It all happened so long ago... In 1972, John Deacon, bass player in the famous rock band Queen, was walking near a skip/dumpster in London, and saw an electronics board that was hanging out of it. He quickly identified it as being an audio amp section. Being a student in electronics and frequently DIYing music-related electronics, he decided to salvage it, and to use it to make a piece of gear for his own music. Using a small cabinet, fitted with some Elac (english brand) speakers, he made a small guitar amp. He then brought it to another Queen member, guitarist Brian May, who tried it, and was immediately impressed with the tone he obtained thanks to it. A tone that was really different from any existing guitar amplifier, allowing to achieve orchestral-like sounds, or flute, oboe, clarinet tones. From this day, he decided to use it on most of his recordings, for instance on their biggest hit, Bohemian Rhapsody, one of the most well-known rock song ever recorded. This amp was nicknamed after the name of the bass player, John Deacon.
For over 40 years, the true origins of this amplifier were a bit of a mystery... was it coming from a radio, a record player, a baby monitor... ? No-one knew, until 2013, when Dave Doughty, Mitch and the other members at https://www.antiqueradios.com finally revealed that Brian May's recording amp electronics was coming from a Supersonic PR80 portable radio, manufactured in 1964 in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

Having an interest in Queen since the 1970s, and especially in Brian May's recording amp, this radio was a 'must-have'... but none of them was to be found on the usual online auctions websites. So I started a long and difficult quest, mainly in Zimbabwe and South Africa, contacting former 1960s Supersonic employees to know some more about the Supersonic company and the products they then manufactured. Most of these radios have disappeared nowadays, though many had been produced back in the days. I was lucky enough to get in touch with the 1950s and 1960s Supersonic R&D manager, but also with the employee who wound all the audio transformers prototypes for Supersonic at the time. They very kindly gave me some priceless technical informations about the Supersonic range in general, and specifically about the Supersonic PR80 radio. Eventually, my contacts in South Africa helped me finding the original radio, some spare parts, and bought them on my behalf. Thanks to them, DoxyWorld now owns the original Supersonic audio amp board, but also some spare Supersonic audio transformers, one of the keys to the elusive tone of the original amplifier.

Having also access to the original Elac woofer and tweeter, and to the original cabinet, I decided to replicate the amplifier in its finest details. This work took me several years, doing some R&D on every single part of the amplifier and replicating them as faithfully as possible. Having full access to the separate elements that make the amplifier was the key to making our latest replica, the Supersonic Pro, as good as possible, both aesthetically and technically.