Vox is a musical equipment manufacturer founded in 1957 by Thomas Walter Jennings in Dartford, Kent, England, after World War II. The company is most famous for making the Vox AC30 guitar amplifier, used by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, Queen, Dire Straits, U2 and Radiohead, the Vox Continental electric organ, and a series of innovative electric guitars and bass guitars. Since 1992, Vox has been owned by the Japanese electronics firm Korg. Jennings’s first successful product was the Univox, an early self-powered electronic keyboard similar to the Clavioline. In 1956 Jennings was shown a prototype guitar amplifier made by Dick Denney, a big band guitarist and workmate from World War II. The company was renamed Jennings Musical Industries, or JMI, and in 1958 the 15-watt Vox AC15 amplifier was launched. It was popularised by The Shadows and other British rock ‘n’ roll musicians and became a commercial success. In the early 1960’s , Vox began to product guitars and a huge series of legendary instruments came out. Guitar pedals and other effects, including an early version of the wah-wah pedal used by Jimi Hendrix and the Tone Bender fuzzbox pedal, a Vox variation on the famous original Gary Hurst Tone Bender (used by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Jeff Beck of the Yardbirds as well as The Beatles, Spencer Davis and others), were also marketed by Vox and later on manufactured in Italy. The Vox brand was also applied to Jennings’s electronic organs, most notably the Vox Continental of 1962, whose distinctive trademark “wheedling” tone was immortalised by Alan Price on the Animals’ track “House of the Rising Sun”. In 1962 the Vox Continental was given to The Echoes to trial on stage and use on records they cut with Bert Weedon and Dusty Springfield as well being featured on their version of “Sticks & Stones” 1963 as well many other records, and later used by Paul Revere of Paul Revere & the Raiders, as well as Ray Manzarek on most songs recorded by The Doors and by John Lennon on The Beatles’ track “I’m Down”, both in the studio and live at their 1965 Shea Stadium concert. Vox Amplification Ltd. has been owned by Korg since 1992.