Might of the Concord

A homemade amplifier instrumental to New Zealand's first wave of rock 'n' roll in the 1950s remains a favourite of some of our best- loved guitar heroes.

- GEORGE DRIVER

When I found it in the basement, my life changed. I was 15 and it was lying on the dirt floor covered in cobwebs. A little wooden box coated with a speckled baby blue finish and a black metal faceplate inscribed “Contina, made by Concord Musical Industries, Auckland”. A five-watt guitar amplifier.

My grandma had bought it at a Dunedin music shop in 1963 as a gift for my father, part of a cheap guitar and valve amp package. It had moved with him to Clyde in the 1970s and was eventually put in the cellar beneath the floorboards for another 20 years or so.

Central Otago’s dry climate had been kind to it. Plugging it in upstairs it coughed, spluttered, screeched to life. Then that distinctive smell of glass vacuum tubes heating up filled the room, a mixture of decades of dust being incinerated and the pine cabinet warming.

As I played the first chord a sound emerged that I'd only ever heard coming from records made long before I was born. That magical warm grit of a 1960s tube amp played a little too loud - only a little different.

I was besotted. The Concord powered my teenage music career around the pubs of Central Otago. Its modest output compensated for by a microphone to the PA, achieving a volume that led us to nickname our covers band Retrovirus the Crowd Dispersal Unit.

I had no idea that a few of the songs we were covering were by some of the country’s greatest and most influential musicians who also had the same Concord moment.

Although the amp’s popularity had waned with the easing of import licensing restrictions in the 1960s, the Concord would become the amp that wouldn't die. It gained a whole new lease of life with the rise of the Dunedin sound in the 1980s - the likes of Shayne Carter, The Chills’ Martin Phillipps, The Clean’s David Kilgour and The Bats’ Robert Scott becoming lifelong fans.