WEM Amps

Charlie Watkins opened a record shop in Tooting Market in 1949 with his brother Reg. By 1954 he was building guitar amplifiers — the Watkins Westminster, followed by the V-fronted Dominator — and by 1958 he had invented the Copicat, the first compact, self-contained tape echo unit in the world, which made echo the first must-have guitar effect in history. The entire first production run of 100 units sold in a single day. The Copicat defined British guitar sound in the early 1960s — Hank Marvin and the Shadows built their tone around it — and it remained in production in various forms for over 50 years.

The connection to this collection is specific. In 1965, the Byrds' tour promoter offered Watkins £100 to build a PA system for the band's British tour — Roger McGuinn and his Rickenbacker 12-string were the instrument at the center of it. The first attempt was a disaster. David Crosby called Watkins the morning after, expletives and all. Watkins accepted the challenge and told McGuinn directly: "OK, I know, I’ve got it wrong and I’ll try to get it right". The failure drove him to develop the slave-amplifier system — multiple solid-state amps chained together to drive stacks of speakers — that became the architecture of every large outdoor PA system that followed. The Byrds returned to WEM on a later visit and bought a system to take home with them. By 1967, WEM was powering the Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival with the world's first 1,000-watt PA. The Isle of Wight. Glastonbury. Stones in the Park. All WEM.

Charlie Watkins died in October 2014 at 91. He was supplying the British music scene both earlier and longer than any of his more celebrated contemporaries — Dick Denney, Tom Jennings, Jim Marshall, Dave Reeves — and received considerably less recognition for it.