Ruminating on Vox onboard effects

[R.G.]

I've been idly curious about the effects put into some Vox guitars back in the Jurassic era.

I always intended to track down the schemos for those some day. I *think* they were the same as the plug-into-the-guitar effects, just squeezed into the guitar itself, but don't (yet) know for sure.  Someday maybe I'll find out.

But that line of thinking got me thinking about the effects they put in there. There was a distortion, a treble/bass boost, a "repeat percussion", which was a fancy/different tremolo, and a wah operated by a palm lever.

What's really screamingly missing is a compressor. I think it's only not there because Vox didn't make a compressor at this very early state of the effects world.

If I was redesigning this stuff (with ...only... fifty years of hindsight as an advantage!) I think I'd put in a compressor first thing, before the distortion, and leave out that silly "e-tuner".

[Mark Hammer]

But here's the challenge for you, brother: given how omnipresent limiting and copression was in nearly every step between recording and radio broadcast, fifty years ago, would anyone have even noticed the absence of a compressor?

If anything, the current affinity for compressors is partly a desire to replicate the "natural" sound of heavily compressed and limited AM radio and vinyl.

[R.G.]

Kewl~!

With a whole lot of gear, I can just barely manage to sound like an old-timey AM Radio!

Life is good.