Vox Cliff richard Reverb ?

[Jay Bass]

Hi
Has anybody seen or heard one of these before?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Original-Vintage- ... 1e5e0bf95d

Regards
Jay

!B1pePKgBGk~$(KGrHqUOKiUE)(08r)VJBMfU+7SHOg~~_35.jpg (19.69 KiB) Viewed 8874 times

[dave robinson]

I believe it's a spring reverb and to my knowledge never used by Cliff . . . . . .

[George Geddes]

Bit like the Hank Marvin tremelo never used by Hank...

I remember the adverts for the Cliff Richard reverb, but never seen one!

George

[JimN]

Yes - I bought one exactly like it for £10 in 1971, in perfect condition, complete with black covering and the Cliff Richard logo.

I didn't like it and sold it a few weeks later for £17.

It was inexplicable to me at the time, believing Vox to be the epitome of quality sound equipment, but it didn't sound good. The Hammond / Accutronics unit which is built into many American (and some British) amps is a fair bit better.

I understand that Jennings engineered the reverb transducers in a quite odd way. There's more about it in the Jim Elyea "Vox Years" book, of course.

JN

[roger bayliss]

Heres a cracking reverb pedal just listen to the accutronics spring reverb tank model which is demoed on the SRV 'Lenny' test... people say its not distingushable from the real deal ! think I shall be getting one... who knows it might do Abbey Rd Reverb !!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ6kzw3x ... 1&index=37

[dusty fretz]

Like Jim, I bought one of these many years ago. Mine also cost a measly tenner and was a beige-covered example. Again in accordance with Jim, I thought it sounded complete rubbish, so I kept the handle, knobs and other useful bits before actually binning the rest. I notice the same eBay seller has quite a few other over-optimistically high-priced items up for grabs, including a Burns 4-pickup Bison, now down from £7,500 to a mere £6,500! Dream on.

[RayL]

Here's a scan of the original Vox brochure (not dated, but late '63 or early '64 at a guess?)

vox brochure.jpg

(81.81 KiB) Downloaded 5996 times

Surely you'd want to buy one after you read this?
"Jennings pioneered the introduction of echo and reverberation in the United Kingdom (Oh yeah?) This new sound - the third dimension - is an essential addtion to modern amplification. Unquestionably the finest Reverberation equipment available"
The modesty is rather touching, don't you think?

To complete the fun and games, you can see that the unit is labelled the 'Cliff Richard Model'. However, Cliff is pictured on the brochure (just outside the scanned area) where he is described as 'Cliff Richards'.

The pic of the Shads is a well-known one, but the pic of the Tornados is unusual in that Roger Laverne is holding a Clavioline (the type of instrument actually used on Telstar) rather than the Vox Continental which was used for later publicity pics and TV spots.

Ray

[Amanda]

Hi all,

The best spring lines were made by Hammond, at one time if you had a Hammond reverb in your amp
it was a great thing, then Accutronics came out with their copies. The original Hammond reverb units as used in the
Hammond PR40 Organ speaker were a "T" shape with the send and receive transducers at each end of the horizontal
part of the "T" the 3 springs all different lengths used to hang down and made an awful crash if the cabinet was
knocked hard while in use! Then Hammond went to the standard type we see today when they started putting reverb on
spinet organs. One interesting thing about the long springs in the early "T" reverb was if they went rusty the reverb
sound distorted!!

[roger bayliss]

Amanda

Jon Lord of Deep Purple used to use that crashing of the Hammond reverb a lot by lifting it up on one side and letting it fall