Repeat Performance
HIS NAME MIGHT not be as redolent of the glory days of English guitar gear as those of fellow pioneers Dick Denney, Tom Jennings, Jim Marshall and Dave Reeves, but Charlie Watkins was a major innovator of the golden age of British amps and effects. For that matter, he was supplying the scene both earlier and longer than any of those iconic designers and manufacturers.
Like JMI/Vox founder Jennings, Watkins was an accordionist and had just returned from his war service in the late 1940s, looking to magazine in an interview published in 2015, after his death, “I thought, ‘I’ve put up with that long enough. I can do something about that. I’ll make an amplifier!’”
