by dave robinson » 20 Nov 2009, 00:22
The JMI amps are built by Music Ground in Doncaster. The MD Rick Harrison has license to build them and I understand owns the blueprints of the originals. They can't be called Vox for obvious reasons, but the JMI name is as far as I know - an abbreviation of 'Justin's Musical Instruments', Justin being Rick's son.
I did demos of a JMI AC15 as long ago as July 2007 and posted them on the MSN site and they were received with great interest and satisfaction amongst the 'THAT SOUND' followers. It was indeed the eye opener for me regarding the EF86 and I instantly recognised THAT SOUND when I plugged in, having never tried this type of amp before.
One of our members, Alain LaFrance bought the amp that I had here and loves it to bits. I heard from a reliable source that Rick offered the amps to The Shads for the forthcoming tour quite a few months ago and as Hank won't have anything to do with Vox since the problems of the early eighties, it was a good choice, being as there's nothing really to compete of that type of amp. I also suspect that they will have been 'loaned' - the reward for JMI being the publicity. I opted not to buy a JMI as there were one or two bad ones around at that time that were returned due to customer dissatisfaction, but they seem to have sorted things now. Because of this I bought a Vox AC15 Heritage instead, which sounds as good as the JMI, as well as fitting Roger Alcock's 'Vintage Unit' to my AC30TBX, which did the trick.I later acquired a hand built Australian AC30/4 which is absoutely superb.
Dave Robinson