Founder
Tom Jennings
1917–1978 · Dartford, Kent, England
The accordion man who gave the sixties their chime
Tom Jennings wanted to build organs. What he built instead became the sound of British pop and British blues.
Tom Jennings ran Jennings Musical Industries (JMI) in Dartford selling accordions and electronic organs. When rock and R&B walked into the shop in the late fifties, he set engineer Dick Denney to design a guitar amp. The result was the AC15 in 1958 — and shortly after, the AC30, a bigger two-channel combo with four 12-inch speakers and EL84 valves, with a character all its own: bright, chimey, full of top end.
The AC30 caught the guitar of The Shadows, then the Beatles, then the whole British Blues Boom. It lived in a different room from Fender and Marshall — less tweed, more choir.
Anecdotes & moments
- Brian May stacked two AC30s in series and made it Queen's signature voice — but it was the young John Mayall who first proved an AC30 could sing the blues.
- JMI went bankrupt in 1968. The Vox name has changed hands several times since, but the AC30 circuit has outlived most of them — it is still being built.