Guitar Reviews for you: Rare Vox AC4 c.1964 smooth vinyl covered amplifier - the one that got away!

                                             

The VOX AC4 smooth covered valve amplifier circa 1964

The very rare 'smooth' vinyl VOX AC4

This is a bit of a retro review in a number of ways, reminiscing over a rare version of an old VOX AC4 amplifier I owned which got damaged in a house move which I should have kept!

The simple control panel layout

I was on holiday in Truro in Cornwall in 1985 and saw a small Vox amplifier in a music shop for £59! I had to have it. I had to wait a few days to get home to try it and it was really great. it hadn't been used for years as it had an old round pin plug on it. Plug changed, it fired up and sounded great.

It was an early 1960's VOX AC4 with Vibrato effect. The rare thing about it was the covering material which I have not seen on another Vox in the flesh.

Not shown in the back is a small divider shelf that slides in to provide a baffle between the speaker and circuit board. A small, hardwired 'egg' footswitch was wired to the amplifier which engaged or disengaged the Vibrato 'Tremolo' effect.

I had heard in a music shop of 'Blue Cabinet' Voxes but the only Voxes I had seen were the Black Tolex covered type. At the time this Vox was made, Jennings the makers of Vox were very busy with keeping up with supply due to the popularity of their amplifiers which were almost used exclusively in pop music from the Shadows onwards.

The smooth covering variation was used on the early AC series amplifiers with darker covering It isn't as rugged as the more plastic Tolex but I like the smooth covering.

The simple circuitry of the AC4

The AC4 I had was covered in a dark Grey colour smoothish vinyl, with a slight blue tint in the covering -  hence the 'Blue Cabinet reference' . Now, it reminds me years later of the Rexine material used on the old Routemaster bus interior wall coverings, so I am presuming this vinyl on my AC4 was a Rexine type of material in this special shade for Vox as I haven't seen any otherwise as light, they are usually a darker grey colour.

Small though this amplifier was it had big sound and I used it with a Watkins copycat for the Shadows sound. A friend made me a reverb unit which ran on 2 x 9 volt batteries and you could wind up the gain on the unit to make the Vox sound like it was a 100 watts!

It sounded great for playing along to the Shadows tracks.

A fabulous old amplifier, now very rare and expensive! The one that got away, sadly.

But I now have bought a near new AC4 C1 in Blue (below) which I will do a review of in another article.

Although this has no tremolo effect like the original,  it may be possible to modify it and add a footswitch, in which case I could add a reverb tank.