Gear In-depth & Longer Blogs — Vox

Last week saw the publication of my 'Lords Of The Springs' article for Premier Guitar. Being invited to write for such a finely-crafted publication was an honour and quite some education. I received a six-page document on correct writing practices for the house style, and another that detailed ethical guidelines (don't be afraid of giving a bad review; no free or discounted demo units to be kept by reviewers; check all facts thoroughly). This was clearly a publication with very high standards and I didn't want to let the side down. My first piece was for the June 2018 edition on the subject of vintage...

Or a journey from "Yet another overdrive pedal" to "This pedal has inspired me to play guitar more than any other I've bought in recent years"...   When Gurus’ headman Chicco informed me that their next pedal after the Echosex 2º was to be a twin overdrive pedal based on a classic Marshall valve amp, I wasn’t exactly overawed. “Yet another overdrive pedal,” I thought to myself as I tacked a couple onto our re-order for yet more stock of the fabulous Echosex 2º LTD. Named the 1959 after the legendary Marshall, and Double Decker because it sports dual channels. The...

We found all sorts of things we'd forgotten about, and fell in love with some new things that we'd never used before. Pete from Teleman and Ben from Elephant Disco came down to help us get organised and so huge thanks have to go to them for kicking us into action. It's a facebook post so hopefully most of you can see it, but if you can't and you want to see pictures of a lot of vintage gear then give us a shout. We also made a load of video demos (thanks again to Pete for the great guitar...

The 1963 AC30B is back from a total strip down/rebuild and sounding as fantastic as I'd hoped. All original parts are fine - speakers, transformers, footswitch etc - valves are Brimar/Mullard and test good. Case is very tatty (someone painted it black a long time ago when fawn wasn't cool), but structurally-sound: no fittings remain though (badge is new). Grille cloth is original - has a small tear which will have a very basic mend on to stop any further damage. Pots dated Sept/Nov 1962, Woden transformers Dec 62, Speakers early 63. It's not been touched for about 30 years before now....