In 1950, the biggest amp you could get was no bigger than a tabletop radio.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The first amp I had back in the '50s was a small Fender.
But in those days - in the mid-'50s, early '60s - there was less than 300 radio stations that were playing country music and a lot of that wasn't full time.
When I was a teenager in the late 30's and early 40's, electronics wasn't a word. You were interested in radio if you were interested in electronics.
I blew amps like they were made of tissue paper. Once I blew out the sound system at Royal Albert Hall in London.
I never got a stereo system until about 1969. It was only when I went to America in '68 and listened to FM radio; I really thought, 'Wow, there's something in this.'
I wish they'd had electric guitars in cotton fields back in the good old days. A whole lot of things would've been straightened out.
If you had a good radio - and everybody did in those days - you could find it.
I remember one of the first gigs I played with that amp was at a local church. They wanted someone to fill in with the guitar and my friend say, 'Ah, he can play.' And so I dragged the amplifier down and started playing and everybody started yelling 'turn it down!'
I've got a Fender Concert amp from the '60s, the one Joe Osborn used. He played his bass through it.
Well, the big products in electronics in the '50s were radio and television. The first big computers were just beginning to come in and represented the most logical market for us to work in.