Ahed

Ahed was a Canadian company that produced guitar amplifiers. Its main product line was the GBX amplifier, which could reach 180 watts with 4x10", 4x12" or 2x15" speakers. The GBX amplifier had a pre-amplifier that could change the gain, brilliance, depth, contour and response of the output.

Ahed Music Corporation, Ltd., established in 1969, changed its name in 1978 to Ahed Corporation, then became Eco Corporation. [ [http://www.lib.uwo.ca/business/co_a.html Western Libraries Business Library] ]

In 1979, The Vannelli Brothers were using a GBX amplifier to mix their keyboards. [ [http://www.ginov.com/About/Articles/40keyboard19793.shtml Joe Vannelli article, Keyboards Magazine, 1979. See "How are you mixing your keyboards?"] ]

GBX amplifier

The GBX series was a concept created by Guy Beresford, the domed-headed madman who inhabited the basement of Kalua Music on Kingston Road in Scarborough. His family owned the store and he worked the rental and repair shop in the basement. Legend has it he designed the circuitry based on the idea that the head should be the pre-amp and the cabinet should carry the secondary amp and the power. The idea is you could scale up your power according to need since the cabinets would stack, driven by the four outputs of 0.5 watts from the head. Thus you could have four 140 watt cabinets pushing a total 560 watts.

GBX is said to stand for Guy Beresford Experimental.

The guitar series offered different configurations.

The Reberb Bug was a 1x12 Solid State combo offering 2 channels (Clean, Effect)

The Super Bug was a 2x12 Solid State Amplifier.

GBX also built 4-10 and 4-12 cabinets for guitars with the rear mounted amplifier.

Bass series were know as the 'Bass Bug' with a single 15 in speaker. They also made 4-10, 8-10? and 2-15 enclosures for bass as well as a matching driver. There may have been other series but it's not clear since most of the history has been lost in time.

In the back of each cabinet was a power amp which was interchangeable woth a unit that ranged from 90 to 140 watts (and probably some lower wattages). The head, a small, black and blue unit with a variety of channels for sounds, a single input and an effect input, was either designated for guitar or bass. It had four outputs on the back which fed the secondary, power amplifiers. It made the cabinets very heavy but the heads, conversely were incredibly light.

Taurus Bass Head

Another model designed by Ahed was the Taurus Bass amp head. This model had a slime/neon green face plate with volume, treble, presence and bass controls. It has two equal impdeance inputs and produced 70 watts to power two external speaker cabnets. The Taurus head came with matching cabnet, though specifics are currently unknown.

The head allows the user to virtually exclude either extreme highs or lows through its controls, and produces its best tone in the low-mids.

References