Vintage Guitar - September 2017 - open - 38

In addition to protecting
the control panel while
in transit, the hinged
rear panel has storage
for the amp's footswitch
and spare tape loops.

seems wacky and utterly
endearing. But it's worth
noting that, for all else
he'd done to this point,
the Copicat was by far
Watkins's greatest success
of the early '60s (and entire
career, really).
As he told David Petersen
for The Guitar magazine in
2000, Watkins experienced
what might have been his most
profitable brainstorm after a pair
of customers returning from a
visit to Italy in 1958 dropped into
his shop and raved of an echo unit
they'd seen being used by singer
Marino Marini. Figuring Marini's
system produced its echo from a
continuous tape loop, with the
help of engineer Bill Purkis, he
compacted it into a 12" x 8" box
using a Gerrard gramophone
motor for transport, adding
a selector switch to tap its
three replay heads, and
devising a feedback loop
that allowed a variable
echo-repeat effect.
each via the echo effect, and tremolo on
Channel One, all of which were housed
in an upper chassis. And what's this at the
end of the control panel, beneath the tape
loop? That's right, a Master Control, (a.k.a.
Master Volume). Next time that old chestnut
comes up at your local tavern or some chat
site and the wiseacres chime in to give "first
master volume" credit to Dave Reeves' mid'60s Sound City/Hiwatt designs or Randall
Smith's late-'60s Boogies, you can trump the
lot of 'em with your Joker.
As much as all of this already makes the
Joker probe-worthy, the real novelty and
"What the hell?" factor lies in its built-in
Copicat. This sound had entered, even
established, the pantheon of rock-and-roll
tone as a built-in on Ray Butts' Echosonic
amp of the mid '50s, so it's entirely fitting
that a British maker continued the trend;
viewed from our 21st-century perspective,
however, the notion of bundling such a
cumbersome effect right into the amp

VINTAGE GUITAR

38

September 2017



Vintage Guitar - September 2017 - open

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Vintage Guitar - September 2017 - open

Contents
Vintage Guitar - September 2017 - open - Cover
Vintage Guitar - September 2017 - open - IFC
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