History · British-style

The Vox AC line

Jennings Musical Industries built its first guitar amplifier at the end of the 1950s: a 15-watt combo on a pair of EL84s, designed by Dick Denney. Within two years the same design office had scaled it to 30 watts for players who needed to be heard over a crowd, and the whole line settled on one set of ideas — cathode-biased output valves with no bias supply and no feedback loop, a single Top Cut control after the phase inverter instead of a tone stack, and phase- shifting vibrato built into the amplifier. The one part that did not survive the scale-up was the EF86 pentode front end, dropped from the louder models because it was too microphonic to live beside a pair of twelve-inch speakers.

1958–1965 8 models 2 documented 6 history-tier
Era timeline — each bar spans a model's production years; the chain from top to bottom is the line's succession.
Documented circuit — links to its page History-tier — placed & sourced, circuit not yet drawn Succession within the line

The models

DesignationYearsWattsOutput stageKey changeCircuit
AC1/15 1958–1959 15 W push-pull 2×EL84 JMI's first guitar amplifier, designed by Dick Denney: a 15-watt EL84 combo with two channels and a chassis its own archive calls cramped and inconvenient. It introduced the long-tailed-pair phase inverter that every later Vox in this line uses. Sources disagree on exactly when it appeared — the Vox history archive dates the first circuit from late 1957, while the encyclopaedia account gives an early-1958 release — so it is bracketed here rather than pinned. history entry
AC15 circuit No. 2 1959–1960 15 W push-pull 2×EL84 A short run of perhaps two hundred amplifiers, on drawing OS/005 of 4 December 1959. This is where the EF86 pentode arrives as the first valve — much higher gain than the ECC83 it replaced — along with the EZ81 rectifier, a lower 300-0-300 V secondary, heavier smoothing and 100 Ω protection resistors in the EL84 anodes. Its tremolo was not in the amplifier: the Vibravox circuitry lived in a separate box on the back panel, and each channel still had its own tone control rather than the single Top Cut that followed. history entry
AC30 (AC/30) 1959–1960 30 W push-pull The answer to players who could not be heard over an audience on 15 watts: Vox doubled the output section and released the AC30 as the AC15's follow-up. The archive indexes an AC2/30 ahead of it in 1957-58 and the AC/30 proper across 1959-60; accounts of what the earliest AC30 output stage held do not agree, so no valve complement is claimed for this entry. history entry
AC15 circuit No. 3 1960–1963 15 W push-pull 2×EL84 The AC15 as it is remembered, and the circuit this corpus documents. Drawing OA/031 was drawn on 29 April 1960 and signed off by Dick Denney, the same day as the two new AC30 drawings. The phase-shifting vibrato came back inside the amplifier as an integral part of it, the chassis and control panel were laid out afresh, and the per-channel tone controls gave way to one Top Cut serving both. The circuit then ran unchanged into 1963 through split-front and copper-panel cabinets, with a "Bass" voicing offered alongside "Normal" and marked on the drawing with asterisks. AC15 circuit ↗
AC30/4 1960–1961 30 W push-pull 4×EL84 The four-input 2×12 twin, drawn 29 April 1960 alongside the new AC15 and the AC30/6. It keeps the EF86 in the Normal channel and runs four EL84s in the output stage — the AC15's ideas at twice the power. Production ran to late 1961. history entry
AC30/6, pre-list-of-changes 1960–1961 30 W push-pull 4×EL84 The six-input three-channel twin, first drawn on 29 April 1960 by Dick Denney and traced by Derek Underdown — the same day as the new AC15 and the AC30/4. Three channels rather than two, and a single treble "cut" control after the phase inverter instead of per-channel tone controls. This first form still carried the AC15's EF86 on the Normal channel; only one copy of the sheet without a list of changes is known to survive, so no complete valve complement is claimed for it here. history entry
AC30/6 Normal 1961–1965 30 W push-pull 4×EL84 The list of changes of 8 May 1961, and the point where the family's front end changed: the Normal channel's EF86 was swapped for the commoner ECC83, one half serving the Brilliant channel and the other the Normal, because the pentode was too microphonic at AC30 volume. The same list lifted the gain of the Brilliant channel and its treble response. That substitution is the clearest line between the AC15 documented in this corpus and the amplifier the AC30 became, and everything the AC30 is remembered for sounding like dates from after it. The sheet ran on with three further issues to 11 September 1964 — an oscillator resistor, a fuse modification and one revised voltage annotation — and it is this post-1961 form that the corpus documents. AC30 circuit ↗
AC30/6 Top Boost 1961–1965 30 W push-pull 4×EL84 Top Boost began in 1961 as a factory retrofit — an extra valve stage with its own treble and bass controls, added to amplifiers already sold — and was folded into the standard AC30/6 by 1963, its two knobs joining the top control panel. It is the first time the line carried a real tone stack rather than the single Top Cut the AC15 uses. history entry

A circuit ↗ badge links a fully documented circuit — redrawn schematic, verified operating point, parts list. A history entry is placed and sourced here but its circuit isn't drawn yet; contributions are welcome.

Dating & notes

This is the corpus's first family outside the Fender and Marshall lines, and its dating rests on a different kind of evidence: JMI's own works drawings are numbered and dated in their title blocks, so the AC15 and AC30 revisions can be pinned to a day where the Fender tweeds can only be bracketed by chart revisions. They also carry running modification boxes, which is why the AC30/6 appears twice above: one sheet, two circuits, separated by the list of changes of 8 May 1961 that took the EF86 out of the Normal channel. JMI issued the same circuit in three voicings — "Normal" (drawing OS/065), "Treble" (OS/056, dated 10 September 1964) and "Bass" (OS/057, 11 September 1964) — differing only in a handful of capacitors and, on the Treble sheet, in V1's cathode circuit; the Normal sheet is the one documented here. Two honest gaps remain. The first AC15's introduction is given as late 1957 by the Vox history archive and early 1958 by the general reference used here, and no drawing has been read that settles it. And accounts of the earliest AC30 output stage disagree, so the 1959-60 AC30 row above claims wattage and years but no valve complement. Two circuits in this line now have documented entries in the corpus — the third AC15 circuit and the post-1961 AC30/6 "Normal" — and every other row is history-tier (circuit_ref: null) until one is built.

Sources

Every model above carries its own citations in the corpus data file. Browse the full source list for this line: history/families/vox-ac.yaml.