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Where are the British brands?

#61
Trabeen said:
ACG is second to nobody, serious basses from Scotland.
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ACG are amazing, and there are loads of brilliant small boutique bass builders in the UK. We're probably better known for boutique basses and acoustics than we are for electric guitars, these days!

The reason that there are no real major UK-based guitar brands now is probably due to the fact that the revolution of the instrument began in America and the biggest bands here in the 60's (like the Shadows, the Stones and the Beatles) started off using some dodgy European gear and quickly moved to American instruments when they could. Everyone remembers Bruce and Hank playing their red Stratocasters and the dodgy Burns guitars they used to play were consigned to the dustbin of history.

This also needs to be considered in the context of UK manufacturing history. UK manufacturing practically collapsed in the mid 70's and never recovered. The country was very badly mismanaged by successive Labour governments at the time and we had some of our worst economic years since the end of WW2. The Labour-backed unions became too powerful and held too much sway with the Government and they effectively put a stop to many industries as and when they pleased. It was only when the Conservatives came back in the late 70's and early 80's that the country was dragged back from the brink of the abyssal basket-case it had become. British manufacturing never recovered from this, the damage already having been done, so the UK economy turned it's sails towards finance and services. The British guitar brands were all sold off or moved production overseas and that was effectively the end of them.

Unlike America, the pride in British manufacturing died in the 70's and never returned. There was never any value placed in anything that was made in the UK. Consider how our car industry became a laughing stock and collapsed (though Rover soldiered on bravely until the millenium and Jaguar Land Rover managed to survive by luck more than skill). We openly mock British-made products like Vauxhall, yet froth over supposedly superior German products. If you tried to argue that a Honda made in Swindon was an excellent car, someone would tell you that it was only good because it was Japanese and that the factory runs the famed (Toyota-born) Japanese production cycle. UK manufacturing is not financially competitive on any sort of scale, and customers here just do not appreciate quality enough to pay more for it.

However, the UK continues to be a centre for innovation with some excellent craftsmen, hence why we build such great boutique basses.
 
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#66
jouneyman111 said:
Ashdown make bases too now, or are at least branded Ashdown.
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Love or hate Ashdown but they are a company with some lineage - when Trace Elliot were parcelled off to Gibson (before ending up with Peavey) the Trace guys went on to form Ashdown. Funnily enough, most of their bass amp offering was (and continues to be) more vintage-y focused than Trace Elliot ever were but they continued their Trace lineage in the Mark King MK500 amps. That was how, after a few years playing Eden, Mark ended up playing Ashdown with his own signature amp. Ashdown still make limited runs of the Mark King amp series, usually advertised via Facebook and they sell out quite quickly!
 
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#69
My parents were British, and were children during WWII. They had some pretty wild stories about watching aerial dogfights overhead, having bombs and V-2 rockets fall in their neighborhood, being relocated out to the countryside for safety, etc. As young adults, in the late 1950's, they emigrated to Canada. They described post-war England as very economically (and psychologically) depressed, lots of shortages, etc. I wonder to what degree that might have played a role in the topic at hand, as it meant that Fender and Gibson and Rickenbacker, experiencing the post-war economic boom in the U.S., had an easier time of it in terms of acquiring resources and gearing up production of electric guitars and basses. And then once those became the established brands (including in England thanks to Hank Marvin and the Shadows, the Beatles, etc.) the board was pretty well set in terms of large-scale production guitars, and their popularity became self-perpetuating as successive waves of rock stars played the brands their heroes had played. So what developed in England was more of the traditional cottage industry of guitar and bass makers. My theory doesn't explain the converse success of British amplifiers however.
 
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#70
Dan, I think it goes back even further than than. Britain in the 1900's followed American trends in music. The rock and pop revolution was effectively built on the springboard of Leo Fender's instruments. As Britain continued to look to the US for cultural inspiration, it followed that American instruments would be the ticket. There were no instruments made to any sort of scale around that time in the UK that could compete with a Fender for quality and even if there were, it still would have been the wrong 'name'.

You are right though in saying that in the 1950's, the UK was rebuilding heavy industry and setting up the National Health Service. A lot of the heavy industry had either been destroyed by Axis bombs or turned over to war-time production and the economic damage meant that business slow internally. It wasn't really the time to undertake an instrument building enterprise. Food was still rationed until the 1954!
 
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#71
India_Sierra said:
Love or hate Ashdown but they are a company with some lineage - when Trace Elliot were parcelled off to Gibson (before ending up with Peavey) the Trace guys went on to form Ashdown.
Click to expand...

Yup many Ashdown amps use the same frequency centers for their onboard EQ's as the older Trace amps, and the "shape" function is also pretty much lifted from Trace Elliot as well.
 
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#74
India_Sierra said:
You are right though in saying that in the 1950's, the UK was rebuilding heavy industry and setting up the National Health Service. A lot of the heavy industry had either been destroyed by Axis bombs or turned over to war-time production and the economic damage meant that business slow internally. It wasn't really the time to undertake an instrument building enterprise. Food was still rationed until the 1954!
Click to expand...

Part of this was because the UK was paying off debts incurred during the war. By 1945 it owed over 3.2 billion pounds to overseas lenders, primarily American ones. Some loans to the US were only paid off in the 21st Century.
 
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#75
darkwasthenight said:
Those import instruments were still very expensive to your average teenager so outside of professional bands you were more likely to find Burns and Watkins guitars (and amps) but they just didn't survive into this century so you don't hear about them as much.
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For most of the 1950s imports of musical instruments from the United States were restricted in the UK. The few American guitars and basses that made it across the Atlantic were usually purchased by British people visiting the US. The restriction was lifted in 1959.
 
#76
Man, since I found out about the Retrovibe T32 I just can't stop thinking about it...
That bass rings so many bells in my head.
I'm a huge fan of All Them Witches and always thought that the amputation of his bass gave it a sort of Telecaster wierd shape that looked pretty cool to me, along with that wrecked worn out condition. This Retrovibe bass looks really great, has a 32'' scale which I've always wanted to try and if it sounds like a Rick then it just checks all the boxes! And on top of that it won't create a black hole on my bank account.
Has anyone here tried one of these and if so can you share your experience?
 
#77
sonic 7 said:
British amps and American guitars. That’s just the way it happened. There are plenty of British guitar makers but none ever became as popular as Fender,Gibson and Rickenbacker. Maybe because the early British Invasion bands were heavily influenced by American blues, the American guitars were considered more authentic ? Maybe it was a lot easier and profitable to import American guitars than big bulky Fender amps, leaving the British domestic amp market to the domestic manufacturers ? The 60s and 70s were amazing times for British amplification. Marshal, WEM, Matamp/ Orange, Simms-Watts, Sound City, Vox. As far as guitar amps during the same period the U.S. it was pretty much just Fender. But when it came to bass amps the American amps dominated first with Ampeg and then Acoustic became very popular as well. Trace Elliot were the first really serious British bass amp but they didn’t appear until the 1980s.
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Not Marshall? (Or do you mean specifically for bass?)

I associated Marshall with the 1960s and 1970s, but the 80s-prolific Steve Lukather used to say he could never beat Marshall gear, even with all the effects he had to use in live gigs (as the recordings were invariably covered in "grease", as he called it).
 
#79
India_Sierra said:
ACG are amazing, and there are loads of brilliant small boutique bass builders in the UK. We're probably better known for boutique basses and acoustics than we are for electric guitars, these days!

The reason that there are no real major UK-based guitar brands now is probably due to the fact that the revolution of the instrument began in America and the biggest bands here in the 60's (like the Shadows, the Stones and the Beatles) started off using some dodgy European gear and quickly moved to American instruments when they could. Everyone remembers Bruce and Hank playing their red Stratocasters and the dodgy Burns guitars they used to play were consigned to the dustbin of history.

This also needs to be considered in the context of UK manufacturing history. UK manufacturing practically collapsed in the mid 70's and never recovered. The country was very badly mismanaged by successive Labour governments at the time and we had some of our worst economic years since the end of WW2. The Labour-backed unions became too powerful and held too much sway with the Government and they effectively put a stop to many industries as and when they pleased. It was only when the Conservatives came back in the late 70's and early 80's that the country was dragged back from the brink of the abyssal basket-case it had become. British manufacturing never recovered from this, the damage already having been done, so the UK economy turned it's sails towards finance and services. The British guitar brands were all sold off or moved production overseas and that was effectively the end of them.
Click to expand...
I think the dominance of American instruments comes from the history, manufacturing tradition and reputation, and also from popular culture which drives and evolves the tradition. But there is always room for specialist production and the UK has plenty of luthiers with a strong tradition especially in acoustic manufacture.

It's certainly the case that the huge manufacturing base left behind after WWII was ravaged by union greed and mismanagement. So low-margin stuff like cars and fridges are off the menu. However, high-margin manufacturing has never died off, and the UK is still the ninth biggest manufacturer in the world by value, if not volume. (It's only a hair's breadth behind France, and historically has often swapped places with France in the comparison tables.) On the plus side, we no longer have general labour strikes, three-day weeks or rolling blackouts, although that's to be expected because frankly most developed countries don't either :)

To put it in contest, manufacturing represents 18.2% of UK output GDP, or did before you-know-what. Germany, the European powerhouse, manages 24.3%. (I don't know if the measurements for sector and total are exactly the same; definitions are never identical, and variances are applied differently - for example I doubt the German Federal Statistics Office has a precise equivalent to the ONS's blue book.) The sources are important - so the UK figure is from the ONS 2019 summary, and the Germany source is from the German FSO's GDP-at-a-glance.
 
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#80
Danny O Danny said:
My parents were British, and were children during WWII. They had some pretty wild stories about watching aerial dogfights overhead, having bombs and V-2 rockets fall in their neighborhood, being relocated out to the countryside for safety, etc. As young adults, in the late 1950's, they emigrated to Canada. They described post-war England as very economically (and psychologically) depressed, lots of shortages, etc. I wonder to what degree that might have played a role in the topic at hand, as it meant that Fender and Gibson and Rickenbacker, experiencing the post-war economic boom in the U.S., had an easier time of it in terms of acquiring resources and gearing up production of electric guitars and basses. And then once those became the established brands (including in England thanks to Hank Marvin and the Shadows, the Beatles, etc.) the board was pretty well set in terms of large-scale production guitars, and their popularity became self-perpetuating as successive waves of rock stars played the brands their heroes had played. So what developed in England was more of the traditional cottage industry of guitar and bass makers. My theory doesn't explain the converse success of British amplifiers however.
Click to expand...
Interesting reflections, thanks. I'm slightly OT continuing the amp discussion but since the UK and US are still leaders in sound reinforcement and production across the board (PA, instrumentation, production and hi-fi are all still very strong), I think some of the momentum, at least on this side of the pond, was probably to do with the cost of freight :). So whilst John, Paul and George ended up with Gretsches and Rickys, it was much easier to go and choose a Vox rather than Fender.
 
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