At present, only one reference to the AC.1 has come to light - a line in the JMI typescript pricelist of November 1960. Otherwise - for the time being at least - there is nothing to show the model ever existed.

Detail of a JMI pricelist from November 1960.

In terms of format, the AC1 is likely to have resembled the AC2: - split front cabinet; brown diamond grille cloth; small yellow logo; and control panel at rear on top. The elliptical speaker naturally will have allowed for the use of a cabinet that was less tall than the AC2's - whether that was indeed the case is unknown.

In terms of its circuit, the AC1 was effectively an AC2 without the tremolo, the electronics presumably assembled on an identical chassis. Fingers crossed as ever that a bona fide example surfaces.

What seems to have happened next - and fairly quickly - was the decision to dispense with the AC1 entirely and produce two versions of the AC2, both with vibrato, one with a single input, the other with the standard two. The former was pitched at 12 guineas, the price originally adopted for the AC.1

November 1960

Hobbies

The "Radio Hobbies Exhibition", November 1960, Royal Horticultural Society's Old Hall (now Lindley Hall), Westminster. The show was opened by Brian Rix, star attraction of many a "Whitehall farce".

The best general picture of the show to have emerged so far, probably a view across the width of the hall rather than up and down its length.

Jennings was there primarily to exhibit its new kit guitar, the "Pacific". "Build it yourself" projects were the staple of British radio clubs and magazines in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In all likelihood Jennings displayed the new AC.1 and AC.2 too, the original plan (as related by Rodney Angell, who worked at JMI from c. 1960 to 1968) being to bring the amplifiers to market in the form of kits as well, constituent components selected and prepared by Triumph Electronics.

Late 1962, detail from the Vox fold-out catalogue "Choice of the Stars".

If any such amplifier kits were actually made ready for sale, numbers will have been extremely small. At present the earliest AC.2 we have is number 20 (serial number 2020), registered on this page. The idea of kits was evidently shelved fairly rapidly, along with the AC.1.

Fully-assembled budget amps in any case made much more sense. Wire up a kit guitar wrongly and little harm would come; wire up a transformer wrongly ....

That beginners continued to be of huge importance to JMI into the mid 1960s can be gauged from the hundreds of adverts for budget guitars and amplifiers placed by John Willament and Reg Clark (successive General Sales Managers) in daily and local newspapers, listings magazines, and select mail-order catalogues. Some of the many ads put out in the name of "Musicland", the Jennings shop in Bexleyheath, can be found on this page.

On to the AC2, late 1960 to 1963.