The Guitar Magazine – July 2019

R

ory Gallagher’s use of the Vox AC30 with a

Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster was iconic

and influential – combined with his Strat and

Tele, this was the bedrock of so much of his

music. “That’s the tone!” Daniel says of the battered

Top Boost model, as we remove it from its flightcase.

“It started out because that’s the amp that was

available to him when he played with the showband.

Being an English company, you could actually get

hold of them in Ireland at the time, whereas a Fender

amp would have been very hard to get.

“As soon as he plugged in the Dallas Rangemaster

Treble Booster, that was his sound for Taste and the

first few solo albums. It’s piercing, but for that three-

piece thing, he was aware that sonically, the bass and

drums take care of all the low end and so having that

sharper tone meant that he would be able to stand

out with the guitar, rather than having something

muddier like the ‘woman’ tone. I think the Vox and

the Treble Booster made the sound jump out.

“He liked Vox amps because he could turn them

all the way up and still get a good tone out of it. He

enjoyed playing smaller venues – it was one of his

quirks. He’d rather play five nights in a small place

than one night in a big place, because it meant that

he could have that full-bore and not need to get

anything else, like a Marshall stack.”

So committed was Rory to his beloved combo, that

even when he played the Isle Of Wight festival with

Taste in 1970, it was still his only backline... “The

whole time you can just see that amp, sat on two

folding chairs, with a curly cable sticking out of it and

that’s it,” Daniel laughs. “And then it was just him, a

guitar and a brass slide... how can you stand in front

of 600,000 people, with this little amp cranked up

and a mic in front of it and be totally fine? When

you look at the backline that everyone else had –

people like The Who with their stacks and stuff –

and all he needed was his AC30.”

As Rory’s band expanded, he started to bring

Fenders into the mix, namely this ’56 Twin. “He

would always keep a Vox going live, but with the

introduction of the keyboards – Lou Martin who

joined in ’73 – he started using Fender amps in

conjunction with the Vox. I guess it was a balancing

thing: going to a four-piece and having to find where

the guitar fit in better with the keyboards.”

But it’s Rory’s use of the AC30 that was so hugely

influential – not least with one other very famous

Vox user... “There’s this cool story about Brian May

coming to watch him a lot at the Marquee club,”

Daniel explains. “Brian says he snuck backstage

once everyone had been kicked out after a gig and

asked him how he got his sound and Rory talked

him through the Treble Booster and the AC30. And

Brian just went straight out and bought it, and got his

sound from there...”

NEED FOR TWEED

Rory’s guitars are wonderful in their own

right, but his amplifiers have a few stories

to tell, too...

THIS SPREAD Although the

AC30 is virtually synonymous

with Rory’s signature sound,

he also added tweed amps

to his rig once the band

lineup expanded to include a

keyboard player

GUITAR MAGAZINE 49

RORY GALLAGHER