Amps

SELMER TRUVOICE AMPLIFIERS
- FROM OUT OF THE MISTS OF TIME

The Kaisers and their Selmers - Courtesy of Matt Armstrong

JOHN WEIR

John Weir, Production Manager for Selmer Electronics back in the 1970's, passed away on 22nd November 2008.

John worked for the Selmer London company in various capacities from 1964 through to 1973. His assistance in providing information about what actually did take place at Selmers during that period was invaluable in the setting up of this website.

John's own story can be found on the website at "The Production Manager's Story".

This page was put together as a joint collaboration between Tim Fletcher and myself, Steve Russell. Tim is an enthusiast who, like me, believes that the old Selmer guitar and bass amplifiers have never received the recognition that they deserve. There is virtually no information available anywhere on these old workhorses from the 60's. Totally different story with Vox amps, of course. The WWW is full of sites expounding the virtues of those admittedly fine amplifiers. Yet, during the early 60's in the UK, both Vox and Selmer were running equally in quality and quantity, supplying the up-and-coming bands of the day with professional standard amplification. Tim and myself would like to help redress the balance.

The philosophy that we adopted with the Selmer section, is that we simply put down our joint knowledge on the subject. This relied on us using memory going back nearly 40 years, because as previously stated, there appears to be no other source of accurate information on the subject. The accounts must not, therefore be taken as the full "gospel truth". Over the years during which the website has been running, the website content has been updated and expanded on the basis of information sent to us by the many visitors to the site.

AN INTRODUCTION TO SELMER AMPLIFIERS

By Tim Fletcher

Think you've never heard a Selmer ? Well, if you're familiar with the immortal guitar riff forming the mainstay of The Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" then you probably have. During the course of an internet debate amongst Vox fans about what guitar & amp was used to record the song, Hilton Valentine (lead guitarist, whose fingers & Gretsch Tennessean supplied the input signal) was finally tracked down by e-mail and blew away conventional wisdom by declaring "No, it definitely wasn't an AC30, I think it was a Selmer" ! As The Animals were a Selmer-equipped band before that song catapulted them on to fame, fortune and free Vox amps (with which they mimed it on TV), the evidence suggests that he's right.

But that just illustrates how, in 60's Merrie England, Vox had all the glory and Selmer took second place, leaving poor old Watkins (aka WEM) to trail in third. Selmer started selling amps for the UK market before Vox ever did. They looked good. They sounded good. They probably lacked a little in street-cred because rebel rock'n'rollers may not have wanted amps made by the same company who made the clarinets in the school band. But principally they lacked two things, (1) The Shadows and (2) The Beatles, as high-profile users. Sad, because both those groups initially used Selmers, but abandoned them for Vox on the point of finding fame - maybe they preferred Vox, or maybe Vox were just smarter at giving free gear to the next set of pop icons. Either way, the rich & famous bands used Vox, and the rest had to be content with the cheaper Selmers & Watkins. (Like our host Steve Russell!)

So who were Selmer, and why did they make guitar amps ? Click HERE and this will take you to a page which provides as much of the history of the Selmer Company in the UK as we have been able to compile to date. As far as the amps were concerned though, Selmer UK saw the rise of the guitar, which came with the acoustic skiffle craze in 1956, as an opportunity, and in 1958 added Hofners and other brands to their portfolio of imported instruments. By then many of the guitars had pick-ups, and Selmer faced the problem of supplying amplifiers to accompany them. There was a post-war embargo on US imports at that time and a dearth of manufacturers in Europe. As it happens, Selmer had taken over a small company called RSA in December 1947, and this company had been producing a range of PA amplifiers since 1946 under the RSA and Selmer names. It was therefore easy to expand the RSA production into guitar amplification in the mid 1950's with the introduction of such models as the early RSA (non-Selmer) Truvoice Model TV19. The TV19 (Auditorium/Stadium) and TV6 (Popular) model designations on early Selmer Truvoice amps was a throwback from that era. Later they seem to have entered into production arrangements with other companies, in particular Fenton-Weill because that company also made amps near-identical to Selmer models under their own name. If you see an "FW" stamp on your Selmer's circuit board then it was probably made by Fenton-Weill. (Henry Weill was an early partner of Jim Burns in Burns-Weill guitars, who went his own way to make guitars, amplifiers and later lighting & disco products under the Fenton-Weill brand, the Fenton part being taken from the name of a Burns-Weill guitar model. There's a bit of trivia for you. I read somewhere that Selmer eventually bought Fenton-Weill.)

Many Selmer fans bemoan the lack of information on Selmer amps, and this is our humble attempt to kick-start the process of putting together a source of knowledge. Parts of it are an educated guess, and some even hearsay. If you know better - and you might very well do - please put us right! We will correct things, add things, omit things accordingly provided they fit the picture.

THE SELMER AMPLIFIER INDEX

THE STORY OF HENRI SELMER & CO IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
- LIFE AT THEOBALDS ROAD by Allan Baldwin
- THE PRODUCTION MANAGER'S STORY by John Weir
- MEMORIES OF 114-116, CHARING CROSS ROAD by Patrick Kirby
- MEMORIES OF THE LEW DAVIES SHOP by Colin Falconer
- WORK & PLAY AT THEOBALDS ROAD by Chris Wright
- WINDOWS, ROCKETS......AND RONNIE LANE! by John Crocker
- A YOUNG MAN AT THEOBALDS ROAD by Tony Darke
- THE ORGAN MAN'S MEMORIES by Graham Priestly
- THE SALES DIRECTOR'S STORY by Dennis Holloway

Let's get down to specifics. Below are lised the main periods of the Selmer Amplifier evolution. Click on the one that appeals most, and have a look at the details and pictures of the amps appropriate to that period.