Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I know how much we all obsess about the guitars, but does anyone have a clue as to what happened to the third-generation AC30s, the AC50s and the AC100s that were used from 1963-1966. I know the original fawn AC30s were recovered in black, and later (1963) swapped for new production-line black ones. But those amps and all the later variants (with the exception of the two given to The Rockin' Roadrunners in 1964) seem to have vanished into thin air. They must be somewhere....

It is interesting that in all the interviews and such Harrison and Macca have done for Guitar Player and such, they seem not to have been asked about the whereabouts of their old amps, other than Harrison commenting that his favorite slide was cut from a Vox stand by Mal Evans in the Cavern days, which is interesting because George became such a slide enthusiast but not until so many years later. One of the AC-100s, though, from an American tour, was given away as an award in a battle of the bands contest or some such thing.

I have them at home and use them as a coffee table and lamp stands.

I've seen interviews where McCartney is talking about the best amp/guitar combination to his ears, and he shows an AC30 and his Casino, so maybe he got one of the AC30's they used to use?

I think all of their equipment was pretty much kept at Abbey Road when they stopped touring, but who knows what happened to it when they broke up.

Yoko had to make her wooden picture frames out of something, didn't she?

For that matter, what happened to the Beatles Fender amps? They had them in the mid 60s and Let It Be period. They had quite a few of them.

I thought that they got the majority of their Fender stuff free for the Let It be sessions.

It was my understanding that the store that supplied to the Beatles new Vox amps took beck the old ones. These were refurbished and sold as used. I don't think they ever made extra money by selling them as 'used Beatles amps'.

If the Beatles still owned any of these amplifiers, why haven't they turned up in the Beatles Gear book, along with their serial numbers?

I heard a 'story' once that some of their amps went to the Bee Gees after The Beatles stopped touring. Apparently a deal went down for some of the stage gear between Brian Epstein and Robert Stigwood. YMMV....may not be an ounce of truth to this.

Beatles traded them in. The Who then leased them, and the smoldering remains vanished.

Most interesting would be the Hard Day's Night AC 50s and Revovler era amps.

Unfortunately Mal is not here to help solve the riddle. Has anyone asked Neil?

Saw a pic. once of a band that was recording at Johns (told..'Don't go in there..!')who opened the door and promptly had their photo's taken with the orig. guitars/dms/amps etc...And personally told the same tale by a band member working in the late '70s but who were too stoned to do anything about it!

This would have been at Ascot?

I think he's referring to the Aerovons recording at Abbey Road. There's a picture of one of the band members holding John's Rick 325.

Actually, I think the photo shows him holding John's 325/12. In the background you can see their amps and a bunch of cases (Rick, Gretsch, Fender, etc).

Right, but "recording at John's" and John had a studio. And "don't got in there" well, a lot of bands had their gear in the storage room at Abbey Road. So who'd say that?