 | | Watkins Westminster (12 images)
It was 1976 or 1977. I was working on a project in Leicester during the sandwich year of my degree course. There was a consultant from London on the project, and we got talking over lunch one day. He learned I played guitar, and told me that he had an amp 'up in the attic at my Mum's house in Croydon' that he no longer used. He asked me if I'd be interested in it. "Sure", I said, always ready to accept something for nothing, and expecting something like a Marshall or Hiwatt to turn up.
When he delivered it, under the red leatherette cover was this funny looking little amp with a V front. It certainly wasn't a big, loud Marshall. I was kind of disappointed.
But then I powered it up and plugged my Japanese Strat copy in. Oh my goodness ... the sound of angels. What a wonderful, complex distortion.
There was a box that came with it that you plugged into a socket on the back. It was a hand-built reverb unit. The 'spring' was the element taken from an electric bar fire, and at each end it was connected to phonograph heads that I'd only ever seen before on my Dad's gramophone. It sounded like the Albert Hall - beautifully spacious and rich.
Time passed. In the early 90's, I tried to do some research. What was this amp? It didn't match any of the circuit diagrams I found on the web and in books. The speakers, and their position, were different from every other Westminster I could find pictures of. I contacted Charlie Watkins himself, who tried to help, but he couldn't remember the details of what had been produced back in the 50's. He did remember enough to be able to confirm that it was a Watkins original, and it probably came from a run of 30 or less amps of that specification.
By now, the amp was struggling. It still had the working original valves, but several of the other components weren't functioning, and there were some bad solder joints. The first technician that looked at it did his best, restoring it to working order, and getting the original tremolo working again. The hand-made reverb unit had to be sacrificed in order to get that going, but it was worth it. The technician found a copy of the original 1962 magazine article that had described how to build the reverb, so I let him have it in return for getting the amp working.
But it wasn't working quite right. Move on to 2005, and my Watkins Westminster found its saviour: Jeff Lewis at Matamp. He carefully examined the circuit, got it working properly again, and did some sleuthing on the dates of manufacture of the components. The amp couldn't have been made before 1955, because such-and-such a component wasn't available, and it was unlikely to be have been made after 1957 because of some other thing he found. Jeff gave me a full description of this electronic archaeology, but I didn't remember it all.
And so, in 2007, my Watkins Westminster still sounds fabulous, completely different from any other amp I've heard in its gorgeous distortion voice. And I've never seen another like it.
My only regret is that I don't know how to get back in touch with the bloke who so kindly gave me this amp thirty years ago, to tell him how grateful I am for his gift.
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