JEI Phaser 1960-1970 serial number 368

In 1967, Vox founder Tom Jennings was feeling the full impact of having lost controlling interest of his company to the Royston Group—a British industrial holding company—while also being forced to watch helplessly as Vox’s U.S.-based partner, Thomas Organ, was calling questionable shots in the design of Vox amplifiers. The push by Thomas to convert the line to solid-state, while simultaneously discontinuing the use of the essential Celestion Blue speakers, had helped to greatly diminish Vox’s standing in the American market. These factors, coupled with Royston’s decision to pursue the costly development of transistorized flight data recorders—leaving little capital to invest in Vox at a time when it was needed the most—created a rather dire situation, to which Jennings responded to by resigning from Royston’s board of directors in September 1967.
Jennings and his longtime friend/chief amp designer Dick Denney (who also resigned from Royston) quickly re-established themselves at the original Vox headquarters in Dartford Kent, and set about creating a new company called
Jennings Electronic Industries. Among the first JEI products were a pedal called the Cyclone, and a primitive synthesizer named the Bushwacker— the sounds of which Denney described as being similar to “croaks.”