Talk:Charlie Watkins (audio engineer)

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Charlie Watkins is a British audio engineer and musical instrument maker, and is notable for pioneering loud PA systems for outdoor rock festivals, tape delays and small guitar amps. His company Watkins Electric Music was founded in 1949.

AFter serving in the Merchant Navy during WWII, Charlie began playing accordion accompanied by a guitarist. His brother and he opened a music store in the early 50s and began building inexpensive guitars and amplifiers for guitarists and accordion players. Their first model, a single channel, 10w amp with a 10" speaker was the Westminster. This was followed by the larger Clubman and V-front Dominator in 1956 for skiffle bands. The Dominator, with 18w, two speakers, 2 channels and tremelo was an influence on the development of the Marshall 18w "mini-Bluesbreaker", still produced as a reissue now.

In 1958 he began producing the Copycat tape delay. This was quite advanced for it's day, with multiple tape heads for complex echos, although its use of a short tape loop increased wear. It was less expensive than the other European tape delays and garnered a large proportion of the market there, although it never approached the popularity of the Echoplex in North America.

In the 1960s and 1970s that "WEM" PA systems in the kilowatt range became standard for British festivals, such as the Isle of Wight Festival (with Dylan in 1969 and Hendrix in 1970) and Glastonbury. Watkins claims[1] to have been the first to build PA systems with multiple slaved solid state amplifiers driving various loudspeaker stacks, beginning with the Windsor Festival in 1967.

<ref>History of Watkins/WEM on Charlie Watkins website<ref> <ref>Brief History of Watkins Guitar amps<ref> Johnsoniensis (talk) 21:13, 2 December 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Drbob1a (talk • contribs) 22:41, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]