Bygone manufacturers of amplifiers used by musicans at performances.

[ms660]

RSC in Manchester was in Brown Street which was off Market Street, I remember going to that shop in my youth, in the ad in this link it was known as RSC (Leeds) Ltd:

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/...PW-1960-12.pdf

Lawrence.

[Cobaltblue]

If we are talking PA as well as then CTH

Cheers

Mike T

[Boater Sam]

Gerry Wells' amps? Definitely British.

[Bill]

Anyone remember TVM? Made in Manchester/Salford in the 60's. Well built in an all steel grey hammer finish case.I had a 30w TVM that featured a Radiospares "De-Luxe" output transformer. These amps were popular with bands in the area and cheaper than Vox or Selmer.
Mention further back of Burman- these were made in Newcastle. I have a 1970's 100w(4xEL34) SL100 power amp and MPA pre-amp. Beautifully made using very neat point to point wiring and tag boards, almost military standard of construction , weighs a ton and very LOUD!

[Hunts smoothing bomb]

Originally Posted by dragonser

Bird were known for their Electronic Organs ( used Neon dividers ! ) and made a couple of Guitar Amps, servicing was done by Mooore Randall electronics in New Malden.
I think Bird also made television Tuners ?

Yes, they did infact manufacture TV tuners at their works in Fleets Lane, Poole. The building still stands and is very "deco"
This is also where the organs were built.

Regarding the bird organs, I have one that I am (very slowly) restoring, It uses lots of ECC83's, Ef91 and push/pull EL34 output, it works ok-ish but needs more work!

[Hunts smoothing bomb]

A Few More..


Cheers

[mark_in_manc]

Originally Posted by Bill

Anyone remember TVM? Made in Manchester/Salford in the 60's. Well built in an all steel grey hammer finish case.I had a 30w TVM that featured a Radiospares "De-Luxe" output transformer. These amps were popular with bands in the area and cheaper than Vox or Selmer.

Ah, I thought I was going to score some 'esotericity' points with TVM Sound, but you beat me to it. A building next to the Kings Arms (still there) in central Salford behind the Cathedral used to have their logo on the outside, before it was pulled down - I wonder if that was their works.

I've seen their amps in churches - I recall a hybrid with discrete transistor preamp and KT88 push-pull output stage - and their speaker cabs turn up still. They used a distinctive black grille-cloth with yellow stripes in it. I once had an early Vox AC30 sort-of-combo where whoever married a head and some speakers in a custom cab, had used their grille cloth!

cheers
Mark


(I've been working out how much an audiophool would pay for all those preamp valves. Your organ is a bit like the unfortunate Rhino and his horn, or elephant and his tusks. Better keep its location very quiet )

[Hunts smoothing bomb]

How about Sound City?


I used to own a Sound City 120, 120 watts using 6 x EL34.

That was a loud amplifier!

[vidjoman]

Stern-Clyne mentioned in post #40 were 2 separate shops originally in/around Tottenham Court Road and Lisle Street in London. I bought parts from both before they merged. They both sold kits for amps and tuners etc. many originally from war surplus. Remember seeing tea-chests full of capacitors at 1d each (1 old penny).

[Mad Mal]

Are Orange Box PA equipment still around. All their product had a distinct orange case colour (As far as I'm aware it was a special colour they alone used)? A distant relative of mine had a Revox stereo Amp with a very odd 49w RMS per channel, not 50 as most other manufacturers, but 49 I haven't seen that model anywhere else, so I'm assuming he brought it back with him when he came back from Germany during the late 60's early 70's.

[stevehertz]

Orange Box? surely you mean 'Orange'? Yes the Orange brand is still going strong.

[Radio Wrangler]

Orange started as a studio, branched out into a second-hand pop music instrument shop and then into amplifiers and speakers. Their early stuff was made in Huddersfield by Radiocraft on King Street, later up Cowcliffe Hill, before Orange went on their own.

There are Revox amplifiers in the UK, but they only sold in very low numbers because of the price. People could get a lot more bang per buck elsewhere. Revox tape machines were competitive in their market segment, the amplifiers were not. 49 whey will have had different ratings into 4 Ohms and into 8 Ohms

David

[stevehertz]

But Revox are not a UK manufacturer.

[kevinaston1]

I remembered this morning. About 10 years ago, a British company offered the Bluetone Pro 30M guitar amplifier. I do not remember seeing any distributor selling these, but the advertisements stated it was designed by Alex Cooper of Midas, a highly respected British audio mixer manufacturer.

The pictures of that Bird Organ brings back very happy memories - then everything went digital.

[McMurdo]

Trace Elliot are now a brand made by Peavey so you might consider them american.

Wharfedale are still going with UK offices but are a brand of IAG owned by and made in China.

Dynacord are a brand of Bosch and in any case are German.

Vox is now a brand of japanese company Korg who make the amps in China.

[ColinTheAmpMan1]

There was a mention of Laney, but only as an aside and association with HH. As the amps of choice for Tony Iommi, I think they deserve specific mention. Much like Tony and myself, they were made in Birmingham.
These may not have been mentioned yet:

Ashdown
Cornell (Southend-on-Sea)
Cornford

Hiwatt has been mentioned, but the company was started by Dave Reeves in the early 1960s. Dave died in 1981 and a few changes in ownership didn't do Hiwatt much good. There are now Reeves amps made, but in Cincinatti, USA.
Orange and Matamp were pretty much the same amps. They were designed by Matthew Mathias (see if you can guess where "Matamp" came from) and manufactured by Cliff Cooper in Huddersfield. They were sold as "Orange" in London and the South and "Matamp" in the Midlands and North. The orange covering just may have been exclusive to these amps, but both Vox and Marshall did make some amps with colourful coverings. I find it difficult to believe that any company making such materials would only sell a particular colour to one amp manufacturer exclusively. Orange amps were used, notably, by Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac.

I agree that Hohner is a German company, but the Hohner amps in my Bell catalogue look rather Watkins-ish and it wouldn't surprise me if they weren't made in the UK. The two mentioned are the 100 and 100T, the difference being the "T" model sporting a tremolo. Despite the name "100", these amps offered the stadium-filling power of 6-8 Watts (yes, six-to-eight, not sixty-eight). There is no mention of "Orgaphon" in my catalogue - I wonder when that started and ended?

Colin.

[kevinaston1]

If you include British PA manufacturers;

Cloud Electronics in Sheffield - nice reliable units.

Allen and Heath in Penryn - ditto.

Cadac in Luton - high end mixing desks.

Calrec in Hebden Bridge - ditto

MC2 audio in Devon - high end PA amplification


There was also a British company made an amplifier called the Otis Power Block, may have been called Otis. I only ever saw two of them.

[volte-face]

Here is my contribution to the cause - "Nolan". So named after Pat Nolan, an Irishman who set-up making amplifiers in London in the early seventies. Primarily, as is often the case, to copied designs.

Google searches do turn up some information by other owners who have done their own research, but not much.

I bought mine secondhand in 1981, after joining a band that had serious equipment and my rather improbable looking home built gear was no longer going to cut it. Valve amps like these were quite out of fashion at the time, which was why I ended up with it, as I only had a ridiculously meagre budget and a Fender practice amp to part-exchange.

The model I bought was sold to me as being general purpose 50W, suitable for my use as a bass player. However, it hasn't got as much bottom end grunt as my current Ashdown. It's powered by 2x EL34, along with three ECC8x's, along with a solid state rectifier. Construction is traditional tag-strip / hand-wired. All very functional and fairly neat, but not as neat as, say, a Sound City. I bought it from Allan & Gordon's music shop in Walthamstow, which was a fantastic place to visit at the time.

In 1987, when I did have some money, I bought a new Marshall combo and sold the Nolan to a friend - something I always regretted afterwards, but I didn't have room for both in the flat I was living in. Fast forward to 2013 and, after several conversations about it in the latter years, the friend I sold it to located it, stored in a church hall loft where it had been used for the youth music club in earlier years but was no longer needed. He was kind enough to give it back to me for nothing, and I was overjoyed to have it back. I've attached some pictures.

I've since changed a couple of Dubillier "Bluecon" caps before they started to leak and cause problems, but otherwise it's all original and works great.

Over the last few years I've seen a couple fetch quite high prices on eBay, but that's pretty much an irrelevance, as I'm not going to part with it again!

[stevehertz]

Originally Posted by ColinTheAmpMan1

There was a mention of Laney, but only as an aside and association with HH. As the amps of choice for Tony Iommi, I think they deserve specific mention. Much like Tony and myself, they were made in Birmingham.
These may not have been mentioned yet:

Ashdown
Cornell (Southend-on-Sea)
Cornford

Hiwatt has been mentioned, but the company was started by Dave Reeves in the early 1960s. Dave died in 1981 and a few changes in ownership didn't do Hiwatt much good. There are now Reeves amps made, but in Cincinatti, USA.
Orange and Matamp were pretty much the same amps. They were designed by Matthew Mathias (see if you can guess where "Matamp" came from) and manufactured by Cliff Cooper in Huddersfield. They were sold as "Orange" in London and the South and "Matamp" in the Midlands and North. The orange covering just may have been exclusive to these amps, but both Vox and Marshall did make some amps with colourful coverings. I find it difficult to believe that any company making such materials would only sell a particular colour to one amp manufacturer exclusively. Orange amps were used, notably, by Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac.

I agree that Hohner is a German company, but the Hohner amps in my Bell catalogue look rather Watkins-ish and it wouldn't surprise me if they weren't made in the UK. The two mentioned are the 100 and 100T, the difference being the "T" model sporting a tremolo. Despite the name "100", these amps offered the stadium-filling power of 6-8 Watts (yes, six-to-eight, not sixty-eight). There is no mention of "Orgaphon" in my catalogue - I wonder when that started and ended?

Colin.

Yes but these aren't bygones, they're all still going strong!

[stevehertz]

Originally Posted by volte-face

Here is my contribution to the cause - "Nolan". So named after Pat Nolan, an Irishman who set-up making amplifiers in London in the early seventies. Primarily, as is often the case, to copied designs.

Google searches do turn up some information by other owners who have done their own research, but not much.

I bought mine secondhand in 1981, after joining a band that had serious equipment and my rather improbable looking home built gear was no longer going to cut it. Valve amps like these were quite out of fashion at the time, which was why I ended up with it, as I only had a ridiculously meagre budget and a Fender practice amp to part-exchange.

The model I bought was sold to me as being general purpose 50W, suitable for my use as a bass player. However, it hasn't got as much bottom end grunt as my current Ashdown. It's powered by 2x EL34, along with three ECC8x's, along with a solid state rectifier. Construction is traditional tag-strip / hand-wired. All very functional and fairly neat, but not as neat as, say, a Sound City. I bought it from Allan & Gordon's music shop in Walthamstow, which was a fantastic place to visit at the time.

In 1987, when I did have some money, I bought a new Marshall combo and sold the Nolan to a friend - something I always regretted afterwards, but I didn't have room for both in the flat I was living in. Fast forward to 2013 and, after several conversations about it in the latter years, the friend I sold it to located it, stored in a church hall loft where it had been used for the youth music club in earlier years but was no longer needed. He was kind enough to give it back to me for nothing, and I was overjoyed to have it back. I've attached some pictures.

I've since changed a couple of Dubillier "Bluecon" caps before they started to leak and cause problems, but otherwise it's all original and works great.

Over the last few years I've seen a couple fetch quite high prices on eBay, but that's pretty much an irrelevance, as I'm not going to part with it again!

Nolan, now that's a good one. It was the type of amp that you would very rarely see amidst a stack of others in a back street second-hand music shop.