THREE AMPLIFIER HEADS IN CUSTOM RACK, JCM 2000 DSL50

This custom amp rack – designed by Pete Cornish and adapted for Jeff Beck’s use by Steve Prior, his guitar tech between 1999-2014, was a mainstay of Beck’s touring rig for most of the early 2000s, until around 2006. The rack, which Prior told us had been previously owned by Whitesnake and Kula Shaker, was fitted with three JCM 2000 DSL50 amplifier heads – a main to the top, spare in the middle and ‘slave’ to the bottom, feeding Beck’s on stage Marshall custom wedges (see lot 74). The top main amp is notable not only for being his favourite, but also because it is itself a rarity - a prototype which, according to Prior, was sent by Marshall to Beck, along with around ten other famous guitarists, and is reportedly the only one of those ten that didn’t fail in one way or another. Something in the circuitry created a sound that he loved and which was unlike any other DSL50. Describing the DSL50 model as “a well-balanced head-amp” with “a tolerance for noises”, Beck was particularly drawn to the variation its two channels allowed, with one catering to vintage distortion and the other classic tone. In 1999, when Beck took the rack on tour to promote Who Else!, he noted how ‘It sounds like you're playing at a million watts...with a nice agreeable amount of distortion that can be continuously varied. I love it.’

The rack was used alongside two Mike Hill B.I.S boxes, to remove the ground lift, and a Snarling Dogs Super Bawl Whine-O Plus Wah pedal, which also sported custom features. It was specially mounted on a custom board with a high gain switch, allowing Beck to adjust the amount of guitar signal entering the active circuit and utilise its preset features. As with the DSL50s, Jeff had high praise for the pedal stating, ‘That's a radical pedal. I mean it's one or two steps further than any wah pedal ever known. It’s got an active circuit, as opposed to just a battery-powered toggle pot. So it kicks in a lot more dB and a lot more sweep and a lot more depth variable in the wah-wah itself. You can preset it so it won’t take your head off, which is good. I’ve seen guys play it in a bar where it’s time to leave the building.’

Whilst in the rack configuration, the main amp would power straight to two or four 4x12 cabinets on either side of it (see the following lot). When removed, it was used for recordings, notably the early noughties ‘techno trio’ of Who Else (1999), You Had It Coming (2000) and Jeff (2003), alongside many other recordings and sessions with other artists. In an interview in 2001 Beck told Paul Guy, when discussing the recording process for You Had It Coming: ‘We were fooling around a lot with EQ on the amp, on those JCM2000s it’s just great. We used that one amp and never moved a mike for the whole session. Just used the pickup settings on the guitar, and then in the mixing we just used some serious EQ.’ Similarly, speaking to Adam St. James in 2003 following the release of Jeff he stated: 'I've just got one head. One JCM 2000 (DSL50) head. As long as I spend time dialling in sound through the side fills on the stage, and give the front of the house guy plenty of time to dial out the nasty fizz, it's been fine. Although I am going to change up and go back to all four cabinets and two tops [after the B.B. King tour], 'cause that's not for B.B. They went berserk on me 'cause it was too loud on stage at one point. And I just went, 'OK, if I turn it down, I don't get the fatness and the importance of the sound. It just disappears into a country sound' which is fine if you're playing country. But if you want powerful attack to replace a 20-piece band, you need to be louder. Have the capacity to be loud.’

Please note that this product may feature internal components which contain Cadmium Sulphide. Although no release of the substance is intended or anticipated through foreseeable use of the product, any maintenance should be carried out exclusively by qualified professionals.