They live for the Sixties, and they've got the gear to match. Jailer: Chris Holland-Hill Warden: George Bodnar

"When you're listening to a tranny amp you can't tell whether it's a Roland or what 'cos they all sound like shit."

So sayeth Alan Crockford, bass player and vocalist with the Prisoners who, on their almost lone crusade to reeducate the masses on the virtues of the valve have won themselves a contract with Countdown records and a major tour supporting the Ramones.

"We don't have a general policy about old gear or anything like that it's more a policy about valves."

Apart from having one of the most original sounds out of all the Sixties copyists, they also have a selection of equipment that would make a collector break down and weep.

And the task of trying to make them believe that a transistor amp can sound good would make any shop owner do the same.

Alan: "We pick up most of our gear in second-hand shops, not in the music shops in London."

Johnny: "You can get money off gear by playing something and then slagging it off for a while, 'cos most of the people in music shops are just interested in selling you a Simmons so they have no idea we're interested in old gear."

Alan: "Strictly speaking a lot of the gear isn't ours, it belongs to a sort of pool of musicians, and everyone's gear gets passed around so we all use it!"

The gear, which consists of some very rare equipment indeed, is used in the Prisoners' case to produce some of the most authentic Sixties psychedelia this side of the 'Dukes of Stratosphear' — not that they feel that the equipment is responsible for their sound.

"I think it's the way we play really, though the sounds on some of the cutting might have something to do with that. It's not a valve lathe but there's valves in the system somewhere."

The band's obsession with valves stretches right through to the cutting stage where Johnny Symons, the bands drummer, takes up the story.

"There's this old guy down in Folkestone who used to work for CBS in the states and he brought all his old stuff over with him because he prefers that kind of thing too.

"At each stage we've tried to use old stuff and it's a shame there are no studios with valve desks in them."

At this point I feel that it's definitely time for me to explore the obsession with valves that seems to dominate a lot of the bands techniques.

Johnny: "Valves just sound so much warmer when you overdrive them than a distortion slapped on a tranny amp.

"When you do that there's something missing, the way that in a transistor or a chip the sound has never existed in a physical form but in a valve there's like real gas and electrons all jumping around." Alan: We're not purists or anything like that; it's just that on the whole, to us anyway, valve gear sounds the best and old gear sounds the best."

With that put to rest we move on to the rest of the bands gear. Alan: "Well, err, I've just bought a brand new bass. It's one of the Squier vintage series — but it is built to exactly the same specification as a pre-CBS Precision. I nearly didn't buy it, though, because it hasn't got Fender written on it.

"Before, I had a '68 Telecaster bass that was all original, even the wax and string round the pickup. I'm really attached to it but it kept falling to bits so I just play it at home when I'm feeling nostalgic."

A slight blush alights on his face at the confession.

Johnny: "It was a stroke of luck finding my kit. I was in Drumland in Dartford, great shop, when this fat old session player came in and said he was selling a 1964 Super Ludwig Classic, so I checked it out and bought it. And Graham just got a '67 cherry Les Paul for £150."

Alan: "The Hammond was a bit of a find too. We saw that advertised in the paper and went round to have a look at it."

Johnny: "There was this original 1964 Hammond M100 sitting there like part of the furniture and it must have been polished every day for years. So the first thing we did to it was chop it in half because they're too heavy to carry around in one piece."

Alan: "We've got loads of other gear like an old VOX tonebender, like Hendrix used, and Fuzzfaces are good too. Ours keeps on breaking down but it's great for getting that really weedy fuzz..."

Their equipment list could probably take up the entire article so I won't bother to turn you even greener by repeating more of it but needless to say most of it's done with valves.

The band have taken a slightly different approach with their latest single, 'Whenever I'm Gone' which has a much more soulful feel to it due to the brass section and is vaguely reminiscent of The Style Council. Could this be an attempt to throw off the Garage tag and chart?

Alan: "Well we thought it was a pretty commercial single and it hasn't been played on the radio once.

"In actual fact the backing track is just as rough as a similar track on an earlier record.

"When we did records before if we made a mistake then we just left them on there and laughed about it, but now we're working with a Producer we get told to go back and do it again."

The producer in question is exploded teardrop Troy Tate, but his presence doesn't seem to have affected the style, from Joe Public's point of view anyway. Or does it?

Alan: "Well, the record company chose him and we agreed. Ideally we would like to have done this one exactly as we've done on the earlier records but because we've got some responsibility to people we have had to compromise a bit."

Johnny: "We haven't compromised on sound, just tightness and things like that, but we are going to be reaching a larger audience and so we can't do things the way we did when we were making them for us and our mates to listen to."

Johnny and Alan wander off to the studio to see the rest of the band and to try on a very natty line in dogstooth suits. I wander back to the office thinking to myself that I'm witnessing a change in one of the best live bands I've ever seen. I think it may be for the better.