“The first run of these amps is expected to happen later this year,” begins Colin. “It’s unfolding at the moment and it’s going to be re-birthed.”
Goldentone Amplifiers have a deep and rich history in Australian music. Harkening back to the 50s and 60s, their sound and tonality bleeds into decades of Australian musical influence. Their tubey crunch and bright disposition elevate them to a league all of their own, with sonics that aren’t unlike other famous amplifier sounds, but also entirely unique in their response.
Goldentone have been out of production for some time, though have been slowly building a dedicated following on the used and vintage amplifier market. The brand was originally a Rose Morris product, an instrument distributor involved in both VOX and Marshall amplifiers in the United Kingdom. Rose Morris established a Melbourne office in the 50s and, along with the explosion of rock ‘n’ roll across the world coinciding with heavy post-WW2 tariffs, the Australian-manufactured Goldentone Amplifier is born.
Read all the latest product & music industry news here.
More recently, Colin Leadbetter of Nepean Music happened upon the trademark for the Goldentone name for sale, and has now taken on the job of bringing Goldentone back to life.
Goldentone debuted at this year’s Melbourne Guitar Show, with a handful of amps at various stages of production available for the masses to try and hear, blowing away the small crowd that surrounded their booth. In addition to amplifiers, Colin also has plans for some of the famous Goldentone sounds like tremolo, reverb, overdrive and distortion in pedal format, in partnership with an Australian pedal maker, as well as instrument and cabling solutions.
“The first run of these amps is expected to happen later this year,” begins Colin. “It’s unfolding at the moment and it’s going to be re-birthed.”
“[The beginning] was coincidental and opportunistic, but ultimately I found the trademark for sale— the rights to the name.”
Colin goes on to explain that the owner of the trademark had had big ambitions for the brand that never came to fruition, and Colin, having developed a love for an old Goldentone during his time as a record producer, jumped at the chance to bring the company back in 2025.
“I’ve always been very into the history.” he says, referring to the wider world of Australian guitars, amps and gear.
“There was one very notable amplifier that lived at Sing Sing, the old Platinum Records building there. I used that amplifier a lot there.”
“It was an old Goldentone 1755, it was one of my key experiences I suppose. So I was very aware of Goldentone, and its Melbourne-based history.”
“We thought getting our own amps built, and making a way forward for the brand would be five or six years. Right at the time that I got the trademark, I was having a conversation with a well known guy in Melbourne named Phil Bowen, who’s very well known for re-tolexing vintage amplifiers.”
As fate would have it, Phil knew an amp technician, Tim Occleshaw, who happened to be in Mornington, nearby to Nepean Music, who has an extensive knowledge of Goldentone.
“So thanks to [Tim’s] technical skill, we’re 12 or 13 months in and we have prototypes built.”
Excitedly, Colin expands further on what he loves so much about Goldentone, and the design elements he uncovered that made Goldentone amps sound the way they do.
“Via Tim, I’ve been able to say things like ‘I love how the 1755 212 combo from 1964 sounds, but I do like the extra gain and sizzle I get out of the 1758 from that era’, and he can look at the circuits, he’s able to take my generalised ideas and make them into a workable reality.” he says with a grin.
Colin continues, also saying that he managed to happen upon some original Vinex coverings, used on the original Goldentones, as opposed to the usual Tolex for amplifiers.
For all this focus on the legacy and history of the brand, Colin is supremely focused on bringing Goldentone back to the modern day, with tones of the vintage amps available, but with better reliability and consistency, having improved on the original schematics wherever possible and taking advantage of readily available, high quality, modern components.
The entire process has been truly fateful, from Colin happening upon the trademark for sale to connecting with amp tech nearby and even finding the same covering that the amplifiers were originally built with.
“It’s not to say we’re not going to find things challenging, but so far it feels like every part we’ve needed has someone falling at our feet. This has really come together, the right people at the right time.”
In pursuit of staying true to the original designs, the transformers in the amplifiers are also being hand-wound in NSW with a very rare Magnavox transformer winding machine from the 1930’s.
“We’ve found ourselves trying to improve on the elements of the older amplifiers, but on the other hand, Goldentones run on very unusual tubes.”
Colin expands further, referencing the 6GW8 tubes. They’re not found in any other major brand of amplifier, serving as half pre-amp tube, much like a 12AX7, and half power amp tube in one.
“There was a time when they were used in record players,” he says. “The 12AX7 side amplified the needle and the other side amplified the speaker. A lot of Goldentones run on them and they do have a very unique sound. It’s a very Australian sound.”
Colin and his team then discovered that Electro-Harmonix are still producing something with a similar design to this day, the 6BM8, albeit with a different pin out structure. The 6BM8’s preamp side sounds more like a 12AT7 as opposed to a 12AX7.
“We managed to redesign our smaller amplifier, The Gentleman, around those 6BM8 and make it more true to the originals.”
“And that amp has really struck a chord, pardon the pun, with a lot of people who’ve heard it.” Colin says with a laugh.
“When we get to the bigger Goldentones, for example, the Reverbmaster or the Bassmaster series, their tubes were these big things that were the 6DQ6As.”
These tubes are unusual in that they were used extensively in black and white televisions. Surely a sign of the times, Goldentone using whatever tubes were most freely available in Australia at the time.
“From 1958 to ‘60, maybe into ‘61, most of the amps are identifiable that they had the control plates up the top on the back. Those amps ran on, typically, EL34s, some of them even had 6L6s in them, the standards. So they started off in that same universe.”
“From ‘61 onwards, the design completely changed, and all those tubes disappear and all these esoteric ones that no one else uses [appear]. But it’s fair to say that [these tubes] are the sound that Goldentone amps are now famous for.”
While Colin has old stock of these 6DQ6A tubes available, they’re a finite resource, production having been stopped in the 70s, but there’s no point designing new amplifiers on old technology.
“We had to switch over to something else in the output section of our bigger amps, and that is going to naturally make them different than the traditional Goldentones, but we wanna see what we can do to keep it in that realm.”
“We seem to have found our solution in 6V6s.” Colin explains, though is quick to add that their larger amps are still in development as he wants to ensure they’re exactly right.
Colin is leading a small team of incredibly dedicated people to reviving the Goldentone name. He’s not interested in reissuing what’s already been built, nor is he keen to use the Goldentone name to mass produce amplifiers with a vintage aesthetic. Instead, he’s looking to bring Goldentone back, to pick up where they left off, and see a new family of amplifiers on the stages and in the studio with Australian musicians of every generation.
For more info, keep reading at Nepean Music.
