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Why Doesn't Vox Make Bass Amps?

#21
Bassman62 said:
Heres a shot of me using a Vox AC30 Bass amp in 1964 along with my Burns Six String Bass, Vox produced on reasonable bass amp which was the Foundation Bass, all of 50 watts with an 18" speaker in a separate cab, they also did the T50 which was an early transitor piggy back amp and a 15" + 12" cab.
There's a company about 30 miles from me making direct Vox replicas under the JMI (Jennings Musical Industries) banner, Jennings were the sort of parent company.
Click to expand...


Awesome pic! Talk about 'back in the day':) Very cool!
 
#23
I remember playing bass thru a Vox Super Beatle and a couple smaller Vox bass amps they just didn't sound that good. The Super Beatle was loud for its day, but thin sound. Liked my Standel amps better like the one Duck Dunn has in old pictures of Booker T. and the MG's.
 
#24
my first bass amp was a t50(i think) stack and i am not kidding when i say it was the most lame thing i have ever used....its still lying somwhere in my parents garden or attic....but some guy in japan wants to buy them for loads of money...now where is my spade.:confused:
 
#27
The "leap" from a guitar amp to making a bass amp is certainly not as big as making bass bins and deciding to make an amp (Epifani). Making a bin is not electronic engineering. Yet we here at TB have no problems letting Mr. Epifani make that tremendous leap. In fact we drool in anticipation.

Vox already makes amps. And bins. They "only" have to have the will to do it for bass. Then package it with that nice cloth. And it's not like Korg doesn't have the resources to make that happen.

Sure old Vox bass amps sucked. So did their guitar amps for the most part. Their past is extremely checkered (unlike old Fender). But somehow, within the swamp of our collective minds, we remember fondly that the Beatles sounded so good, so there's a market if we can only figure out how to keep the amps from blowing up. Modern engineers can do that pretty well.

The large number of responses to this thread indicate (to me, anyway), that if Vox really made a nice bass amp, it would do ok. And I'm not talking about that POS practice amp. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have one sitting on the shelf. You couldn't get a better marketing boost than one of Macca's tours!
 
#28
When I started playing bass back in the mid 1970s, I had a VOX AC50 head, and it handled bass very well.

But I was stupid, and looking for a cleaner sound, so I part-exchanged it for a 100Watt run-of-the-mill solid state amp. I got £50 part-ex for the AC50

Biggest mistake I ever made. Now, AC50s fetch ridiculous amounts. Only the other day, I saw one going for £1000. I coulda been rich! :crying:
 
#33
I had a Super Beatle for a while back in the 60's and it broke down regularly and didn't have much bottom, so I dumped it. I also tried one of their bass combos around the same time with an 18" speaker, I think it was called a Westminster and it sounded ok but I passed on it and bought an Accoustic 360 instead.

George
 
#34
A modern AC30 does relatively the same thing the old one did...sound great. There were vox bass amps that were somewhat adequate, but if they merely re-created what they once did, they'd be dead meat competitively speaking...because they just weren't that good for bass.

Sure they could engineer something new, but what would make it a vox? The grillcloth?
 
#35
X Wolf said:
I had a Super Beatle for a while back in the 60's and it broke down regularly and didn't have much bottom, so I dumped it. I also tried one of their bass combos around the same time with an 18" speaker, I think it was called a Westminster and it sounded ok but I passed on it and bought an Acoustic 360 instead.George
Click to expand...
Unless Vox nicked the name the Westminster was an 8 watt combo with an eliptical speaker and made by Watkins (WEM), I had one in 1962 till it blew up in 1963 and got left in the practice room.
The only difference between the AC30 guitar and bass amps was the speakers, what I ended up doing was to take a cable from the speaker tag block with a jack plug and drive an extension cab with a Goodmans Audiom 90 which was an 18" 50 watt speaker.
By todays standards Vox bass amps sucked, what we have to remember is that their heyday was the early to mid 60s.
Going back to using old gear compared to the amazing stuff available today is a no no for me.
Having said that look what's parked in between my Stingray and G&L, a 1962 Burns 6 String Bass which I took on a gig last night.
 
#36
Found a pic of a Vox Super Foundation, if anybody cares...

846vox.jpg
 
#37
Bassman62 said:
Unless Vox nicked the name the Westminster was an 8 watt combo with an eliptical speaker and made by Watkins (WEM), I had one in 1962 till it blew up in 1963 and got left in the practice room.
The only difference between the AC30 guitar and bass amps was the speakers, what I ended up doing was to take a cable from the speaker tag block with a jack plug and drive an extension cab with a Goodmans Audiom 90 which was an 18" 50 watt speaker.
By todays standards Vox bass amps sucked, what we have to remember is that their heyday was the early to mid 60s.
Going back to using old gear compared to the amazing stuff available today is a no no for me.
Having said that look what's parked in between my Stingray and G&L, a 1962 Burns 6 String Bass which I took on a gig last night.
Click to expand...

The Westminster I saw in 1967 was at their Thomas Organ (the distributors) facility in the L.A. Valley area. I found some information and pictures of this amp at www.voxshowroom.com
On a side note I believe the lead Vox technician at the time during the Thomas Organ days was a man named Jose Arredondo who had worked on some of the amps that the beatles used on their first American tour.


George
 
#38
For the uninitiated, the crucial fact to absorb about VOX gear is that the strange and horrible creations built by Thomas Organ in the USA, and sold there under such names as Essex, Berkeley, Westminster, Buckingham and ...wait for it... Royal Guardsman (for heaven's sake!), were not real VOX amps at all. They bear no resemblance to genuine VOX products such as the AC30, AC50 etc. Here in the UK we had no knowledge of them. Thank goodness.
 
#39
As far as the idea that somehow a new Vox amp has to reflect back upon its heritage is bunk. Let's face it, the old Vox heritage is pretty much about cheap, unreliable manufacturing layered upon some really good engineering ideas and (imo) some of the very best industrial design (with a LOT of romantic notions thrown in for good measure).

What I'm trying to say is that if Vox could make a reliable bass amp with their already fab look, they would be more than half-way home. Voice the preamp with some character, and voila!

Or something like that.
 

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