A GUITAR AMPLIFIER, DELUXE, 5A3

This Fender Deluxe amplifier was almost certainly acquired by Jeff Beck in America in the mid-1970s. Following the outstanding success of Blow By Blow, Beck was compelled by the new tax regime which had been imposed by Harold Wilson's government - whereby income was taxed at 85% - to become a US resident between 1976 and 1978. It is likely that whilst there he purchased several Fender tweed amps, which could be bought relatively affordably from music and pawnshops in California. A photo-shoot at Jeff Beck's Sussex home, commissioned by the Japanese music magazine Player by the photographer Toshi Yajima, just before the tour to Japan with Stanley Clarke in 1978, shows Jeff Beck with a group of guitars and amplifiers in a gallery line-up. With the exception of his 1960 White Stratocaster, which Stanley Clarke would be bringing over to UK rehearsals from Beck's California home, long-time road manager Al Dutton confirmed that this group comprised all of Jeff Beck's guitars at the time. Behind the guitar line-up and to either side, various amplifiers can also be seen, including one of the Univox speaker cabinets which had been a mainstay of his stage rig since BBA, as well as a Marshall head - most likely a JTM45 - and two Fender tweed amps, with the distinctive painted tweed finish of this Deluxe visible to the left. Steve Prior, Beck's guitar tech between 1999 and 2014, confirmed that this amp was always kept in the home studio and was not taken out on tour.