in Dartford, the town east of London where JMI was founded. At the suggestion of wife Pam, Elyea took out ads in area newspapers to find former employees of JMI and got what he called an amazing response. “What I realized in talking to everybody was that there was a story here,” Elyea said. “It was much more than a field guide.” As a business owner, Elyea found it useful to see what Jennings and his team did right and wrong in guiding the company. On the plus side was the feel Jennings had of what musicians would buy; of expertly packaging the technical ideas of lead designer Dick Denney and chief engineer Derek Underdown. On the negative was Jennings’s decision in 1963 to sell a controlling interest in JMI to the Royston Group in exchange for a cash infusion. Royston lacked the feel Jennings had for the amps and used JMI to fund its other business units. Financial difficulties faced by Royston later in the decade brought down the profitable JMI. (Japanese company KORG now makes and distributes the Vox brand.) “From a small humble beginning in this little bitty storefront they became huge, which became its own problem,” Elyea said. “A classic problem in business is that sometimes you can grow too fast for your own good. In some ways they handled it well and in some ways they didn’t.” That sales of Vox equipment took off comes as no surprise when the biggest musical act of its or any age endorsed the amplifiers. For the book, Elyea spoke with Reg Clark, the salesman from the JMI retail store in London who was approached in early 1963 by a well-dressed gentleman asking about getting free Vox equipment for the band he managed. The man? Brian Epstein. The band? The Beatles. Epstein and JMI struck a deal that had the Fab 4 exclusively using Vox amplifiers and appearing, free of charge, in Vox advertising. During their touring years of 1964 to 1966, The Beatles received brand new equipment, all of which Elyea documented. “Everybody wanted to be The Beatles. Everybody knew The Beatles played Vox amps,” Elyea said. “So everybody wanted to use Vox amps.” Clark wrangled other superstar endorsements. Name any British Invasion band and likely they were on the list of the Vox artists loan program: The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Zombies, The Dave Clark Five. That amplifier Pete Townsend smashed his guitar into? Yep, it was a Vox. When British music show “Ready Steady Go” switched to live singing from lipsynching, Clark made sure to get Vox amps on the set. Vox foldback speakers and a Continental organ were placed at the Abbey Road studios used by The Beatles and other groups. And that leads to another fatal mistake in the Vox story. Despite the biggest names in rock and roll using the amps, JMI didn’t adapt to changing musical styles. As the psychedelic period transitioned into a heavier, guitar-oriented style, Marshall amps became the preferred equipment and the embodiment of the sound of Jimi Hendrix, Cream and others. Marshall amps used tubes whereas Vox continued to use transistors and transistors, Elyea said, don’t produce a good sound for the electric guitar. The fate of those amplifiers lugged around the world by The Beatles, Stones and other popular groups illustrates a recurring theme that emerged as Elyea researched his book – that the story of Vox was the story of things being thrown away. The beat-up touring equipment was returned to Vox and stored in a shed behind the factory. When the shed became full a Vox employee had the bright idea to dump the amps into a large hole dug at a nearby petrol station. After all, the company was in the business of selling new equipment and not preserving the old regardless of who had plugged into it. “Not only under this petrol station are dozens and dozens of really cool rare Vox amplifiers but they are ones used by The Kinks and Herman’s Hermits and everybody,” Elyea said. “The coolest ones, the ones with the most pedigree are the ones under the petrol station. Everybody I tell this story to has this look in their eye like, ‘I wonder if we could…'” Vinyl Destination A conversation with a record store owner has put Jim Kaplan back into the world of newspaper publishing. The co-founder and former publisher of the Sun Newspapers chain in the Valley, Kaplan now puts out Record Collector News ( recordcollectornews.com )from his home in Burbank. Stories and columns on collecting vinyl records, musician interviews, and a calendar of record shows fill each bi-monthly issue. A map showing the locations of stores in the western U.S. that buy and sell vinyl takes up the center section of the paper. “If you are a collector, if you have the bug, and you see this map it is a useful tool,” Kaplan said. Record Collector News might not have happened had Kaplan not been in Freakbeat Records on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks one day earlier this year talking with owner and friend Bob Say. Discussing Kaplan’s future plans he had left the Sun chain not long before Say pulled out a copy of Record Convention News, a record collecting publication that had stopped publishing in 2007 on the death of its owner, Jim Philbrook. As Say recalled the conversation, he told Kaplan that is the type of newspaper he should be doing. “He instantly saw the value in it,” said Say. “He has created a new and improved edition.” The paper has a print run of 10,000 copies distributed at 200 record stores, primarily in Southern California. Stores and stereo equipment vendors that advertised with Philbrook now do so with the new publication. Hundreds of copies get snatched up at Amoeba Records in Hollywood and shop owners in Seattle are willing to pay to have Kaplan send copies. Freakbeat goes through several bundles of the paper with every issue. A recent customer visiting from Germany asked what other stores he could stop at and Say gave him a copy of Record Collector and its centerfold map. “He headed out on the bus to go to some record stores,” Say said. In a high-def digital world where music downloads are the norm, searching out albums and singles that require a turntable appears to be a step backward. But that is not the case. Major artists on major labels continue to release new work on vinyl albeit in limited pressings. After a steady decline between 2001 and 2006, sales of vinyl albums and extended-play discs rose to $22.9 million in 2007, according to the Record Industry Association of America. (Sales of vinyl singles, however, continue to plummet.) “Vinyl is getting hot again,” Kaplan said. While Baby Boomers cling to their records for nostalgic reasons and the ritual of sliding that black disc from the sleeve to place on the turntable and then lower the needle, Kaplan said the attraction for other age groups is in the better sound quality and having a physical product to hold and a cover to look at. Since starting Record Collector News this spring Kaplan has learned of more record stores in Southern California than he ever knew existed and rekindled his interest in buying more vinyl. “I have an iPod with 12,000 songs but it doesn’t give the same emotional attachment as I get with the vinyl records,” Kaplan said. Staff Reporter Mark Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or by e-mail at [email protected] . He still has a modest collection of vinyl albums and singles despite not having a turntable.