Vintage Guitar - September 2017 - open - 36

The Watkins Joker
BY DAVE HUNTER

T

his could be just what every well-heeled young "Beat" guitarist and
singer in Britain needed in the early 1960s - a guitar amp/PA with
reverb, tremolo, mic stand, and tape echo all in one! We're joking, right? Not
in the least - although Joker-ing, we are indeed. Put your hands together
for the Watkins Joker, funkiest rock machine we've ever seen.
Years before more-enduring British brands were establishing names for
themselves, Charlie Watkins - following
a wartime stint in the Merchant Marines
and a shot at playing the accordion professionally - was catering to the needs of the
burgeoning London skiffle/rock-and-roll
scene. By the time this fanciful model came
about in 1962, he had been marketing a little

of everything the aspiring guitar star might
require: guitars, amps, and tape-echo - the
only effect that really mattered.
At the time, the British guitar scene was
on a quest for volume that would soon
be achieved with bigger, more-powerful
amplifiers, and Watkins would prove the
most significant pioneer of festival-sized
PA systems in the U.K. - he was even

VINTAGE GUITAR

36

September 2017

summoned to court for disturbing the
peace after putting together a 1,000watt system (largest of its day) for the
'67 Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival,
which featured the Small Faces, Cream,
Fleetwood Mac, and others. But in '62,
your local dance-hall outfit generally still
achieved vocal amplification by plugging
into the combos that were also running
guitars. In the mind of inveterate tinkerer
Watkins, why not give kids everything in
a one-handed package?
Even so, this '62 Joker is more than just
a Dominator and a Copicat tape-echo
crammed into one box, and does appear
to have been tackled as a ground-up
design even if it borrowed from elements of those products. For
one thing, where the Dominator - Watkins' flagship
amp at that time, featured
here in March '17- used a
pair of EL84s to generate
about 17 watts, the Joker
pushed 25 or so (nominally
rated at 30) from a quad
of these thin British tubes.
Vox had already upped the
ante in the volume stakes by
introducing the AC30 in '59,
and Selmer's Selector-Tone
Automatic of the same year
was capable of 25 watts. It's
often said Watkins released
its first 30-watt amps, the
Control ER30 and Control
HR30, in '64, after a change to
the snappier WEM logo. Here,
though, we have an output
stage in the Joker's Power 30
Drive Unit that was already
capable of keeping up with
the Joneses.
Into this chassis the Joker
blends three independent
channels plus effects, each
with its own Tone and Gain
controls, with a button to send

Amp and photos courtesy of Julian Marsh.

BEAT-GEN BEAUT

1962 WATKINS JOKER
* Preamp tubes: six ECC83 (12AX7),
one 6BR8, one EM87
* Output tube: four EL84
* Rectifier: EZ81
* Controls: Gain and Tone for each
of three channels; tremolo Speed
on Channel 1; shared Reverb and
Echo Swell; Master volume
* Speaker: 12" Goodmans Axiom 301
plus Goodmans Trebax tweeter
* Output: approximately 25 watts RMS
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