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Dave Davies Guitars & Gear: The Complete Guide to The Man Who Accidentally Invented Distortion

9 June 2026

He’d had an argument with his girlfriend.

“I was very depressed and fooling around with a razor blade. I could easily have slashed my wrists, but I had a little green amplifier, an Elpico, that was sounding crap. I thought, I’ll teach it — and slashed the speaker cone. It changed the sound of my guitar. Then, when I wired that amp up to another, a Vox AC30, it made it a lot, lot louder. That’s how ‘You Really Got Me’ became the first hit record to use distortion, which so many bands have cited as the beginnings of punk and heavy metal.”

Dave Davies was sixteen years old. He was The Kinks’ lead guitarist. He had an argument with his girlfriend, picked up a Gillette razor blade in frustration, and stabbed the speaker cone of his tiny green Elpico AC55 amp. The speaker still worked — the small tear gave it a raw, ragged, raspy character that was completely unlike anything being produced by the clean guitar sounds of the era. He wired the damaged Elpico into a Vox AC30 to get more volume. He played the riff that his brother Ray had written on piano. The result was “You Really Got Me” (1964) — the song that fired up Pete Townshend to write “I Can’t Explain,” raised both Jimmy Page’s and Jeff Beck’s awareness of distortion’s transformative power, and is cited as a direct ancestor of heavy metal and punk.

The most consequential piece of gear in British rock history was a £10 amplifier that a sixteen-year-old stabbed in anger after a domestic argument. The invention was an accident. The musical result was permanent.

Davies described it on BBC Radio 4 in 2025, demonstrating the technique live: “The slash? Comes down here,” picking up a razor and slashing a speaker cone on camera with casual authority — “and that’s basically it.”

That’s basically it. The history of rock distortion, demonstrated in one casual gesture.

Background: Muswell Hill, The Kinks, and a Family Band That Changed British Rock

David Russell Gordon Davies was born February 3, 1947, in Muswell Hill, north London — the seventh of eight children in a working-class household where music was constant. His older brother Ray Davies, who would become The Kinks’ primary songwriter and vocalist, was the central musical figure in the family. The two brothers formed The Kinks in 1963 with drummer Mick Avory and bassist Pete Quaife — a London R&B band that would become one of the most influential in the British Invasion’s history.

Dave Davies was the younger brother, the lead guitarist, and the wilder force. Ray wrote the songs; Dave played them with an aggression and technical innovativeness that distinguished The Kinks from every other British band of the era. The sibling dynamic — Ray’s melodic, reflective songwriting against Dave’s raw, aggressive guitar playing — produced a creative tension that defined the band’s sound for a decade.

The early hits: “You Really Got Me” (1964), “All Day and All of the Night” (1964), “Tired of Waiting for You” (1965), “Sunny Afternoon” (1966), “Waterloo Sunset” (1967), “Lola” (1970), “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” (1966). Through all of them, Dave Davies’s guitar provided the sonic character — from the distorted power chord aggression of the early records to the sophisticated chord work of the later Ray Davies-composed social commentary songs.

The band endured through multiple eras and lineups until their final dissolution in 1996. A reunion was announced in 2023, marking the first Kinks activity in nearly thirty years.

Tone note: Ray Davies told NME about the approach to the distorted guitar sound more broadly: “We stuck knitting needles in the speakers, or in Dave’s case, he slit the speakers with a razor blade. In those days we played records on a radiogram so loudly that they all sounded fuzzy. We thought, ‘That’s a great sound,’ without realizing the speakers were buggered. Everyone else was using really clean guitar sounds, so for ‘You Really Got Me’ we hooked a little speaker up to a clean amp and came up with thunderous, unaffected, pure power.” The discovery was not that distortion was desirable — it was that the sound they had accidentally produced by abusing equipment was better than the clean sound everyone else was using. Rage and a razor blade: the history of electric guitar distortion in six words.

The Rig: Dave Davies’s Guitars, Amps & Gear

Guitars: From Guild to Flying V and Beyond

Guild Starfire III — The Early Kinks Guitar

Dave Davies’s primary guitar during the early-to-mid Kinks period was the Guild Starfire III — a semi-hollow thinline electric with Guild’s characteristic warm humbucking pickups. In the television performance of “Sunny Afternoon,” Davies is seen using his Guild Starfire III. The guitar is visible at the start and end of the clip. Dave is also shown playing the guitar on the cover of the Kinks’ LP The Kink Kontroversy.

The Guild Starfire III’s specific character: a thinline semi-hollow with Guild’s own humbucker pickups, producing a warm but present tone with good feedback resistance at working volumes. The semi-hollow body’s natural acoustic resonance added depth and sustain to the signal, while the thinline design reduced the full-hollow body’s tendency to feed back at stage volume.

The Starfire III is one of the underappreciated semi-hollow guitars of the 1960s British rock era — not as famous as the ES-335 it resembles in format, but with its own specific character that suited The Kinks’ specific musical direction of the 1965-1967 period.

Gibson Flying V (1959 Prototype) — The Iconic Kinks Guitar

Dave Davies is probably best aligned with the Gibson Flying V. Throughout his years with the Kinks and various solo projects, he used several Gibson models.

Dave Davies with his 1959 Gibson Flying V, circa 1967. According to Dave’s official site, the guitar had a “slightly different shape from the Flying V because it was in fact a prototype V.” The prototype Flying V — slightly different in body shape from the production models — is one of the rarest and most sought-after vintage Gibson instruments. The prototype’s specific visual difference from production Flying Vs reflects the design iteration process before the model was finalized for production.

The Flying V in the late 1960s Kinks context: the guitar’s dramatic, aggressive visual character suited the harder rock direction of the band’s later 1960s period, and its mahogany body and full humbucker tone provided the weight and power appropriate to the heavier material. The Flying V became Davies’s most visually associated instrument — the image of him playing the V is the iconic Kinks lead guitarist image of the era.

Gibson Les Paul Artisan (1977-1978) — The Late-Period Kinks Guitar

Davies used a 1978 Gibson Les Paul Artisan during the Kinks’ 1977-1978 period. The Les Paul Artisan was a limited-edition Les Paul variant with ornate inlay work — flowers and other designs on the fingerboard and headstock. This later-period Les Paul use reflects Davies’s continued preference for Gibson instruments as the band moved through their arena rock phase of the late 1970s.

Other Key Guitars

Various early Kinks-era guitars — Multiple guitars used in the 1963-1966 formative period before the Guild Starfire became the primary documented instrument
Fender Stratocaster — Used in the BBC Radio 4 demonstration with the slashed speaker; Davies has been documented playing Stratocasters in various periods of his career
Gibson Les Paul Standards and Customs — Various models used across different periods
Various Gibson models — Throughout his years with the Kinks and various solo projects, he used several Gibson models

Complete Guitar List (Key Instruments)

Guild Starfire III — Early-to-mid Kinks primary; “Sunny Afternoon” TV performance; The Kink Kontroversy cover
1959 Gibson Flying V prototype — Late 1960s primary; “slightly different shape from the Flying V because it was in fact a prototype V”; iconic Kinks image
Gibson Les Paul Artisan (1977-1978) — Late Kinks period; ornate inlay work
Various Gibson models — Throughout the career
Fender Stratocaster — Various periods; BBC demonstration

Amps: The Elpico, The Vox, and the History-Making Connection

Elpico AC55 (“Little Green”) — The Distortion Origin

The most historically significant amplifier in British rock is a £10 portable battery-powered combo amplifier called the Elpico AC55 — “Little Green” as Davies called it, for its green covering. This is the amplifier that Davies attacked with a razor blade after an argument with his girlfriend, producing the slashed-speaker distortion that defined “You Really Got Me.”

The Elpico AC55’s specifications reflect its modest origins: a small-format portable amp with a single speaker, designed for portability and basic amplification rather than professional musical performance. Its limitations — too bassy or too bright, but never right — were precisely what drove Davies to attack it. The Elpico’s technical deficiencies, combined with the specific acoustic effect of a slashed (but still intact) speaker cone, produced what no electronic circuit had yet produced commercially: aggressive guitar distortion.

Davies described the moment across multiple interviews with consistent detail. To The Guardian in 2013: “I was very depressed and fooling around with a razor blade. I could easily have slashed my wrists, but I had a little green amplifier, an Elpico, that was sounding crap. I thought, I’ll teach it — and slashed the speaker cone. It changed the sound of my guitar.”

And in response to the BBC Radio 4 demonstration in 2025 — slashing another speaker cone on camera: “I was quite surprised that it was still working, and it had this kind of raspy sound. I thought it was amazing, and I felt like an inventor!”

He was. He didn’t know it yet. He was sixteen years old, depressed about a girlfriend, and he had accidentally invented guitar distortion.

Tone note: “Rather than slash my wrists, I thought I’d attack the speaker cone.” The specific mental state — depression, rage, self-destructive impulse redirected toward equipment — is documented in Davies’s own words in multiple interviews. This is not embellishment. He was sixteen, emotionally distressed, and he turned the self-destructive impulse toward the instrument. The result was one of the most consequential sonic accidents in popular music history. The history of rock is full of accidents. This one began with a razor blade and emotional pain and produced a sound that changed everything.

Vox AC30 — The Volume Solution

The second component of the “You Really Got Me” distortion rig: a Vox AC30 that Davies wired the damaged Elpico into for volume. The slashed Elpico produced the distorted character; the AC30 provided the power and volume to make that character audible in a recording and live context.

The specific connection: the Elpico’s speaker output connected to the AC30’s input — using the small amp as a preamp/distortion generator and the larger amp as a power stage. This daisy-chain approach — one amp feeding another — is now a standard technique for achieving specific tonal characters. Davies arrived at it by accident and necessity: the Elpico produced the right sound but not enough volume; the AC30 provided the missing power.

The Vox AC30’s character complemented the Elpico’s damaged speaker: the AC30’s EL84 tubes provide natural compression and harmonic complexity when pushed, and the combination of the Elpico’s ragged distortion character feeding into the AC30’s input created a specific stacked overdrive that no single amplifier could replicate.

Ray Davies confirmed the setup’s innovation to NME: “We hooked a little speaker up to a clean amp and came up with thunderous, unaffected, pure power.”

Other Amplifiers

Vox AC30 — The AC30 was The Kinks’ standard stage amplifier throughout their peak period, consistent with the British rock era’s adoption of Vox amplification
Various Marshall amplifiers — As the band moved toward harder rock in the late 1960s and 1970s, Marshall amplification became more prominent in their live setup

Pedals and Effects

Dave Davies’s approach to effects was defined by its era: in 1964, commercial distortion/fuzz pedals did not exist. The Maestro Fuzz-Tone, one of the first commercial fuzz pedals, was released in 1962 but was not widely used in British rock. The Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face and Electro-Harmonix Big Muff came later. Davies’s method — the slashed speaker — was a pre-pedal solution to the tone problem that pedals would subsequently solve more conveniently.

Davies was, in this sense, the direct ancestor of every fuzz and distortion pedal user in rock history: he identified the tonal goal (aggressive, ragged guitar distortion) and found a method to achieve it before the commercial tools existed. When the tools arrived — the Fuzz Face, the Big Muff, the Tone Bender — they were solving the problem Davies had already solved with a blade.

Ray Davies confirmed the context: “We stuck knitting needles in the speakers, or in Dave’s case, he slit the speakers with a razor blade. In those days we played records on a radiogram so loudly that they all sounded fuzzy. We thought, ‘That’s a great sound,’ without realizing the speakers were buggered.”

Davies has used various effects in later periods of his career, but his primary historical significance is as the person who first achieved the distorted guitar tone commercially, before effects were available to achieve it.

The “You Really Got Me” Signal Chain

The complete documented signal chain for “You Really Got Me” (1964):

Davies’s guitar (Guild Starfire or similar, played through the specific rig described)
Elpico AC55 amplifier with speaker cone slashed by Gillette razor blade — producing the raw, ragged distortion character
Elpico output wired into Vox AC30 input — using the Elpico as a distortion generator and the AC30 as a power amplifier
Vox AC30 speaker output to recording chain

This is the complete “distortion rig” of 1964: a damaged small amp feeding a clean large amp, the damage providing the distortion, the clean amp providing the power. The commercial fuzz pedal would solve this problem electronically within a year or two; Davies solved it mechanically with a blade.

Playing Style & Tone Philosophy: Aggression, Simplicity, and the Power Chord

Dave Davies’s guitar philosophy is the most purely aggressive in the British Invasion tradition. Where fellow British guitarists of his era — Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Jeff Beck — emphasized blues-derived technique and tonal refinement, Davies emphasized raw power, simple but effective riff construction, and a playing style that valued impact over complexity.

The Power Chord Pioneer

“You Really Got Me” is built on power chords — the two-note fifth intervals that would become the foundational vocabulary of heavy metal and punk. Davies didn’t invent the power chord as a chord shape, but he was among the first to make it the primary riff tool of a commercially successful hit record. The combination of the power chord’s harmonic simplicity with the slashed-speaker distortion’s sonic aggression produced the template for hard rock guitar.

Pete Townshend explicitly acknowledged the influence: “You Really Got Me” fired up Townshend to write “I Can’t Explain” — a song that adopted the same power-chord-with-distortion approach. The chain: Davies → Townshend → a generation of British hard rock guitarists who absorbed both.

The Riff as Everything

In the early Kinks records, the riff is the song. “You Really Got Me,” “All Day and All of the Night,” “I Need You” — these songs are their guitar riffs. The vocal melody sits on top; the riff is the structural foundation. This approach — the guitar riff as the central compositional element — anticipates heavy metal’s riff-centered architecture by a decade.

A sixteen-year-old was doing this in 1964, before anyone had a name for what he was doing, before the commercial tools (fuzz pedals, distortion boxes) to do it existed. He was doing it with a slashed speaker and a borrowed amp and a razor blade.

The Solo Voice

Davies was not primarily a lead guitarist in the conventional sense — he was a rhythm player with occasional expressive solos that served the song’s emotional content rather than demonstrating technical facility. The “You Really Got Me” solo is the model: aggressive, melodically direct, emotionally committed, and completely appropriate to the song’s spirit. He described working on the early Kinks records as “like catching lightning out of the sky.”

How to Sound Like Dave Davies: The Kinks Guitar Tone

The Guitar

A semi-hollow thinline (Guild Starfire or ES-335 equivalent) for the mid-1960s period; a Gibson Flying V for the late 1960s heavier material.

Guild Starfire III or Guild Starfire V — The most authentic choice for the 1965-1967 period; warm Guild humbuckers; semi-hollow body
Any thinline semi-hollow with humbuckers — Gibson ES-335, Epiphone Sheraton, or equivalent; the semi-hollow character suits the warm-but-aggressive tone
Gibson Flying V — For the late 1960s period; the dramatic angular body and mahogany humbucker tone

The Amp

The most historically authentic approach: damage a speaker and wire it into a clean amp. The more practical approach: a Vox AC30 or Vox-family amplifier with a fuzz pedal before the input.

Control	Setting	Notes
Normal channel volume	High (near maximum)	The Vox at working volume; the natural saturation of the EL84 tubes contributes to the character
Treble	6–7	Present; the aggressive character requires treble to cut through
Bass	4–5	Controlled; the power chord’s low E string provides bass foundation; excessive amp bass muddies
Top Cut	Minimal	Allow full treble response; the slashed speaker’s rasp requires treble extension

The Fuzz

The slashed-speaker distortion was the original “You Really Got Me” tone. The closest modern approximation: a silicon fuzz pedal (Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face silicon, Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi, ProCo RAT) before a clean Vox-family amp. The Tone Bender, developed by London’s Gary Hurst in 1965 specifically influenced by Davies’s slashed-speaker sound, is the most historically connected commercial fuzz pedal.

The authentic recreation: Take a cheap amplifier (the Elpico AC55 or any small vintage combo). Make a small slash in the speaker cone — not all the way through; a tear around the cone’s perimeter, still keeping the cone intact. Wire this amp’s speaker output to a Vox AC30’s instrument input. Play through the resulting chain.

The practical recreation: Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face (silicon) or Tone Bender before a Vox AC30. Power chords. High volume.

Budget vs Authentic

Budget:

Guitar: Epiphone Sheraton or any thinline semi-hollow with humbuckers
Amp: Vox AC15 or AC30 (reissue or used)
Distortion: Dunlop Fuzz Face Mini Silicon (or any silicon fuzz)

Authentic:

Guitar: Guild Starfire III (vintage or reissue) or 1959 Gibson Flying V prototype if you have access to the time machine
Amp: Elpico AC55 (slashed speaker) wired into Vox AC30 input
Distortion: Built into the damaged speaker; no pedal needed
Tool: Gillette razor blade

Influence & Legacy: The Accident That Launched Three Genres

Dave Davies’s influence on guitar playing is the influence of the accidental inventor whose accident proved so consequential that subsequent generations built entire genres on the sound it produced. He identified and demonstrated — before anyone else had done so commercially — that aggressive electric guitar distortion was possible and musically powerful.

The documented direct connections:

Pete Townshend (The Who) — “You Really Got Me” fired up Townshend to write “I Can’t Explain” — an explicit adoption of the power-chord-with-distortion approach; The Who’s subsequent development of power chord rock (and eventually guitar smashing) runs through Davies
Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck — Davies’s distortion “raised both Page’s and Jeff Beck’s awareness of distortion’s transformative power”; both subsequently used the sonic vocabulary Davies had pioneered
Heavy metal — Davies explicitly cited as a precursor: “which so many bands have cited as the beginnings of punk and heavy metal”
Punk rock — The power chord vocabulary and the specific aggressive, stripping-away of musical refinement that punk represented is directly traceable to “You Really Got Me”
Van Halen — Covered “You Really Got Me” as their debut album’s opening track (1978); Ray Davies said it was his favorite Kinks cover and that it sent Van Halen “on a career of excess”; the lineage from Davies’s 1964 power chord to Van Halen’s arena rock is direct and documented
Every fuzz and distortion pedal ever made — Commercial fuzz pedals were developed in the mid-1960s specifically to reproduce the sound that Davies had produced with a razor blade; the pedal exists because he demonstrated the goal

He was sixteen. He had an argument with his girlfriend. He picked up a razor blade. He stabbed a £10 amplifier with it. He wired it into a bigger amp. He played a power chord riff through the resulting chain.

Heavy metal. Punk rock. Every fuzz pedal ever made. The power chord as the central vocabulary of hard rock for sixty years. Pete Townshend. Jimmy Page. Jeff Beck. Van Halen.

All of it starts with a sixteen-year-old boy, an argument with his girlfriend, a cheap amplifier, and a Gillette razor blade.

Tone note: He demonstrated it on BBC Radio 4 in 2025 at the age of seventy-eight. He picked up a razor, slashed a speaker cone, strummed a chord, and said: “That’s basically it.” Sixty years of rock history, demonstrated in one casual gesture. The casualness is the point: he didn’t know he was inventing anything in 1964. In 2025, he can reproduce the invention in ten seconds with no special equipment and no particular ceremony. Some of the most important things in history are very simple. A razor blade and a £10 amplifier. That’s basically it.

He’d had an argument with his girlfriend. He was sixteen. He picked up a Gillette razor blade and stabbed the speaker cone of his little green Elpico AC55 amplifier. The speaker still worked — the slash gave it a raw, raspy, ragged character unlike anything else in 1964.

He wired the Elpico into a Vox AC30 for volume. He played the riff his brother had written on piano. The result was “You Really Got Me” — the first hit record to use guitar distortion, the foundation of heavy metal and punk, the song that fired up Pete Townshend and Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck.

His primary guitar in the formative years was the Guild Starfire III. Later it was the 1959 Gibson Flying V prototype — slightly different from the production model, because it was actually a prototype. He used a Gibson Les Paul Artisan in the late 1970s.

In 2025, at seventy-eight years old, he picked up a razor on BBC Radio 4, slashed a speaker cone, and said: “That’s basically it.”

Heavy metal. Punk rock. Every fuzz pedal. Van Halen. Pete Townshend. Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. One razor blade. One angry teenager. One £10 amplifier.

That’s basically it.

If Dave Davies’s slashed-speaker distortion — the Elpico into the Vox AC30, the Guild Starfire and Flying V, the power chord foundation of heavy rock — has you exploring the British Invasion’s guitar tradition, check our complete guide to Pat Martino’s guitars and gear — the jazz guitarist whose completely different tradition demonstrates how many different ways the electric guitar found its voice in the same era that Davies was accidentally inventing distortion in north London.

And for the next guitarist in this series — whose American swamp rock roots are as far from Muswell Hill as it’s possible to get but whose guitar aggression connects to the same electric tradition Davies inaugurated — don’t miss our breakdown of John Fogerty’s complete gear guide.

FAQ: Dave Davies Guitars & Gear

How did Dave Davies invent guitar distortion?: In 1964, Davies was frustrated with his small green Elpico AC55 amplifier, which he described as “too bassy or too bright, but never right.” After an argument with his girlfriend, he picked up a Gillette razor blade and slashed the speaker cone of the Elpico. The speaker still worked — the slash gave it a raw, raspy distortion character unlike anything being produced commercially. He then wired the damaged Elpico’s output into a Vox AC30’s input for additional volume, using the small amp as a distortion generator and the larger amp as a power stage. He played the power chord riff his brother Ray had written, and the result was “You Really Got Me” (1964) — cited as the first hit record to use guitar distortion. He described it to The Guardian: “I was very depressed and fooling around with a razor blade… I thought, I’ll teach it — and slashed the speaker cone.”
What guitar did Dave Davies play on “You Really Got Me”?: The specific guitar used on “You Really Got Me” is not confirmed with absolute certainty in all sources, but his primary guitars during the early-to-mid Kinks period included the Guild Starfire III (documented in TV performances and on the cover of The Kink Kontroversy LP) and various other instruments of the era. His most iconic visual association is the 1959 Gibson Flying V prototype — slightly different from production Flying V models because it was an actual prototype — which became his primary guitar in the later 1960s. The power chord riff on “You Really Got Me” is consistent with a semi-hollow or humbucker-equipped guitar of the era.
What was the Elpico AC55?: The Elpico AC55 was a small, inexpensive portable combination amplifier — a “little green amplifier” in Davies’s description — valued at approximately £10. It was a modest, non-professional amplifier designed for basic portable use rather than stage performance. Its limitations frustrated Davies in his attempts to find the right guitar tone for The Kinks’ recordings. After he slashed its speaker cone with a razor blade, the damaged amp became one of the most consequential pieces of musical equipment in rock history. Davies referred to it affectionately as “Little Green.” He wrote a song about it on his solo album I Will Be Me (2023) called “Little Green Amp.”
Why did Dave Davies stab his amplifier?: Anger and depression following an argument with his girlfriend, combined with frustration at not being able to get the right guitar tone from the Elpico. He described it to The Independent: “I’d had an argument with my girlfriend and I was full of rage and pissed off. Rather than slash my wrists, I thought I’d attack the speaker cone.” To The Guardian: “I was very depressed and fooling around with a razor blade. I could easily have slashed my wrists, but I had a little green amplifier, an Elpico, that was sounding crap. I thought, I’ll teach it — and slashed the speaker cone.” The act was simultaneously impulsive, self-destructive in impulse, and musically transformative in result. He was sixteen years old.
How did “You Really Got Me” influence rock music?: Davies described the song as “the first hit record to use distortion, which so many bands have cited as the beginnings of punk and heavy metal.” The song specifically fired up Pete Townshend to write The Who’s “I Can’t Explain” — an explicit adoption of the power-chord-with-distortion approach. Both Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck have acknowledged that “You Really Got Me” raised their awareness of distortion’s musical potential. Van Halen covered it as the opening track of their debut album (1978), launching one of rock’s biggest careers. The power chord vocabulary the song demonstrates became the foundational grammar of heavy metal and punk rock. Commercial fuzz pedals developed in 1965-1966 were created specifically to reproduce the sound Davies had produced with a razor blade.
What is Dave Davies’s most famous guitar?: His most iconic visual association is the 1959 Gibson Flying V prototype — a slightly unusual example with a “slightly different shape from the Flying V because it was in fact a prototype V,” according to Davies’s official website. This guitar became his primary instrument in the late 1960s as The Kinks moved toward harder rock material. His earlier primary was the Guild Starfire III thinline semi-hollow, documented in multiple TV performances and on The Kink Kontroversy album cover. He also used various Gibson models throughout his career including a 1978 Gibson Les Paul Artisan in the late Kinks period.
How do I get Dave Davies’s “You Really Got Me” guitar tone?: The most authentic method: take a small cheap amplifier, make a small slash in its speaker cone with a razor blade (not all the way through — a tear around the perimeter, keeping the cone intact), and wire that amp’s speaker output to a Vox AC30’s input. Play through the chain. The more practical modern approach: a silicon fuzz pedal (Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face silicon, Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi, or Tone Bender — the Tone Bender was developed in 1965 specifically influenced by Davies’s slashed-speaker sound) before a Vox AC30 or Vox-style amplifier set at working volume. Semi-hollow guitar with humbuckers (Guild Starfire or ES-335 equivalent) or Gibson Flying V. Power chords. High volume. “We hooked a little speaker up to a clean amp and came up with thunderous, unaffected, pure power.”