Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Whatever happened to these blokes?

C'mon. Someone must know! Help me out here!

I think Rose Morris fell into financial troubles in the lates 1980's and somewhere around the early 1990's they simply vanished as a company. At one time the Board of Directors looked for a buyer for the company but it apparently never happened.

Any connection?

Some quick sleuthing will lead to a number of significant events in the history of Rose Morris.

1979 - Rose Morris had been the distributor of Marshall amplifiers throughout the 1970s but it became apparent that Marshall wished to do the job themselves and so Rose Morris started looking for another amplification line to run. Rose Morris soon became the new owner of Vox Sound Ltd, which became simply Vox Ltd. The first great achievement that Rose Morris made was to buy back the rights to Vox from the Thomas Organ Company. Rose Morris had no manufacturing facilities so it acquired the exclusive use of the Arbiter plant at Shoeburyness.


1982 - Vox recommence production of guitars. Made in the Far East the “Custom” and “Standard” guitar ranges provide some of the best quality guitars to bear the Vox name. Later in 1985 the Korean built White Shadow guitar made and appearance and replaced the Standard and Custom range.

1988 - Rose Morris decided that the way forward was to acquire its own manufacturing facility and started looking at a company called Precision Electronics who soon designed and built a new transistor range for Vox called the Q-Series and take over the manufacturing of the AC30.

1989 - Rose Morris buy a large section of the P.E plant and hire a small team to make Vox amplifiers.

1992 - Time for change again and the recession of the late 1980’s and slow economic recovery in the early 1990 had left Rose Morris’s directors looking for a buyer for Rose Morris. At the time Rose Morris distributed many prestigious lines including the successful Korg keyboard range and in the summer of 1992 Rose Morris chairman, Peter Clark announced that the business had been transferred to the ownership of Korg inc.

The name Rose Morris soon disappears and the new company becomes Korg UK LTD. The only reference to the name Rose Morris that still exists is in the name of a music shop in Denmark Street, London. The last of a chain of music retail outlets once owned by Rose Morris, the shop was sold soon after Korg UK LTD came into existence but retained the Rose Morris name as it was always a well known music landmark in London's West End.

You got me on that one, Peter.

That's from Vox History, correct? At any rate, I guess that answers Brian's question.

Yes from the Vox history. A fascinating story and I will be including this book in my library at some point.

WOW! Thanks for the info. When did their relationship with Rickenbacker end?

1969, according to Smith's book

Thanks Stan. I guess i should have read that more closely. Thanks all for the help. Now if I can only get my question about the "B" Series answered, all my trials will soon be over.

There was still a shop on Denmark street in London last I checked.

The shop is definitely still there. I went in 2 weeks ago and it sucked. They had one fireglo 330 for about £1200. I don't even remember any of the other stock...

Yeah, I dropped in there around a month ago. I was looking for the Rickenbacker book. The assistant said 'Huh, who?'...
...I will never return.

Brian: The B series was a limited run of those models that were really popularized by the Beatles. I am not entirely sure when the very first models were produced but they were made from about 1982 to 1984. In any event no obvious reference was made to "The Beatles" but based on the models and finishes there is certainly a strong connection.

The series included a 320B, a 360/12BWB and a 4003SB, in jetglo, fireglo and mapleglo finishes, respectively.

This series certainly seems to be a first run of what would be the immensely popular V series.

I hope that this brief information is of some use. Others will chime in and add much more I am sure.

Check this link out. My "expertise" stops at the 360, which seems to differ from the v series in the short length inlays, modern control dials, R-tailpiece and bound sound hole.

http://www.rickbeat.com/modelslibrary/bseries/bseries.htm