Watkins Electric Music Ltd
Solid Plywood Gold by Lawrie Elston
If you’re anything like me, you spend more time scrolling through facebook’s marketplace tab than you do trolling through the postmodern slop thrown at you on the main page. If you’re a little more like me, you’re only looking for guitars. If you’re really like me, you’re looking for the cheap stuff.
I spend a hell of a lot of time scrolling through listings; usually looking for anything posted in the last 24 hours, close enough to my place in Cardiff, and cheap. While writing my eyes pretty frequently stray back to my saved searches of “Bass Guitar”, “TRADES Guitar”, “gittar” (the last exists as a ‘just in case’- it’s gotten much rarer in the internet age, when everyone knows exactly what it is they’ve got in their attic at the press of a button, but every now and then something decent will crop up listed by someone with no clue what they’ve gotten their hands on.) There’s a weird sort of beauty in affordability that I’m a big fan of, even without my budget taken into account, and amongst the often overpriced Chinese Squiers and early-70s churned-out Japanese-made department-store catalogue-fillers (worthy of a different blog entry entirely) you’ll notice reoccurring brand names such as those of Vintage, Encore, and Fret King on the headstocks of guitars in my preferred 1-300 quid price range… These affordable but honestly solid and passable takes on more expensive designs have one man in common, the late John Hornby Skewes. Skewes very sadly passed in September of 2024, and as per his wishes his family trusts will be ceasing production operations entirely. It’s a respectable decision, and one he’s worthy of making given his left-behind legacy, but JHS was making serious headway in the production of some properly cool vintage inspired instruments; while being affordable and British-based to boot, an aspect I found refreshing in the US dominated landscape of electric guitar production that will pretty clearly never fade; unless those endless price rises finally incur some kind of karmic debt on the Gibson corporation.
I’m sad to say guitar ads like these have gone out of style these days, but this 2010 example from JHS property Fret King brought back some class for a short while.
It’s my favourite Hornby-Skewes & Co division that’s going to lead me onto talking about the main link between my twin obsessions of string instruments and musical trends- a collaboration between JHS and luthier legend Alan Entwistle (maker of some really bang for your buck guitar components, although not to be confused with the legendary Ox of the same surname), back in 2021. The new brand, named Rapier Guitars, took pretty one for one design cues off of the biggest manufacturer of budget instruments here over the pond in the 60s, Watkins Electric Music (WEM), later known as Wilson-Watkins. The affordable vision was pretty in line with what JHS was already in the business of manufacturing, and for those four glorious years Rapier reproduced in modern form several guitars in the WEM style, and still has a lot of stock left of loads of 6 and 12 string guitar models, and my personal vice, the basses. I recently nabbed a Rapier ‘Saffire’ bass for a hundred quid (bargain!) off a guy in Nottingham, of course through my marketplace addiction, and its domestic heritage does make it feel a little more special to play. For the gear nerds, it’s got “gold foil” pickups which give it some serious bite, and a passive mid boost knob for when you just need that little bit extra.
My saffire, in a pure snow white with a vintage style tortoiseshell (‘tort’) pickguard. It’s got the guitar equivalent of an eyebrow slit, which WEM and Burns were both fond of. I think it oozes cool. Just out of frame is the old bright orange Dulux badge I’ve got pinned to the strap.
British electric instrument making hasn’t existed for quite as long as the Americans have been doing it, we pretty much only bothered when we realised their guitars were getting very, very hard to get our hands on. Obviously, no self respecting emerging rock and roll fan had any money at all in the 50s, and guitars just weren’t affordable- not to mention our ban on US imports preventing any fenders or gibsons from entering the country easily. Even when the ban was lifted, those brands remained really very bloody expensive; a couple grand for a nice Fender strat hardly seemed worthwhile when the Germans had stuff for slightly cheaper…
But out of this necessity was birthed some pretty cool anglo innovation- including from our heroes Wilson-Watkins. Others emerged at the same time in the very late 50s, too, including the somewhat unsung Dallas, and my personal favourites at Burns, but they still cost an absolute arm and a leg- and many fetch thousands today by virtue of being old, used by legends, and in some cases almost even “rare”.They looked awesome though, and the reproduction ‘marquee’ models today are also fantastic. Won’t get one for as cheap as my rapier though! In fact, the original Watkins models don't often go for much more than Skewes and Entwistle’s remakes, they're just more likely to fall to bits in exchange for their undeniable mid-20th century charm. Honourable mention to the Resonet Futurama as sported by George Harrison in Hamburg, a Czechoslovakian design I love too much not to include. I could write an entirely different guitar on continental European luthiery.
Billy Bragg pictured here, playing a stylish green Burns Steer model. A later addition to the Burns repertoire, the Steer’s always spoke to me in a weird way- that weird beetle-like headstock in particular simultaneously puts me off and wins me right back over. There’s one up for sale I’ve got my eye on but can’t afford.
Harrison’s fender rip-off futurama. Really cool, but I’m feeling too much shame for straying off topic to say much more about it.
It’s about time I spoke about WEM. Watkins’ main fame stems from their role as an early innovator in the production of PA systems and amplifiers, the height of their fame being in the late 60s- early 70s (after a few hiccups such as an electrocution of an entire pop outfit by what founder Charlie Watkins pessimistically assumed to be one of his AC/DC current powered amps- he quickly switched to AC-only as a precaution) but in my area of freakish expertise, string instruments, they were the British budget Burns alternative. Their cheap but reasonably quality build provided some oomph to the growing scene with the imaginatively named Rapier 22, Rapier 33… and Rapier 44. - below you’ll see a my-age Paul Weller in 1977 playing a 22. Watkins never quite reached the height of Burns but staying underground is for the best sometimes- they’ve got a cooler cult following nowadays than burns, I reckon. The original bass versions of the Rapiers experimented with some properly interesting elements such as massive metal plating to ground the pickups and cartoonishly large control knobs, as you’ll see below. I’ve been hoping for an opportunity to fling my reissue about on stage in a way it deserves but the moment’s not yet arisen.
The aforementioned Weller photo. Sharp. Good choice of colour too, the white’s properly classy.
Fantasies aside- for me, the design philosophy brought to Rapier by Entwistle and Skewes is a wonderful echo of what Anglozine manages to accomplish; all the vintage London charm paired with modern functionality. I want more of that. Here are some miscellaneous Watkins snaps I’m a fan of, Cheers to Reuben for giving me a chance to do a write up after I came into the studio one Saturday!
