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The Vox LG-40 Single Pickup Guitar (1960-1961)




Vox LG-40 Single Pickup Guitar

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© 1996 - 2026 The Vox Showroom, all rights reserved. No use on online auctions, eBay or Reverb.
Cliff Richards exploded onto the British music scene with his 1958 hit, "Move On." Along with his back up band, "The Shadows," featuring Hank Marvin on lead guitar, Cliff Richards generated a string of hit records in the UK from 1959 through the late sixties. John Lennon once stated that before Cliff and the Shadows there had been nothing worth listening to in British music.

Hank Marvin and the
Antoria LG-50 Guitar

In their early days (1958 through mid 1959), the Shadows amplified their guitars with Selmer amplifiers. Hank Marvin played a dual pickup Antoria LG-50 guitar. The Antoria LG-50 guitar was manufactured by Guyatone in Japan and offered in England by James T Coppock, Ltd, a UK importer and distributor of musical instruments based in Leeds.

In 1959, the Shadows replaced their Selmer amplifiers with the first generation Vox AC-15, manufactured by Jennings Musical Industries (JMI) of Dartford Kent, UK. Landing the Shadows as Vox amplifier endorsees was a major coup for JMI. The Shadows would help to make Vox into a power player in guitar amplification.

1959 Vox AC-15

By 1960, Cliff Richards and Shadows were nearly as big as Elvis in the UK, introducing up and coming UK bands such as the Beatles to Vox amps. Before long, JMI realized that they were missing a tremendous opportunity by not offering Vox guitars to complement their amps.

Even though Hank Marvin had dumped his Antoria LG-50 for a Fiesta Red Fender Stratocaster, many fans of the
Shadows still associated the dual pickup Guyatone/Antoria LG-50 guitar with Marvin. This gave Vox an idea how to offer Shadows wannabes both an amplifier and a guitar.

Ar some point in either 1960 or 1961, JMI added the dual pickup Guyatone LG-50 to the Vox product line, rebranded as the "Vox Shadow." A single pickup version of the LG-50, the LG-40, shown in the image above, was added by JMI to increase the product range. The single pickup was positioned near the bridge to enhance treble response.

Both the Vox LG-50 "Shadow" and the LG-40 featured "gold foil" pickups, volume and tone controls, individual tuning heads, an adjustable bridge, white binding, an adjustable truss rod and a silk screened Vox logo on the headstock. While the Vox LG-50 "Shadow" included a trapeze tail piece, the LG-40 had a fixed tail piece. Some Vox LG-40 guitars had a solid white plastic pickguard and control panel (as shown on the guitar above) while others were equipped with a translucent pearloid pickguard and control panel with silk screened Vox logos. The Vox LG-40 shown above also added the words "Jennings Musical Industries, Dartford Kent" to the tip of the headstock.


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Photos and editorial content courtesy Gary Hahlbeck

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